An editorialist tells that if he had been reporting from Iraq, this is the dispatch he'd have sent:
Iraqis, voting in their thousands, literally gave terrorists the finger yesterday. Having voted, scores emerged defiant from the booths, their right forefingers raised and stained – stained for all the world to see. It was a spontaneous giving of the Baghdad bird to those who would stop them from exercising a democratic right, a violet-blue "up yours" (how else to put it?) to Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who had just declared that to vote, for a Muslim, is to commit heresy.
Is there a proper name for this familiar gesture, the one-finger salute?
What cultures use it, and what are the equivalents in other cultures?
I think this is different, though, partly because it has the ink on it and partly because it refers to a specific incident. This is not going to be a gesture that will be used in the future. Yet, I imagine that vision of people holding up their inked fingers will be remembered for a long time.
