OF PRESIDENTS AND PRINCES During his father’s presidency, Neil Bush–you remember–was the object of considerable partisan innuendo concerning his service on the board of a savings and loan bank that went belly up in spectacular fashion. Now, ten years later during his brother’s administration, an apparent Neil Bush embarrassment is again in the newspapers. Only this time the newspapers in question are published in Saudi Arabia. And the embarrassment has nothing to do with partisan innuendo. So far as The Scrapbook can tell, it’s an open and shut case. Early last week brother Neil was in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden’s hometown, for an “economic forum” sponsored in part by Prince Talal ibn Abdul Aziz. The president’s sibling, who heads a company called Ignite! Learning, quite probably imagines that he was invited because of local interest in the educational software Ignite is marketing through a partner company in the United Arab Emirates. But the Saudi press seems only (and predictably) to have reported what this member of the American royal family had to say about regional politics. Which was alarming in its own right, if the English-language daily Arab News can be trusted. Even as George W. Bush’s White House was reportedly considering a significant withdrawal of America’s military commitment to Saudi Arabia, here was Neil Bush in Jeddah blaming tension between the two countries on a “U.S. media campaign against the interests of Arabs and Muslims.” According to Arab News, Bush endorsed a fresh and sympathetic American look at the “root causes of terror.” And he noted that, while “in the U.S. for years we believed in Israel’s right to exist”–believed?–“American public opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict could be influenced through a sustained lobbying and PR effort.” What a coincidence: That’s precisely the kind of lobbying and PR effort that Prince Talal is currently attempting to organize, a multimillion dollar response to Western media defamations about so-called Palestinian terrorism, a “terrible expression” that the prince is determined to rebut. Good ol’ Neil Bush: Always happy to help a friend. That the president’s brother was in Jeddah last week as a patsy, not as a software entrepreneur, was later confirmed, incidentally, by Prince Talal’s bitter criticism of the economic forum’s organizers for having also invited . . . Bill Clinton. They paid Clinton $267,000 for his 40-minute speech, Talal complained to the Al Jazeera television network. All of it wasted, he went on, since Clinton has no influence with the current Republican administration. Also, The Scrapbook might add, were The Scrapbook an anti-Semitic princeling in the Saudi royal family, Bill Clinton has a disturbing history of friendship with Jewish people. As we are reminded by last week’s Associated Press photograph of the distinguished ex-president on a visit to Jerusalem, surrounded by young office workers at the Israeli foreign ministry (see adjacent). One of whom a beaming Clinton appears to clutch, his chin in her long blonde hair, her head nestled softly on his shoulder. Shalom! OUT OF CONTEXT? Scheduled to appear as a speaker at the State Department on January 28, the Monday after this is printed, is the head of the Los Angeles-based Muslim Public Affairs Council, Salam Al-Marayati. His talk, ironically titled “Rising Voices of Moderate Muslims,” is part of a regularly scheduled series for department employees called The Secretary’s Open Forum. Why is the title ironic? Because Al-Marayati distinguished himself during a September 11 radio interview on L.A.’s KCRW by voicing this “moderate” thought: Israel might have perpetrated the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks. After the Zionist Organization of America issued a press release calling on Colin Powell to rescind the invitation, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher last week defended this invitation specifically and the forums generally, saying they were set up during the Vietnam war “with a mandate from the secretaries . . . to encourage a variety of discussion, and there’s no . . . policy approval of who speaks and who doesn’t.” Al-Marayati’s defense is the usual refuge of scoundrels: that his broadcast remarks were a “hypothetical rejoinder” taken out of context. Well, the context for Al-Marayati’s “hypothetical rejoinder” was provided by Los Angeles Times religion reporter Larry B. Stammer in a September 22 article. Al-Marayati was asked during a radio interview whether he was “worried about another spate of anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States?” Yes, he replied, “we’re warning about generalizations that will only aid the criminals who perpetrated this deplorable act and really hurt innocent people.” He then proceeded to offer his own generalization, which, you might say, only aided the criminals who perpetrated this deplorable act. Here’s what he said: “If we’re going to look at suspects, we should look to the groups that benefit the most from these kinds of incidents, and I think we should put the state of Israel on the suspect list, because I think this diverts attention from what’s happening in the Palestinian territories, so that they can go on with their aggression and occupation and apartheid policies. Why not put all the suspects on the list, instead of going ahead and shooting from the hip and saying those people did it and bombing the cornfields of Afghanistan and pharmaceutical factories of Sudan. . . .” Some context. Al-Marayati claims he offered a “personal apology for the misunderstanding to the Jewish leaders I have had dialogue with.” Misunderstanding? Are there any varieties of discussion the State Department won’t encourage? HE HATES US. HE REALLY, REALLY HATES US. In December 2000, The Scrapbook pointed out some of the absurd statements made by Hollywood lefties who threatened to leave America if Bush became president. Prominent among these lefties was Robert Altman. “If George Bush is elected president, I’m leaving for France,” said the director of the critically acclaimed “Gosford Park” and smash hits “Pret-a-Porter” and “Popeye.” After Bush’s victory, Altman amended his statement, saying “if Bush gets elected, I’ll move to Paris, Texas, because the state will be better off if he’s out of it.” So you’d think that in light of the widespread praise of Bush’s leadership at a time of national crisis, Altman might have lightened up. Think again–as he ranted to the London Times, “This present government in America I just find disgusting. The idea that George Bush could run a baseball team successfully–he can’t even speak! I just find him an embarrassment. I was over here [in England] when the election was on and I couldn’t believe it–and I’m 76 years old. Then when the Supreme Court came in and turned out to be a totally political animal, the last shred of any naivet that was left in me has gone.” Altman is unswerving in his hatred, seemingly of all things American. He adds, “When I see an American flag flying, it’s a joke.” Altman is also currently residing in England and says, “I’d be very happy to stay here. There’s nothing in America I would miss at all.” And we won’t miss you, either.
