Let's not forget that the hero Iraqi Shoe Hurler was a journalist before he became a footwear projectilist. A certain portion of his colleagues think he disgraced his profession. They're wrong. Let's go to Muntader's brand new explanatory op-ed!

He says, basically: He'd had enough of his country being fucked up and his countrymen being killed. He snapped. And he's not sorry.

The opportunity came, and I took it.

I took it out of loyalty to every drop of innocent blood that has been shed through the occupation or because of it, every scream of a bereaved mother, every moan of an orphan, the sorrow of a rape victim, the teardrop of an orphan.

I say to those who reproach me: do you know how many broken homes that shoe which I threw had entered? How many times it had trodden over the blood of innocent victims? Maybe that shoe was the appropriate response when all values were violated.

So he's a human before he's a reporter. An interesting notion. Not one shared by America's elite press corps. They're more of the "I totally got Bush to autograph a shoe for my kids, isn't that a hoot?" school of professional nihilistic suck-upitude.

So, Muntader explicitly says he's not a hero but I think he is, at least for journalists. You can't go crazy if you don't have a soul.

Send an email to Hamilton Nolan, the author of this post, at Hamilton@gawker.com.