May 24
...serving up your daily dish.
Our faithful correspondent JMo attended the World Economic Forum in Jordan and filed this report:
Debbie,
Spent two days at the World Economic Forum Dead Sea and all I got was a lousy photo of Richard Gere. (See attached). Yes that is him in the background sitting next to Jim Zogby. Sorry it is out of focus but trust me it’s him. I would have sat next to him but Ragdha Dergham (Al Hayat newspaper and BBC) frequent guest on Hardball got first dibs on that seat. At least I got a pic of her. Anyway heard a lot of interesting speeches - and panel discussions, and it seemed that Gere was everywhere.
Practically every session I attended he was there as well. Laura Bush received a lot of attention regarding her speech on the enfranchisement of women in the Middle East, and poor Shimon Peres, was seen walking the halls and practically no one was talking to him. He looked pretty lonely. On a positive note, Israel, Palestine and Jordan announced a joint cooperation agreement to build an aqueduct between the Red Sea and the Dead Sea to save the latter from completely drying up. Other news I got to see where Jesus was actually baptized – no kidding.
Jmo
Poor Shimon Peres, not getting to sit with the popular kids. Jmo, for those readers in Glen Ridge and Bloomfield who are not familiar with him, is a Montclair preservationist and token conservative, as well as a regular poster to many internet boards. A frequent traveler to the Middle East, he has a salad named for him in Beirut.
May 24, 2005 in A Friend Writes | Permalink
Richard Gere? I think it looks a lot like Bill Clinton!
Posted by: Person of Interest | May 24, 2005 12:47:03 PM
There's more self-restraint out there than I imagined, given no postings on this one. Nonetheless...Richard Gere at a World Economic Forum is scary. Scarier still is the possibility that anybody else took this fake-Buddhist boob seriously there. Maybe we really are in the End Times, if this seeming cousin of the Anti-Christ is loose along the Dead Sea. I love how he sports hornrims when he wants to be taken seriously (and for most of his movies to then be safely forgotten).
Posted by: cathar | May 24, 2005 12:59:49 PM
Lol!! The horn-rimmed guy isn't Gere but Jerry Mosier. Gere is that blurry figure that the arrow points to in the top picture.
Posted by: The Barista | May 24, 2005 1:02:46 PM
I never said Gere was wearing hornrims in "your" picture, barista. I just meant that he pops on the hornrims (just as Sly Stallone does) when he wants to be taken seriously on even bigger maters, such as peace in the Mideast and why those awful grosses for stuff like "Mr. Jones," "Power" and "Dr. T and the Women" (or whatever the Altman movie is called) have nothing to do with his personal credibility and acting ability.
Posted by: cathar | May 24, 2005 1:50:19 PM
Sorry, cathar, thought maybe JMo was going to have a second career as a movie star.
Posted by: The Barista | May 24, 2005 1:54:07 PM
Okay, so what did Jerry Mosier make of Richard Gere? He also looks a lot smarter than Gere ever does.
Posted by: cathar | May 24, 2005 2:41:05 PM
Good points Cathar, I spent a few hours with him at dinner that night and I have to say I was impressed with him. He is intellligent and has a grasp of complex issues. When we talked about the disengagment process on the West Bank, he was extremely knowlegable about the complexity, especially about those settlements that are near and adjacent to the 67 green line. In all I saw his not as the empty suit that I presumed but as a man who is seriously committed to seeing the world as a potentially better place. BTW seeing where Jesus was baptized was truly a life changing experience.
'
Posted by: jmo | May 24, 2005 3:38:53 PM
Gere "co-Stared" in a 2004 Palestinian Authority PSA with Sheikh Tamimi, who said in 1994: “the Jews are destined to be persecuted, humiliated and tortured forever, and it is a Muslim duty to see to it that they reap their due. No petty arguments must be allowed to divide us. Where Hitler failed, we must succeed.
Gere must be an expert at "complexity".
Posted by: Right of Center | May 24, 2005 3:55:48 PM
Where Jesus was baptized? You must mean circumcized....
Posted by: The Barista | May 24, 2005 4:01:16 PM
Atallah Hanna, Gere's other Co-Star in the PSA has said:
"These martyrdom freedom fighters are the heroes of the people, and we are proud of them. We categorically reject suspicious attempts to cast suspicion on their deeds. They are not suicidal, as some are claiming. Nor are they terrorists, as others are claiming. They are resisting the occupation."
"We support the martyrdom [suicide] operations without any reservations, regardless of what skeptics and opponents of this form of resistance are saying."
"We do not believe in so-called 'peace with Israel' because peace cannot be made with Satan. Israel is the greatest Satan. No concession and no truce must be made [with Israel]. Any type of peace with this entity is concession, submission, and retreat from pan-Arab and national principles... We encourage our youth to participate in the resistance, to carry out martyrdom attacks."
I wonder what the Green Room conversation was like?
Posted by: Right of Center | May 24, 2005 4:26:13 PM
Yes, Jesus was baptized as an adult, you dingbat!
Posted by: Saddam's Underpants | May 24, 2005 5:05:37 PM
I liked American Gigolo mainly cuz Mr Gere was young and well built.
But... if anyone thinks he is great guy for supporting the Dalai Lama and all that is Tibet, they should educate themselves. It is not the peace loving
mosaic building saffron robe monks we have come to know and love.
http://www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html
Posted by: Pam | May 24, 2005 5:13:19 PM
As it happens, I too once "spent a few hours" with Richard Gere. I was working for Cashbox and he was cavorting in Studio 54. This was one of those (many?) nights when Gere, to display his complexity and sensitivity to the paparazzi, exposed himself by way of trying to foil their taking pictures outside of him looking befuddled while searching up and down W54th for his limo. One camerman called out, "It's not nearly beeegggg enewf to scare me, Richard." Another yelled,"There's no there, there." Disco regulars still on the street at 2AM mostly yawned.
Posted by: cathar | May 24, 2005 5:28:10 PM
Addendum: while I don't doubt one bit that seeing "where Jesus walked" (as "O Happy Day puts it) could be very moving, I also remember the line from P.F. Sloan's "Eve of Destruction," that "and even the Jordan River's got bodies floatin'." If there is such a thing as a heavenly balance sheet come the last day, too, surely it's lopsidedly against Gere's admission past the Pearly Gates if only for his awful Philadelphia accent, twitchy sneers and carefully styled hair in "First Knight." He was Rocky Balboa's Lancelot there, not mythology's gallant paladin.
Posted by: cathar | May 24, 2005 5:33:44 PM
jmo, it sounds like you're having a good time at Davos, and I'm sure it's fun seeing all the celebs, but I don't know how you can stand the World Economic Forum crowd. All that talk about making the world a better place, and their sham clubs like young global leaders and so forth. All these people who want to be seen being important, taking on the problems of the world in the morning and skiing in the afternoon (or floating in the dead sea), taking themselves so seriously. Don't you just get the urge to jump up during one of those awful talks and start singing some Groucho Marx song? My preference would be:
Whatever it is, I'm against it.
No matter who invented or commenced it,
I'm against it!
But that's me...
Posted by: walleroo | May 25, 2005 12:20:55 AM
Walleroo, I did think of a tune. Not Grouch though. Kinky Friedman's classic, "They ain't making Jews like Jesus anymore. There not making carpenters that know what nails are fer......"
Posted by: jmo | May 25, 2005 3:06:51 AM
Despite the political bile that frequently spills over this site, there's almost never any discussion of the Mideast save to run Bush over the coals for his administration's actions in Iraq.
So it might thus be nice to note here that, re the above-named forum, its 700+ delegates (and I have no idea if that figure included Richard Gere)chose three areas of key concern - education, political participation and transparency-and-accountability, and "model" countries in the region to be admired in each area. Jordan got the nod for education, Israel for transparency and accountability, and Israel and Lebanon alike for political participation. There really were some serious discussions, in other words, no matter all the "Gereheads" (including self) who posted on this thread.
Posted by: cathar | May 26, 2005 6:38:43 PM
Good points Cathar. And as I mentioned one real practical agreement was announced here between Israel, Jordan and Palestine. More than that in one session that was poll driven, meaning the agenda was determined by an poll on air, the chief impediment tgo change in the region was deemed to be the very opaque countries' administrations who were doing the debating. Not exactly total transparency but hey, it's a start.
Posted by: jmo | May 26, 2005 8:28:52 PM
