YES, ANOTHER REASON TO HATE ISRAEL Irving Kristol famously remarked that a neoconservative was a liberal who had been “mugged by reality.” He later added that a neoliberal is a liberal who, having been mugged by reality, refused to press charges. Tom Wolfe’s fictional bond trader Sherman McCoy further elaborated in The Bonfire of the Vanities that a liberal is “a conservative who’s been arrested.” So THE SCRAPBOOK is wondering, What do you call someone who, when mugged by Palestinians, blames the Israelis? Try “a public radio listener.” The August 25 edition of “Savvy Traveler,” a Minnesota Public Radio show distributed by Public Radio International, featured a piquant call by “David from Minneapolis” to host Diana Nyad, who was doing a segment on travelers’ experiences with crime. “David” told of returning late to his Jerusalem hotel. DAVID: I decided to enter through Damascus Gate which is the entrance to the Arab quarter. NYAD: Mm-hmm? DAVID: So I went in, and it was absolutely deserted. And so I walked down the street and a couple of people started to walk beside me. And one of them started to talk to me and—and after just a minute or two, I ended up being shoved up against the wall by about five or six of them. NYAD: Oh, no. DAVID: They started, sort of rifling through my stuff, and they had me just shoved up against the wall. And somehow I got out, and I just ran screaming. And after like 30 seconds, all these guys with machine guns come down, all—it’s the Israeli guard. NYAD: Oh. DAVID: There’s probably about eight of them, and they all have huge machine guns and huge flashlights. I felt really, really—I felt more wrong having that happen than being robbed, I think. I felt more—it felt terrible being on the side of people with machine guns. NYAD: So who was the bad guy in the end? DAVID: Well, it’s hard to say. I mean, you know, it’s no fun to get robbed, but it’s also no fun to, you know, have machine guns on your side. It makes you feel really ambivalent about why you’re there and, you know, who deserves to be there. NYAD: I can understand that. On the—on the other hand, you know, if they hadn’t come around, you don’t know, you could have been like, you know, have your head—your head—your head kicked in, something like that. DAVID: It—it was just a really interesting thing because I know a lot about biblical history, and that’s kind of the Israel that I was looking for. NYAD: Mm. DAVID: And, of course, I knew contemporary politics, but it just made it really—made it really real for me, the street level of it. NYAD: Yeah, and such an instant volatility. DAVID: Yeah. NYAD: I mean, if you as a tourist in the middle of the night just yelled out a couple of times and within, sounded like you’re saying 10, 15 seconds, they swarmed around… DAVID: Mm. NYAD: I mean, they—they are ready. They were ready to go. DAVID: Mm-hmm. Yeah, they were definitely ready. And they—you know, they were really, really anxious to find a bunch of Palestinians that they could, you know, harass or arrest or beat up or something. NYAD: Yeah. Well, David, I’m just glad you’re all right. DAVID: Yeah. Forgive us, but what we’re wondering now is what to call someone who wants to see David mugged again! HEMP FANS AT JUSTICE The brochure shown below was given to THE SCRAPBOOK by a friend and former government employee who banks at the Justice Federal Credit Union. It depicts custom covers that members of the credit union can buy for their checkbooks. The one on the right, available for $9.95, is a Kente Cloth cover that “coordinates with the African-American Heritage checks.” But it’s the one on the left that really caught our eye. Yes, you read it correctly, it’s the “Natural Hemp” checkbook cover, which complements “Liberty Recycled checks.” Plus which, it’s a really nifty fashion statement that lets you advertise your scorn for the nation’s drug laws every time you write a check! Hemp, for the uninitiated, is another name for the plant that produces marijuana. Its cultivation (though not its use in products like the checkbook) happens to be illegal in the United States, and so the promotion of hemp has become a pet project over the last decade for marijuana-legalization activists. We imagine there are some pro-pot activists somewhere having a snickering fit over this, in between attacks of the munchies. Especially since the law banning hemp is enforced by any number of members of the Justice Federal Credit Union, which serves (among others) employees of the Department of Justice and its bureaus, such as the FBI, the DEA, and the U.S. Marshals Service. And we won’t even ask what marketing genius had the creative idea of yoking hemp to African-American heritage. No doubt some soon-to-be-former federal contractor. GREAT MOMENTS IN WASHINGTON LAWYERING Those of you who saw Connie Chung’s interview of Gary Condit will remember his denial of a relationship with flight attendant Anne Marie Smith. Smith has claimed that Condit had an affidavit prepared for her, in which she was supposed to deny a yearlong affair with him. Why, Chung asked, “would you want her to say that she didn’t have a relationship with you?” Replied Condit: “Because she didn’t.” This turns out to have been a lie. Or at least, if you or I had said it, without benefit of counsel, it would be deemed a lie. But Condit has retained a high-powered Mr. Fixit, aka Washington lawyer Abbe Lowell, who went on Larry King Live the following night to issue this retraction. “Look,” Lowell expostulated. “The exchange was going hot and heavy at that point and she was asking about the affidavit and she was asking about lawyers, and then, did you have a relationship? And I think the ‘no’ came out, and the ‘no’ may not have applied to what it looks like it applied to.” That’s a line to remember, though we can’t recommend that untrained professionals try it at home. Lowell should know that he has our highest admiration. Our contempt doesn’t apply to whom it looks like it applies to. PAY UP, THEY EXPLAINED A couple of weeks ago, we dilated on the subject of U.S. government payments to China for “services” rendered in the spy-plane incident. It looked like we were being semi-tough in paying Beijing $34,576 instead of the million dollars the Chinese government had demanded for taking such good care of its American hostages. Unfortunately, we missed a story in the South China Morning Post that suggests the effective amount paid may have been larger. “In June,” the paper reports, “the Defense Department awarded a $5.8 million contract to Lockheed Martin…to dismantle the spy plane and transport it….A substantial but unspecified amount was paid to the Chinese Government, the Lingshui airfield and state and PLA-owned contractors for items and services provided to the Lockheed Martin crew. ‘They [Lockheed Martin] were writing checks left and right,’ said a U.S. government official.”
