Bush In The Role of Milosh The Bad Tennis Player
Bush had a highly publicized photo-op this past week prancing around the ranch in Crawford with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz. According to the advance publicity, Bush was supposedly going to use the meeting as an opportunity to talk tough with Abdullah and convince him that the Saudis should increase oil production, thereby lowering gasoline prices and making the world safe for Hummers.
This event reminded me of an episode of Seinfeld about Milosh, the very bad tennis player who worked in the pro shop at Jerry's tennis club. I won't go into the details of the complicated plot, which involved Milosh selling Jerry an expensive racket on Milosh's personal recommendation and Jerry sleeping with Milosh's wife without knowing who she was. As it turned out, Milosh desperately wanted to convince his wife that he really was a great tennis player so Jerry, who felt guilty about sleeping with Milosh's wife, agreed to participate in a staged tennis match in which Jerry would pretend to be humiliated on the tennis court by the extraordinarily incompetent Milosh.
That was the image that came to mind when I heard that Bush was supposedly going to get tough with Abdullah during the Crawford photo-op. Obviously, Abdullah had no intention of listening to a lecture about high oil prices from a doofus like Bush. However, the relationship among the Saudi thugs, the Bush circle, and the Anglo-American oil industry is so lucrative and important (see, for example, my earlier blog on "Iraqi Debt Forgiveness and More Bush Cronyism"), that Abdullah was willing to play along with a charade in which Bush (in the role of Milosh) would act real tough with Abdullah (in the role of Jerry) for the benefit of the American media (in the role of Milosh's gullible wife) enabling Bush to claim to be the guy who stood up to the Saudis in defense of America's right to guzzle cheap gas.
Of course, the Crawford photo-op did not turn out exactly the way Bush had hoped, because the press focused primarily on pictures of Bush and Abdullah kissing and holding hands. This did not do much to shore up Bush's image as a tough guy. I never recall seeing Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood kissing and holding hands with guys that they were getting tough with.
There was, however, a more serious aspect of Abdullah's sojourn to Crawford that the American media ignored completely. On April 25, 2005, the Agence France-Presse reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had found that a member of Abdullah's delegation was on a Government "watch list" of suspected terrorists, and that the State Department had denied a visa to this member of the delegation. See www.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050425. The State Department confirmed the report but declined further comment, and the report was briefly picked up by the Dallas Morning News. Thereafter, the story disappeared from the American news media. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the television news networks all reported absolutely nothing about the story. At Bush's "press conference" on April 28, no one asked Bush if he had tried to find out from Abdullah, somewhere in between all of the kissing and the hand holding, why Abdullah had tried to bring a suspected terrorist into the country. For an excellent description of media incompetence on this story, see www.mediamatters.org.
The denouement of this entire farce came when Bush gave his speech on energy policy a few days after the love fest in Crawford. According to Bush, the development of coal and nuclear (it's pronounced "new-kyuh-ler") power, accompanied by relaxed environmental standards and Federal insurance giveaways for the nuclear industry, is the real "ticket" to American energy independence. We should give credence to this drivel, Bush's spinners tell us, because it's coming from the guy who got tough with the Saudis.
By the way, in the end of the Seinfeld episode Milosh carried the humiliation routine too far, and as a result, Jerry got fed up and he beat the crap out of Milosh on the tennis court. That must have been exactly how Abdullah felt, and in a sense, that may well be pretty much what has happened. Over the past several weeks, the Saudis have stepped up the arrests of dissidents and have even arrested dozens of Christians for having committed the "crime" of praying in the privacy of their own homes, see www.breakingnews.iol.ie, another story that the American media has largely ignored. Apparently, when Bush/Milosh went too far by proclaiming that not only was he going to force the Saudis to lower oil prices but also was going to make sure that democracy is "on the march" in the Middle East, Abdullah/Jerry responded with a sharp slap in the face and a return to reality.
This event reminded me of an episode of Seinfeld about Milosh, the very bad tennis player who worked in the pro shop at Jerry's tennis club. I won't go into the details of the complicated plot, which involved Milosh selling Jerry an expensive racket on Milosh's personal recommendation and Jerry sleeping with Milosh's wife without knowing who she was. As it turned out, Milosh desperately wanted to convince his wife that he really was a great tennis player so Jerry, who felt guilty about sleeping with Milosh's wife, agreed to participate in a staged tennis match in which Jerry would pretend to be humiliated on the tennis court by the extraordinarily incompetent Milosh.
That was the image that came to mind when I heard that Bush was supposedly going to get tough with Abdullah during the Crawford photo-op. Obviously, Abdullah had no intention of listening to a lecture about high oil prices from a doofus like Bush. However, the relationship among the Saudi thugs, the Bush circle, and the Anglo-American oil industry is so lucrative and important (see, for example, my earlier blog on "Iraqi Debt Forgiveness and More Bush Cronyism"), that Abdullah was willing to play along with a charade in which Bush (in the role of Milosh) would act real tough with Abdullah (in the role of Jerry) for the benefit of the American media (in the role of Milosh's gullible wife) enabling Bush to claim to be the guy who stood up to the Saudis in defense of America's right to guzzle cheap gas.
Of course, the Crawford photo-op did not turn out exactly the way Bush had hoped, because the press focused primarily on pictures of Bush and Abdullah kissing and holding hands. This did not do much to shore up Bush's image as a tough guy. I never recall seeing Charles Bronson or Clint Eastwood kissing and holding hands with guys that they were getting tough with.
There was, however, a more serious aspect of Abdullah's sojourn to Crawford that the American media ignored completely. On April 25, 2005, the Agence France-Presse reported that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security had found that a member of Abdullah's delegation was on a Government "watch list" of suspected terrorists, and that the State Department had denied a visa to this member of the delegation. See www.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20050425. The State Department confirmed the report but declined further comment, and the report was briefly picked up by the Dallas Morning News. Thereafter, the story disappeared from the American news media. The New York Times, the Washington Post, and the television news networks all reported absolutely nothing about the story. At Bush's "press conference" on April 28, no one asked Bush if he had tried to find out from Abdullah, somewhere in between all of the kissing and the hand holding, why Abdullah had tried to bring a suspected terrorist into the country. For an excellent description of media incompetence on this story, see www.mediamatters.org.
The denouement of this entire farce came when Bush gave his speech on energy policy a few days after the love fest in Crawford. According to Bush, the development of coal and nuclear (it's pronounced "new-kyuh-ler") power, accompanied by relaxed environmental standards and Federal insurance giveaways for the nuclear industry, is the real "ticket" to American energy independence. We should give credence to this drivel, Bush's spinners tell us, because it's coming from the guy who got tough with the Saudis.
By the way, in the end of the Seinfeld episode Milosh carried the humiliation routine too far, and as a result, Jerry got fed up and he beat the crap out of Milosh on the tennis court. That must have been exactly how Abdullah felt, and in a sense, that may well be pretty much what has happened. Over the past several weeks, the Saudis have stepped up the arrests of dissidents and have even arrested dozens of Christians for having committed the "crime" of praying in the privacy of their own homes, see www.breakingnews.iol.ie, another story that the American media has largely ignored. Apparently, when Bush/Milosh went too far by proclaiming that not only was he going to force the Saudis to lower oil prices but also was going to make sure that democracy is "on the march" in the Middle East, Abdullah/Jerry responded with a sharp slap in the face and a return to reality.
posted by democratic core at 1:33 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home