If the shoe fits...

Hillary Clinton receives $250,000 in speaking fees  - peanuts compared to Bill  - but I'll bet she'd give it all back to avoid this kind of embarrassment.

Clinton was addressing a convention of the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries in Las Vegas when an unknown woman approached the stage and tossed a shoe at the former secretary of state.

Hillary ducked and then joked about the incident:

Mark Carpenter, a representative for the organization hosting the event — the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries — stressed that the woman “was not affiliated with our organization and was not credentialed for this event.”

“Our staff denied her access before she later rushed past security,” he continued in a statement. “An ISRI staffer then stopped her as she approached the stage. She was then handed over to law enforcement.”

The incident is reminiscent of a 2008 scene in which then-President George W. Bush ducked during a news conference in Baghdad when an Iraqi attendee threw two shoes at him.

A spokesman for Clinton didn’t immediately return a request for comment. But Clinton, speaking at the Mandalay Bay hotel, made light of the moment.

“Is that somebody throwing something at me?” Clinton said, according to an account in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Is that part of Cirque de Soleil?”

She added, referring to a subject of her speech, “My goodness, I didn’t know that solid waste management was so controversial. … Thank goodness she didn’t play softball like I did.”

Since the incident in Baghdad, many protesters have thrown shoes at politicians around the world.

No one really knows the origin of shoe tossing. Some thought it was a Muslim tradition to show displeasure with a leader. But that turns out not to be the case. But everyone appears to be doing it these days, and at the very least we can say it is an unfriendly act.