Saudi Prince Bandar hands out the money even while many hate and laugh at him (but not usually for attribution)

Mideast Realities, Washington Scene (MER Flashback), 7 June 1997

He's the money man in Washington. But that doesn't stop THE WASHINGTON POST from making fun of him while reporting about him. And there are many among the Middle East crowd, including many who work for him, who loathe this Prince, his money bags, and his Aspen home with 26 bathrooms!

"...money from a totalitarian kingdom that stones adulterers to death and beheads religious heretics?"

THE URBAN LEAGUE, a grouping of Black Americans who want to act as much as possible like White Americans, recently awarded Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar Bin Sultan it's first Ron Brown Award (named after the former Clinton Secretary of Commerce who died in a plane crash in Bosnia).

To earn his award the jolly conniving Prince gave a measley $110,000 of the oil money that props up his family's "client regime" to the League. Then the League, dutifully now hired by the Saudis like some classy call-girl, made all the arrangements for 50 Saudi kids to go for computer training (taking their substantial cut of course).

"These are the Black bankers and government high-rankers, the fund-raising gliders and corporate sliders,people who have not foresaken the dignities of dress and personal carriage, and example for us all in the ease of their conservatism... The Urban Leave is all business, the protestant work ethic, Puritan Black with the occasional spach of sequins."

"I let no monkey stop this show," Urban League President Maudine Cooper told the POST. "Prince Bandar is setting an example of community involvement for the diplomatic community. We encourage others to follow."

It must have been a proverbial slip of the tongue by Cooper. Or could it be that she too has heard some of the monkey jokes Arab students pass around about Bandar. It seems that in the Urdu language Bandar actually means "monkey."

Washington is corruption central these days -- nearly everyone is tainted and odorous. Now the Urban League has hired itself out to the Saudis, then given a ridiculous "community service" award to the bag- man Ambassador, and all the while says not a word about the outrageous political and human rights abuses that practically define the place known as "Saudi" Arabia.