Bad, bad Bush-baby

Pictured alongside is Lauren Bush, the niece of US president George W Bush. She made the news recently with a charity project called FEED. Each designer canvas bag sold will generate enough money to feed one child in the developing world for a year.

Good Magazine quotes her as saying: “I would love for [this] to be completely nonpolitical because I think it distracts from the real humanitarian point of the project.”

But that’s not good enough for Sky News, whose Adam Boulton spent most of his interview with the 23-year-old trying to trip her up over his own prejudices about her uncle. According to the Sky report:

However, the US is often seen by some as the main obstacle to helping the Third World in terms of world trade.

It has the largest economy but as a proportion of its wealth it does not give as much as some other nations.

Nevermind that this is irrelevant, ill-informed and uncalled-for editorialising. Nevermind that it confuses aid with trade. Nevermind that the US is the biggest global aid donor in nominal terms, is on a par with many others in relative terms, and that the Bush administration has increased aid commitments to Africa compared to previous US administrations. Nevermind that the US is the leading promoter of trade (as opposed to aid) in the fight against poverty. Nevermind whether trade should be preferred to aid. Nevermind whether simply dispatching an arbitrarily chosen share of gross national income on foreign aid is better or worse than spending less money more effectively. Nevermind whether throwing good money after bad in foreign aid is likely to address “Third World” poverty (as opposed to merely soothing the collective conscience of the rich). These weren’t the questions Boulton asked of Lauren Bush.

Instead, Boulton threw his own simple biases about the US president at his college-age niece, which strikes me as pretty low. If he’s going to bash Bush, why pick on her? Is she to blame for the public’s perception (or more accurately, the media’s lack of objectivity) about the US? Why would she have anything at all to say about US policy on foreign aid or free trade? Why not ask her directly under which conditions she believes aid works, and when she believes aid trumps trade in poverty relief? Why not ask her about her own project, instead of harrying her with cheap shots about her uncle?

When the activistreporter closed by asking why she didn’t want to go into politics, she tartly shot back: “Because of questions like these.”

That barb didn’t make it into the online version of the report. Well done, Ms Bush, for revealing the brave Bush-bashing Boulton as nothing more than an editorialising chicken-hawk who can’t handle being smacked down by a good-looking girl.