Scrapbook
Scrapbook Benoit's Gall Shortly after Bulgarian truck driver Georgi Lazov's headless body was fished out of the Tigris River on July 14, his country's NATO ambassador in Brussels, Emil Valev,...
...Scrapbook Benoit's Gall Shortly after Bulgarian truck driver Georgi Lazov's headless body was fished out of the Tigris River on July 14, his country's NATO ambassador in Brussels, Emil Valev, proposed that the organization issue a statement condemning this and other hostage-takings in Iraq...
...Well, it turns out Mr...
...THE SCRAPBOOK has subsequently conducted a comprehensive internal investigation of the Sacramento Bee-related paragraph published in our June 14 edition...
...The Scrapbook was noncommittal about what it might "have" to do, advising Franken that (1) the Bee story in question hadn't credited anybody from the Associated Press...
...To wit: "I always say that maybe my ancestor made the wrong choice in backing the insurgents...
...Consider instead the "deeper, more troubling question" raised by the fact that the race between George W. Bush and John Kerry remains a neck-and-neck affair...
...Incidentally, d'Aboville "traces his lineage from an artillery colonel who helped the American colonies win a key battle of independence" (at Yorktown...
...Remember how an affable but insistent Al Franken then personally rang us up to question the accuracy of several somewhat less than crucial nuances in the aforementioned summary paragraph...
...Mr...
...Hotakainen, a fine reporter who surely has better things to do, tells The Scrapbook that he is a Washington correspondent for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, working out of the D.C...
...Franken accepted the compliment as appropriate: "We're very scrupulous...
...According to Shishkin, "fellow diplomats call [d'Aboville] the most outspoken and unpredictable ambassador NATO has seen in years," a man "notorious for losing his composure at meetings...
...Voltaire said that...
...Maybe all these people are just plain stupid, the paper's editors speculate, drawing inspiration from a "brilliant, hilarious new book" they've read that describes Republican voters as "low-income, blue-collar, evangelical, white Americans" who get "duped by the party of wealth and militarism...
...NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer did end up releasing such a statement, on July 20, calling these incidents "abhorrent" and "revolting," and expressing "deepest sympathy" for the various victims' families...
...The results are these: A story headlined "Capitol Hill comic...
...So you'll have to correct that...
...After all, he "who serves his country well has no need of ancestors...
...They can't imagine how anyone could vote for such a militaristic servant of the privileged class...
...This same Benoit d'Aboville has since been the subject of a most revealing and excellent profile by reporter philip Shishkin in the August 2 Wall Street Journal...
...And an unusually deadpan and generous Scrapbook has once again decided to pass along a full report...
...Monsieur d'Aboville, one well-placed diplomat reports, dismissed his Bulgarian colleague's request for an expression of support as ridiculous, arguing that all countries must learn to deal with hostage-takers as a matter of course, paying them off as necessary...
...The Bee in His Bonnet Remember how, two months back or so, The Scrapbook ran a single-paragraph-long summary of a June 3 Sacramento Bee story concerning Air America talk-show host Al Franken's possible 2008 Senate campaign in Minnesota...
...bureau offices maintained by the McClatchy Newspapers chain, which owns the Star Tribune...
...The conversation then ended...
...Moreover, so far as The Scrap-book has been able to determine, Mr...
...Never mind who's going to win America's upcoming presidential election, the Gazette advises in a July 17 editorial...
...Because by their own admission they still, with all the journalistic resources at their disposal, "can't imagine" how their own state's voters think...
...Hotakainen is in no respect affiliated with the Associated press...
...I wasn't interviewed by the Bee" at all, Franken informed us over a shaky cell phone connection early last week...
...McClatchy also owns the Sacramento Bee, however, which not infrequently picks up Hotakainen's dispatches, crediting him, not inaccurately, as "the Bee's" Washington reporter...
...I was actually interviewed by an Associated press stringer for Minnesota...
...In any case, the Gazette editorial says, "Educated, progressive people we know are unanimously disgusted by Bush...
...Franken may run for Senate in 2008" ran on page E8 of the Bee on June 3. That story, recounting an interview with Franken conducted "outside a New York skyscraper that hosts his new liberal radio talk show," was bylined "Rob Hotakainen, Bee Washington Bureau...
...Figures that a man like Benoit d'Aboville would "always" like to mention his ancestors, doesn't it...
...I totally understand" that, Franken replied, acknowledging that we might justifiably decline to pursue the issue any further...
...In which case, maybe the (self-described) educated and progressive people who run the Charleston Gazette ought to turn in their press badges and find some other line of work...
...That deeper, more troubling question being, of course: "Why do half of Americans want a shallow, smirking, self-righteous leader who started a needless war...
...2) the injured party here, if any, would thus appear to be the Ap's purported "stringer" and not Franken himself...
...The Scrapbook nevertheless promised to look into the relevant facts, complimenting Mr...
...And Mr...
...An unusually deadpan and generous Scrapbook sincerely regrets the peculiar error Al Franken has made about all this...
...It's something he rather "likes to joke" about, in fact...
...Mountain Brahmin Not citing Voltaire specifically, but grimly noting that "some European writers are beginning to call America a 'pre-fascist' society," the Charleston Gazette, West Virginia's largest daily newspaper, has gone on record with its concern over a "puzzling phenomenon that needs serious study...
...Franken on his meticulous attention to detail...
...Franken's complaint...
...Nor is he anybody's "stringer...
...But he did so, THE SCRAPBOOK has learned, only over the initial objections of Benoit d'Aboville, France's NATO envoy...
...Remember, next, how an unusually deadpan and generous Scrapbook dutifully and soon thereafter offered its readers a full account of Mr...
...Here, presumably, d'Aboville was communicating only his personal views and not the formal policy of France...
...Franken now wishes to revise and extend that complaint...
...He was very nice about it, mind you...
...and (3) that the matter might by now be getting a little old and stale...
...At one such session, for example, d'Aboville first "stormed out" of the room, by itself "an almost unheardof breach of etiquette," and then actually managed to make things worse by returning to his seat, where he "unfurled a French newspaper, interrupting his reading only to quote Voltaire to disparage the speaker...
...It hadn't been fair of us to suggest that the Bee had "quoted Franken gushing" about Hillary Clinton, for example, because "I don't think I gushed...
...For the record: West Virginia awarded its electoral votes to George W. Bush four years ago— and, if recent polls are any indication, they may well do it again come this November...
...At least we hope so...
Vol. 9 • August 2004 • No. 46
