I’ve seen a lot of things at press conferences.

I’ve seen basketball coaches shout down reporters and storm out in a rage.

I’ve seen elected officials stand up and take the credit for work performed by other people behind the scenes.

I’ve seen press conferences where leaders of various groups are not really announcing any news whatsoever, but rather just plugging their own brands and products.

Yep, there are all sorts of press conferences.

But I can say with absolute certainty that I have never seen anything like the one earlier this week where Iraqi “journalist” Muntadhar al-Zeidi threw his shoes at President Bush.

Now, this is really not a laughing matter.

But I keep laughing anyway.

I can think of many people who are probably lucky they have not had shoes thrown at them during a press conference.

Bobby Knight comes to mind.

I’m pretty sure there were times when Democrats and Republicans wanted to throw shoes at former Gov. Bob Taft.

But it never happened. In a historical context, Richard Nixon did not even have one shoe fired in his direction.

Journalists and observers have always kept their shoes on. I theorize that most journalists I have come to know over the years were typically too broke to so freely give up a pair of dress shoes.

Not even a good plunk in the chops would be worth having to buy a new pair.

The real losers in this story are the legitimate Iraqi journalists. There is a whole issue to address regarding the continuing development of an effective media in a middle eastern country trying to establish a democratic state, but that’s for another day.

Right now, it’s too much fun talking about the the president dodging those shoes like a cat.

From a quick glance it looks like President Bush would have been a pretty good dodge ball player, but we should not jump to any conclusions because we didn’t get to see him use his hands.

Throwing shoes at someone in Iraq is, get this, a major insult.

Not sure what else it could be in any culture really, but give the reporter some credit. He has a pretty good arm and he hurled two shoes before the flat-footed secret service was able to subdue him. Besides that, he was also able to get off a shout … “This is your farewell kiss, you dog!”

That kind of press conference disruption makes him a quality candidate for Howard Stern’s show, which for years created great comedy by having people ask hilarious questions and perform bizarre acts during phony press conferences.

But despite all the humor, no president deserves to have shoes thrown at his head for crying out loud, no matter how bad his foreign policy might be. Even Nancy Pelosi would agree with that.