President Bush, on a surprise trip to Iraq and Afghanistan, got a taste of dissent at a Baghdad press event Sunday when an Iraqi journalist threw shoes at him, forcing him to duck.

Barely 24 hours after the journalist, Muntader al-Zaidi, was tackled and arrested for his actions at a Baghdad news conference, the shoe-throwing incident was generating front-page headlines and continuing television news coverage. A thinly veiled glee could be discerned in much of the reporting, especially in the places where anti-American sentiment runs deepest.

In Sadr City, the sprawling Baghdad suburb that has seen some of the most intense fighting between insurgents and American soldiers since the 2003 invasion, thousands of people marched in his defense. In Syria, he was hailed as a hero. In Libya, he was given an award for courage.

In Saudi Arabia, a newspaper reported that a man had offered $10 million to buy just one of what has almost certainly become the world’s most famous pair of black dress shoes.

A daughter of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the Libyan leader, reportedly awarded the shoe thrower, Muntader al-Zaidi, a 29-year-old journalist, a medal of courage.

No. 140 • 1933 Huey Long Toilet Seat Medal • One of the most improbable subjects ever rendered on a medal, by the Medallic Art Co., no less. But, then, Huey Long, known as the “Kingfish” with his one-man rule of Louisiana politics, was a rather improbable politician. Had he not been assassinated in 1935, American political history would likely be different from what we know today. This satirical medal commemorates a set-to when Long left a rest room in Sands Point, Long Island (New York), August 28, 1933, and was set upon by a concerned citizen (accounts as to what happened varied widely; Time magazine reported that a drunk Long had urinated on the trousers of the citizen), the shape of a convenient rest room facility defining the outline of this medal.