CAMBRIDGE, Mass.  The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University today awarded one its prestigious Nieman Fellowships to Muntadhar al-Zeidi, the Iraqui journalist who threw two shoes at President Bush during a news conference yesterday.

"You missed me, you missed me--I guess you're really pissed at me!"

"Mr. al-Zeidi has shown a creative approach that speaks truth to power by throwing shoes at power," said Bob Giles, curator of the foundation.  "I'm sure he will find his time with us to be valuable as he discovers the many fashionable shoe boutiques of Harvard Square."

Giles, with Nieman Fellows:  "If anybody has any questions, fire away!"

Established in 1938, the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard awards one-year fellowships to midcareer journalists, who use the time to sit in Cambridge coffeeshops and read the newspaper.  More than 1,300 journalists from 88 countries have received Nieman Fellowships and gone on to write long, thumb-sucking articles that cloak their prurient interests in purportedly high-minded ruminations on public policy, such as "Should the Press Be More Concerned About What Lindsay Lohan Wears, or What She Doesn't Wear Underneath?"

"I don't have a 10 1/2 in a D width--try this on for size!"

al-Zeidi said he would use the fellowship to become more familiar with American culture and mores, and to sharpen his aim.  "I have for many years been intrigued by--how you say--flip-flops?" he told fellow reporters who congratulated him in the hope of cadging free drinks from the newly-flush journalist who is known back home as the "Iraqi Geraldo Rivera, or maybe Keith Olbermann."  "It is a bad thing for politician to flip-flop, no?  But yet they still wear them to the beach."