Me and the US media

I have become quite reluctant to speak to the US media as I had told you before. I am particularly reluctant to speak to US visual media as they frustrate me. I received many requests for interviews today, and I only spoke to a handful of them. I mean this is a typical request: they wanted to me to speak about "the significance of the shoe in Arab culture." I also discovered that many in the US don't have an appetite for irony. Many have missed the irony and sarcasm of this blog. The daily news show with Brit Hume on Fox News plastered a quotation of mine (with the name of the blog) on the screen: but they quoted me accurately. I told one interviewer: the issue is the American occupation and Iraqi (and Arab) reactions to it, and not the shoe. I am willing to talk about not talking about the shoe, but not about talking about the shoe. The story is big and is getting bigger in the Arab world. Aljazeera went to a street in Morocco and talked to people: unanimous support for Az-Zaydi. One person said that his shoe was not a cluster bomb. By the way, will we Arab travelers now be expected to surrender our shoes before boarding a plane? I need to know.