Where's Bush? Where's Paris?

By Alan Caruba

It isn't exactly a blinding insight, but it occurred to me that, other than watching President Bush "pardon" two turkeys prior to Thanksgiving, I have seen very little of him on TV news and he hasn't exactly been page one news of late.

That will change when an Annapolis conference to do what no conference or international body has ever been able to do--bring peace to Israel and the Palestinians--will be the short, pointless focus of attention on November 28th.

Some pundits think this is some sort of major effort, but I think it is mostly window-dressing and further "making nice" with nations in the Middle East to demonstrate how "even handed" the U.S. is with regard to the poor Palestinians.

Nevermind that Mr. Abbas of the Fatah group created by Yasser Arafat cannot go anywhere these days without Hamas trying to kill him. Their last clash chased him out of Gaza and he is now somewhere on the West Bank. He is described as "timid" by most. Hamas is described by everyone as "crazy sons-of-bitches."

I suspect we may see little of President Bush in 2008 simply because he is not running for office again (Thank you, U.S. Constitution, Amendment XXII) and because it will be up to whoever the Republican candidate is to either distance himself from the Bush policies or defend them, possibly both at the same time.

It has occurred to me as well that I have not seen much of Paris Hilton. In time, someone is going to figure out that she was (a) smart enough to disappear long enough for her prison time to be forgotten and (b) smart enough to have built a fortune of her own by branding herself as the party girl of the decade.