Shoe Bomber: The Video Game

Back in the late-Vietnam era, one of the most coveted underground novelty items was a Richard Nixon dart board -- basically a cork disk bearing a portrait of Tricky Dickie as seen through crosshairs. It was sold in head shops and disreputable book stores. It routinely decorated the walls of alternative newsweekly offices. Some people (including certain national-security personnel) found it vaguely offensive because of the crosshairs. They had a point, but Nixon was a pig and it was all in fun. Sort of.

Now, from European video-game maker T-Enterprise comes the 21st-century version of political blasphemy -- a pretty damn poor flash game called "Bush's Boot Camp." The "game," the ostensible object of which is to "protect" President Bush from shoes hurled at him by foreign journalists, involves a dodging-weaving commander-in-chief, a crosshairs cursor, and two pistols, aimed more or less at the man behind the podium. Hmmm.

Oh wait!  You're supposed to shoot the shoes out of the air before they further stun our crypto-fascist running-dog chief executive. Oh, that's okay then. Aiming guns at a head of state is tasteful if you're only meant to skeet down flying Thom McCanns. Haven't figured out how to score yet. The directions flash on and off the screen too quickly to read. (As we said, this is a crap flash game, but they did turn it around in 24 hours.)

And behind all this lie a question and an obvious irony.

Question: Where was the Secret Service while our boy George was dodging shoes?

Obvious Irony: The Bush administration drops a catrillion tons of bombs on Iraq, kills countless thousands of civilians, and leaves the survivors without electricity or running water for absolutely no good reason, yet ironically, when one of his victims retaliates with a non-lethal weapon of minute destruction, they put that guy in jail.