With his visit with Middle East contacts, former President Jimmy Carter has decisively asserted his relevance to no one in particular.
One Middle East representative was excited about meeting Jimmy Connors, the tennis player, and seemed confused when he found out it was Jimmy Carter who was arriving. He asked if the former president knew Jimmy Connors and could maybe get an autograph to bring to the West Bank.
Former President Carter was undeterred by the turn of events, insisting he was simply there as a communicator, to communicate things to different parties and maybe then tell Larry King about it later.
An undisclosed official, rumored to be a member of the group Hamas, said of Carter that "He was always calling and asking when he could come over to talk. We couldn't figure it out. He did have some funny stories about the house building thing he does, but other than that we figured he had been out of the loop for a while now. In the end we decided it was easier just to let him show up".
Carter said the meetings were productive, and seemed to be looking for a photo to be taken when he put on a traditional middle eastern headwear piece at a gathering afterwards. He looked around pointedly and smiled, but no cameras were in sight. He even quipped "How often do you see a former President of the United States wearing one of these? Someone should take a picture, for gosh sakes!"
He finally found someone with a digital camera and asked that a snapshot be taken and emailed to him for, as Mr. Carter put it, "distribution to important news agencies around the world."
