Molly Ivins February 27BERKELEY, Calif. — Lest we forget: Nowhere in the massive coverage of the death of Deng Xiaoping did anyone see fit to record the semi-immortal remark of the governor of Texas on the occasion of Deng's visit to our state in 1979. What Gov. Bill Clements said was: "Now, we've got to be nice to this little fella, whether we like chop suey or not." This is the sort of modest contribution to better world understanding for which our state gets so little credit, and I, for one, do not think it should languish in obscurity. I speak not a word of Chinese, but as it happens, I know exactly what Deng was thinking during that visit when we gave him a 10-gallon hat that almost drowned the little fella and then made him ride around a rodeo arena in a stagecoach. I read it on his face: "This is the weirdest bleep I have ever seen in my life." Any time y'all need help with another delicate diplomatic initiative, Madeleine honey, just give us a call. Meanwhile, I have been amusing myself with the right-wing reaction to George Stephanopoulos' metamorphosis into a political commentator. Much huffing, puffing and dudgeon from the nether end of the spectrum. Further proof of the liberal media conspiracy. Conduct unbecoming professional journalists. Etc. The reason I'm laughing is because I've been watching, and deploring, the unhappy practice of plucking citizens straight off the front lines of partisan political warfare and making them into political commentators for quite some time now. Let's see how we're doing at last count: William Safire, George Will, Kenneth Adelman, Richard Perle, Mona Charen, David Gergen, Caspar Weinberger, Edwin Meese, Pat Buchanan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Henry Kissinger, John Sununu, Peggy Noonan, Linda Chavez and Bay Buchanan. Also, radio's Ollie North, G. Gordon Liddy and Michael Reagan. Don't you just hate the liberal media? Speaking of the liberal media, they seem to have found the smoking gun in the latest Washington scandal: proof in his own handwriting that President Clinton invited people who had given him a lot of money to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom at the White House. Front page. Big headlines. Collective swoon from horror on part of genteel, Victorian press corps. Outrage and indignation to follow. The Lincoln Bedroom! Oh, the anguish of it all. Clinton has released a list of the people who were invited to stay in the Lincoln Bedroom, and do you know that although not everyone on it had given him a big glug of money, there was not a single person on it who was a serious political enemy of his? I knew you'd be appalled; the Washington, D.C., press corps is.
Speaking of big political contributors, I'm planning to get upset about this Lincoln Bedroom payoff in the near future, but in the meantime, would you like to take a look at the Fanjul brothers of south Florida? Bipartisan donors, these boys: Jose "Pepe" Fanjul, a Cuban emigre with a Spanish passport — i.e., not an American citizen — was BobDole's finance vice chairman and raised a ton of money for the Republicans. His equally noncitizen brother Alfonso "Alfie" Fanjul Jr. was a trustee of Clinton's finance committee and raised megabucks for the Democrats. Pepe and Alfie raise sugar for a living. Ever heard of the sugar subsidy? Ever heard of the interesting lawsuit about the treatment of sugar workers? The Fanjul boys also owned a bond company until the middle of 1995, when the Securities and Exchange Commission became unhappy with this outfit over the municipal bond mess. Many of you already know of BobDole's long-running connections with Archer-Daniels-Midland and the generous benefits stemming therefrom (Texans will be reminded of Lyndon B. Johnson and Brown & Root), but I am indebted to James Ring Adams, writing in The American Spectator, for an equally interesting connection between BobDole and Carl Lindner of Cincinnati. Lindner owns American Financial Corp., which in turn owns banks, insurance companies and Chiquita bananas. Adams reports that Lindner's interests have bumped up against federal regulation many times, including a complaint from the SEC on an S&L in 1979, featuring Lindner's protege Charles Keating as a co-defendant. In case I haven't made myself clear, what I am gently suggesting to my colleagues in the D.C. media, and to Sen. Fred Thompson, and anyone else who wants to listen, is that the problem is not who spent the night in the Lincoln Bedroom. That's the most innocuous OPO (obvious payoff) in recent history. It looks as though we might finally get around to exposing this entire system of legal bribery we call campaign financing. Don't blow it by focusing on who got invited to coffee parties. Focus on who got what in terms of public money: subsidies, tax advantages, loopholes, special regulatory favors. That's where the rot is, and that's where the public interest is. The entire corrupt system costs the people of this country billions of dollars and is destroying our faith in democracy — and that is not hyperbole. Get your heads out of the Lincoln Bedroom. *** Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. COPYRIGHT 1997 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
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