NPR non-sequitors

I'm at work, actually working (woo!) but I'm listening to NPR. There was a segment on the Iraqi journalist who threw his shoes at President Bush. (What sounded like) an Arab woman called in, peeved and insistent, and rather certain throwing a shoe at someone in any culture would be an insult. The host basically told the woman that that was crazy talk and that shoe-throwing was special for Arabs. It reminded me of a similar comment on the inscrutable nature of the Arab honor system. Sure, notions of propriety and disgrace vary across culture, but I could understand why an Arab might be sensitive to 'expert' parsing of a blunt act of protest. I guess shoes may have been the most rhetorically pointed projectile the journalist could have chosen, but that seems a mere side benefit to the fact that they were the largest objects he could have brought into the room without raising any suspicions.