Women Who Ran Washington; Bush-Haters on the Internet

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Sept 30, 2003

Byline: INSIGHT

Conservatives who have been cheering at news of the retirement of liberal Rep. Calvin Dooley (D-Calif.) note that he is backing his chief of staff, Lisa Quigley, to be his successor. An appalled liberal insider remembers hearing her complain to her husband that their gardener, a hardworking veteran, frightened her because he was "a baby killer like all the rest" of those who served in Vietnam.

* A book by tell-all rascal David Heymann out next month claims the political capital of the world was run by Georgetown dames Evangeline Bruce, Kay Graham, Pamela Harriman and Sally Quinn. Haymann reportedly dopes out Graham affairs with Warren Buffett and Robert McNamara presumably after she harassed her late husband Phil to kill himself with a shotgun in the bathtub while on leave from a sanatorium. Cindy Adams of the New York Post, who has seen the book, says it also tells the story of why Bill Clinton appointed Harriman, described as "the whore of Babylon," to be U.S. ambassador to France.

* Syria may have learned something from the overthrow of the Ba'athist Socialist Party in Iraq, modeled on Adolf Hitler's National Socialist Party. Amir Taheri says the ruling Ba'athists in Syria soon will hold a constitutional convention to strike the word "Socialist" from the official name of the party there.

* But don't expect the change of the Hitlerite name to do much else. In early September, hard on the second anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the official spokesman for Syria's foreign ministry, Buthayna Sha'ban, called on all Muslims to honor and support "martyr" suicide bombers.

* Presidential son and brother Neil Bush and his wife of 23 years, Sharon, still are scrapping about alimony and support payments after their bitter divorce. Which apparently is why Sharon again is talking about selling a tell-all book on the Bush family.

* It is called the Libertarian Free State Project, and the idea is that when party membership reaches a target level an internal vote will be held to identify a low-population state to be colonized by Libertarians, who will seek to win electoral control and cut that state's budget by 75 percent. The Communist Party USA attempted to do the same thing in the 1940s. Its target: Vermont.

* At the end of the first family's summer vacation the president's Scottish terrier, Barney Bush, accidentally was dropped on his backside. Barney was embarrassed but is just fine, though the Washington Post gratuitously called him a "lapdog," a rather silly insult for an animal with huge jaws and bred for the courage to go down holes after badgers. But it was left to Laura Bush spokeswoman Noelia Rodriguez unintentionally to give the little dog the ultimate insult: "You know, Barney is. ... like a cat."

* Been wondering about the origin of that scabrous Hate Bush stuff you hear from Democrat callers to C-SPAN? Check out their Websites at BushBodyCount.com; CounterPunch.org; TakeBackTheMedia.com; FearBush.com; PresidentMoron.com;BushIsAMoron.- org; and, TooStupidToBePresident.com.

* So, if the problem with the U.S. public schools is too many kids per classroom and not enough teacher pay, how come the SAT scores have gone into the pits while classroom size has dropped from 22.3 to 16 and adjusted teacher salaries are up $14,000 since 1960?

* Sure, Howard Stern's network was fined $1.7 million in 1995 for indecency, but the shock-pornster's show officially has been declared by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to be a "bona fide news-interview" program along with Meet the Press and Face the Nation for purposes of the political "equal-time" rules. Also qualified, according to the FCC, is the Jerry Springer Show. And how does one satirize that?

* Congratulations to professional journalist Diane Sawyer, a Wellesley graduate and former White House press officer, for overcoming the morning TV audience lead in key cities long held by left-wing cutie Katie Couric.

* And thanks to insider Richard Johnson for laughing at CNN anchor Fredricka Whitfield for reporting the death of Nazi film propagandist Leni Riefenstahl and using the pronoun "he" instead of "she." And especially for remembering when weatherman Storm Field was given a shot at hard news and reported the death of playwright "Tennessee Ernie Williams."

* Way down at No. 50 on the USA Today best-seller list as Insight goes to press is Hillary Rodham Clinton's autohagiography, Living History.

* And, finally, Saudi Arabia's Committee for the Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice which takes whips to women on the street it thinks reveal too much arm or ankle has for more than a decade banned Barbie dolls, which an official spokesman for the kingdom insists is a "Jewish" toy and anti-Islamic since it is "modeled after a real-life Jewish woman."