Just As I Thought

It’s good to be the king’s brother

A (creepily) funny article in today’s Washington Post tells of the pluses of being Neil Bush:

When you’re Neil Bush, rich people from all over the world are eager to invest money in your businesses, even though your businesses have a history of crashing and burning in spectacular fashion.

When you’re Neil Bush, you’ll be sitting in a hotel room in Thailand or Hong Kong, minding your own business, when suddenly there’s a knock at the door. You answer it and a comely woman strolls in and has sex with you.

Life sure is fun when you’re Neil Bush, son of one president, brother of another.

Just how much fun was revealed in a deposition taken last March, during Bush’s very nasty divorce battle. Asked by his wife’s attorney whether he’d had any extramarital affairs, Bush told the story of his Asian hotel room escapades.

“Mr. Bush,” said the attorney, Marshall Davis Brown, “you have to admit that it’s a pretty remarkable thing for a man just to go to a hotel room door and open it and have a woman standing there and have sex with her.”

“It was very unusual,” Bush replied.

Actually, it wasn’t that unusual. It happened at least three or four times during Bush’s business trips to Asia, he said: “I don’t remember the exact number.”

And if only it were this easy to be a success in business:

In 2002, for instance, Bush signed a consulting contract with Grace Semiconductor — a Shanghai-based company managed in part by the son of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin. Bush’s contractual duties consist solely of attending board meetings and discussing “business strategies.” For this, he is to be paid $2 million in company stock over five years, plus $10,000 for every board meeting he attends.

“Now, you have absolutely no educational background in semiconductors, do you Mr. Bush?” Brown asked.

“That’s correct,” Bush responded.

Meanwhile, back home in Texas, Bush serves as co-chairman of a company called Crest Investment. Crest, he revealed in the deposition, pays him $60,000 a year to provide “miscellaneous consulting services.”

“Such as?” Brown asked.

“Such as answering phone calls when Jamal Daniel, the other co-chairman, called and asked for advice,” Bush replied.

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