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HOLLYWOOD AND THE CIA — Film historian Ed Rampell details Hollywood’s entangled relationship with the CIA and the Pentagon; HOUSES OF THE DEAD: Nancy Kurshan exposes the cruel human rights offenses taking place inside America’s vast gulag of Control Unit Prisons; BROTHERHOOD OF SUMMER: David Macaray charts the history of the most powerful union in the US: the Baseball Players Association; TAR SANDS COME TO AMERICA: Steve Horn explains how the Keystone Pipeline debates have diverted attention from Big Oil’s other plans to transport Alberta’s oil into the US. PLUS: Jeffrey St. Clair on CONSTITUTIONAL ENTROPY; Mike Whitney on HOW THE BANKS TARGETED BLACKS; Chris Floyd on THE RISE OF BRITAIN’S TEA PARTY; Kristin Kolb on THE NEEDLE AND THE DAMAGE DONE; Kim Nicolini on the FILMS OF WILLIAM FRIEDKIN; and Lee Ballinger on POETS VS. THE ONE PERCENT.

January 30, 2002

Free Noelle Bush!

by Jack McCarthy

Poor Noelle Bush.

Too bad she didn’t get caught naked and humping in the parking lot of the Tallahassee Mall like her brother Jebby Jr last October. Or making an unwanted entrance through the bedroom window of a love interest like her older, spurned brother George P, who then drove his car across the young woman’s front lawn.

Unlike her brothers, Noelle’s mug shot appeared in newspapers across the country after she was arrested for allegedly (a word her uncle and father hate when it comes to the accused) trying to secure a script of Xanax by fraudulent means.

The wearied look on Noelle’s face suggests more than spiritual deflation from getting busted. She has the haunted face of someone looking to come down from another drug. Perhaps like the daughter of the rich white Judge in the film “Traffic,” it was crack. Or maybe she was crashing from ecstasy. Xanax is very popular with young suburban drug users, especially to ease the crash from ecstasy.

But then again, perhaps Noelle read an advanced copy of her uncle’s ghastly “State of the Union,” address in which he all but declared war on Iran, Iraq and North Korea, the “Axis of Evil.”

And unlike Tim Russert and other media stars, who practically goose-stepped during post-speech analysis, maybe Noelle, like Reagan’s daughter Patty Davis, is revolted by the hypocrisy of Klan Bush.

Many media hacks are urging W to start another war against Iraq and finish the job his father didn’t.

What almost nobody points out is that, as the Financial Times’s Alan Friedman documents in his excellent book, “Spiders Web,” Saddam’s initial tinkering the dreaded nuclear, chemical and biological warfare materials occured with the express approval and complicity of Bush Sr.

If the whole country had read Spiders Web, we’d all be phoning in scripts for Xanax.

Which is why I say: “Free Noelle.”