by Molly Ivors
Well, we're all quite relieved that things have calmed down among the Dem front runners, though I personally believe Dennis should have been up there. HRC was right: the differences among the Dems pale in the face of the differences between Democrats and Republicans, and that's what really matters now.
Especially in the face of shit like this:
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - President Bush arrived for dinner at King Abdullah's tent tonight wearing a floor-length, fur-lined robe. And he gets to take it home with him.
The "tent" is actually a building with a tent-like roof, the pooler reports. Half the building was taken up by an enormous hall, lined on three sides by low arm chairs. The pool waited in a wood-paneled, marble-columned entry hall, its doors open to a front patio and, beyond it, a soaring fountain, bathed in soft bluish light.
The president arrived escorted by the king's son, Mutib, following two men carrying silver incense holders, which filled the hall with aromatic smoke. The president wore a full-length robe, with bluish-silver trim, and seemed eminently pleased. Only later, when he sat beside the king and took it off, did it become clear that the robe was lined with fur.
A Saudi said that the robe is called a farw. The president's aides, including Press Secretary Dana Perino, Communications Director Ed Gillespie and Chief of Staff Josh Bolten, followed in their own robes. One, State's Elliot Abrams, when asked by Newsweek, said he was allowed to keep it, suggesting these were gifts for all.
MoDo, about whom I'll have more to say in a moment, notes that it was even more exotic than that, with more conspicuous consumption than a soprano in a garret:
At a dinner last night in the king’s tentlike retreat, where the 8-foot flat-screen TV in the middle of the room flashed Arab news, the president and his advisers Elliott Abrams and Josh Bolten went native, lounging in floor-length, fur-lined robes, as if they were Peter O’Toole and Omar Sharif.
In Abu Dhabi, Sheik Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahyan gave the president — dubbed “the Wolf of the Desert” by a Kuwaiti poet — a gigantic necklace made of gold, diamonds, rubies and emeralds, so gaudy and cumbersome that even the Secret Service agent carrying it seemed nonplussed. Here in Saudi Arabia, the king draped W. with an emerald-and-ruby necklace that could have come from Ali Baba’s cave.
Time’s Massimo Calabresi described the Kuwaiti emir’s residence where W. dined Friday as “crass class”: “Loud paintings of harems and the ruling Sabah clan hang near Louis XVI enameled clocks and candlesticks in the long hallways.”
..........
The president’s grandiose room included a ballroom, in case Mr. Bush wanted to practice the tribal sword dancing he has been rather sheepishly doing with some of his hosts, something between Zorba and Zorro. The $3 billion, seven-star, 84,114-square-foot pink marble hotel — said to be the most expensive ever built — would make Trump blush. It glistens with 64,000 square feet of 22-carat gold leaf, 1,000 chandeliers, 20,000 roses changed every day, 200 fountains, a dome higher than St. Peter’s, an archway larger than the Arc de Triomphe, a beach with white sand shipped in from Algeria and a private heliport. The rooms, scattered with rose petals, range from $1,598 to $12,251.
Jesus fuck, why don't you just shoot skeet with peasants, you overfed, conscienceless motherfuckers?
I'm not wholly unsympathetic to the idea that world leaders--especially hereditary ones like Abdullah and George Bush--have to put on something of a show. But one would like to think, however quixotically, that our interests were being represented in some small way by this gross display. Indeed, rumors are rife that Bush is "begging the Saudis" to do something about oil prices, even as he feasts off the obscene profits his hosts earn by bankrupting Americans.
But publicly, at least, that's not the point at all. He's promising them money (I am not making this up), and asking for them to support his war-drumming over Iran. It's not going well, shockingly. According to Dowd, "'We don’t need America to dictate our enemies to us, especially when it’s our neighbor,' said an insider at the Saudi royal court."
Unfortunately, we will miss MoDo's cutting analysis of the rest of the trip--"What do you mean women aren't allowed to use the gym?!?"--because she fell ill.
During Bush's eight-day trip to the Middle East, the titian-topped Times columnist caught a doozy of a stomach bug and was rescued by the White House, who gave Dowd access to Dubya's doctor and a ride home on Air Force One.
And what did the New York "Bill Kristol is NOT a Bloodthirsty Lunatic!" Times pay for this privilege? "The Washington Post reports that news organizations could pay more than $20,000 per journalist along on the journey." Well, I guess they had to cover those room costs somehow. (h/t Cookie Fleck '08)
Below: George and Abdullah take in a show at the palace: