Absurdity, Allegory and China

There’s a wonderful poem by Wendell Berry entitled The First, which I think I’ve posted here before, though it’s short enough to comfortably post again. The Cambridge Shoe Toss brought this one to the front of the line.

The First
The first man who whistled
thought he had a wren in his mouth.
He went around all day
with his lips puckered,
afraid to swallow.

Upon opening his mouth at the end of a long, dry day of walking about with a bird trapped in it, only to discover that nothing flies out, no telltale trace of feathers left behind, that the song, all along, was him and only him, is the point of both the title and the poem. The next day there could not have been another mouthful of bird. If there had been, then something would have been horribly wrong, a brain dysfunction of some stripe or other. You can only whistle first once.

It’s like throwing shoes at world leaders, after it’s been done before. It’s nothing but shameless cliché.  It’s consciously choosing to be publicly stupid, anouncing to the entire world, “I am incapable of anything but base rote. I am wholly unoriginal. My mother should have left me on a rock in the wilds the day I was born. I can do nothing else but make noise and drool!”

This cross-cultural copping of a regionally – as well as moment-in-time – specific act of demonstration makes about as much sense as burning a cross in front of Wen Jiaboa’s hotel. It’s all about set and setting. A western white boy tossing a shoe at a Chinese leader in England? I mean, come on! It’s like trying to Save the Whales by setting yourself on fire in the middle of a forest. I can only hope that he gets what he deserves, which will be his photo on the front page of every newspaper throughout the world, with the bold caption

World’s Stupidest Protester Returns to Primary School
Wants to try to get it right the second time around.

That ought to do it. This one goes into the same drawer as the John Watterberg file.

But Munatadar al-Zaidi … Well that was something else, altogether. Both of those shoes fit! But only the first time. And only there in Baghdad, at that particular moment. You can’t paint the Mona Lisa twice.