[J]ust how effective is it to insult someone in an alien cultural idiom? Bush, naturally enough, looked bewildered, but he ducked speedily and seemed none the worse for wear afterwards. Gordon Brown, I suspect, would have stolidly absorbed the blows; Obama would probably have caught one shoe in each hand before throwing them across the room for three points into a waiting waste-paper basket. But none of them, surely, would actually have been offended.

–Tom Chatfield at Prospect magazine’s blog

[Reporter, Muntadar al-Zaidi’s action was a] victory for human rights

–Aicha, daughter of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, while declaring that her charity would honour the reporter with a medal of courage