SCRAPBOOK
Scrapbook THE FRIENDS OF SIDNEY BLUMENTHAT Sidney Blumenthal, special adviser to the president and first lady on the vast right-wing conspiracy, managed to raise hackles across the Atlantic with...
...The 'apple' in question is not the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden, although given the context it is understandable you would make this mistake...
...It refers instead to the computer...
...Rushdie's difficulties with overseas travel," the spokesman said, "our ultimate responsibility is the safety of our passengers and staff...
...As reported by Love in an interview in Spin, Gore told Love at a Hollywood party, "I'm a really big fan...
...There are plenty of other officials, like the ambassadors in London and Washington for instance, who think they handle that relationship, and regard Mr...
...and an incompetent therapist...
...Speaking in Minnesota, Gore talked about moving Missouri into the 21st century...
...The Scrapbook can sympathize, though: When all you do is travel from one fund-raiser to the next, all those states must start to look alike...
...VICTIM" OF THE WEEK According to the New York Times, Jeremy Strohmeyer, convicted of sexually molesting and killing a young girl in a Nevada casino, "attributed his actions to several factors: Los Angeles County officials who did not tell his adoptive parents about his mother's schizophrenia and substance abuse...
...a former girlfriend who drove him to drug abuse...
...President Mohammad Khatami was presumably hoping to reinforce the statement by foreign minister Kamal Kharrazi that the Iranian government would no longer try to kill the British author...
...THE SCRAPBOOK thinks the seminal Hole album, "Live Through This," might be most appropriate for beleaguered vice presidents...
...According to an airline spokesman quoted in the New York Times, Rushdie still won't be allowed to fly on British Airways, which has banned him from its flights ever since the fatwa was issued...
...Scrapbook THE FRIENDS OF SIDNEY BLUMENTHAT Sidney Blumenthal, special adviser to the president and first lady on the vast right-wing conspiracy, managed to raise hackles across the Atlantic with his grand-jury testimony in the Monica Lewinsky case...
...Most telling, perhaps, of the danger that Rushdie is still in is the position of British Airways, which unlike the British government doesn't put much stock in the moderates of Iran...
...Funnier was the effort by Gore to suck up to Courtney Love, the widow of grunge-rocker Kurt Cobain, who fronts the band Hole...
...But there's much more work to be done...
...He also criticized . . . a close friend at the time for not acting to save [the victim] when he happened on the assault...
...Name a song, Al.'" He flailed...
...Exceptionally, Love didn't allow herself to be flattered: "I was like, 'Yeah, right...
...Blumenthal's testimony to the grand jury in the investigation by the special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, he is in charge of the 'special relationship' and looks after relations between Bill Clinton and Tony Blair...
...And the Khordad-15 Foundation, a quasi-governmental Islamic foundation in Iran that had previously publicized a $2.5 million reward for Rushdie's head, last week said it was upping the bounty by $300,000...
...Blumenthal told the investigators...
...The creepy Mahmoud Mohammadi, in line to be Iran's ambassador to Britain now that relations are restored, called the judgment against Rushdie "irrevocable...
...Bill: A computer that never goes down...
...The money will address long-overlooked issues such as missile defense and military readiness, though perhaps most significant is the simple fact that Congress and the Clinton administration finally acknowledged the need to spend more on national security...
...FINALLY, A DEFENSE BUDGET Republicans may find a lot to complain about in the budget deal reached last Thursday, but three cheers are in order for the $9 billion increase in defense spending—the first increase in real dollars to defense since 1985...
...According to congressional sources, the increase never would have been included in the budget had it not been for the efforts of House speaker Newt Gingrich, who overcame the strong objections of the Clinton administration and congressional Democrats...
...As if the president of the United States and the prime minister of Great Britain needed Sid's intervention to meet...
...Blumenthal as a nuisance...
...THE PRESIDENT'S JOKE A professor at a prestigious northeastern university, who asks to have his name redacted, writes in response to THE SCRAPBOOK's query about the joke that Bill Clinton told to Monica Lewinsky—"the Jewish-American princess and apple one," as it's described in the Tripp/Lewinsky transcripts: Our correspondent writes: "Your naiveté is touching...
...The joke you are unaware of dates from the early 1980s...
...Nevada casinos that allowed children to play at arcades...
...That may have been premature...
...Rushdie's 1989 book The Satanic Verses had provoked the Ayatollah Khomeini to issue a fatwa calling for Rushdie's execution for blasphemy...
...GORE SIGHTINGS Vice President Al Gore was featured in Republican National Committee press releases again last week—this time for getting his M states mixed up...
...He's an old friend of mine, I introduced him to the President and the First Lady, and I act as a personal liaison between the President and the Office of the Prime Minister,' Mr...
...our correspondent believes the oval office dialogue went like this: Bill: What do you get if you cross a Jewish-American princess with an Apple...
...Profiles in courage...
...What's really needed is a defense budget that continues to grow, and it would be nice if others would follow Gingrich's lead in making this a priority...
...And Kharrazi's statement that the Iranian government would no longer try to enforce the fatwa was good enough for prime minister Tony Blair's government, which hastened to restore diplomatic relations between Britain and Iran...
...As Andrew Marshall reported in the Independent, a London daily: "According to Mr...
...Marshall further reported that Blumenthal's "statements about his role with Britain have not earned him many friends on either side of the Atlantic...
...Monica: What...
...The rest of the Iranian establishment has also adopted a Clintonian posture towards the fatwa: Mend it, don't end it...
...MEND IT, DON'T END IT Sounding a Clintonian "let's put this behind us" note, the president of Iran at a press conference in late September said the Salman Rushdie affair should be regarded as "finished...
...While we have every sympathy with Mr...
...Strohmeyer neglected to blame Ken Starr, for which he was sentenced to three life terms, to be served consecutively...
Vol. 4 • October 1998 • No. 7
