There are many organizations in Malaysia which get a lot of satisfaction and also cheap thrill, by inviting former presidents, prime ministers and even Hollywood starlets and other international entertainers, knowing how most of them are no more themselves that we used to know of before.

So now we have seen how former US president Bill Clinton who was supposed to be here for the APEC meeting which was held at the heights of the Reformasi activity (I can’t call it movement because it lacks organization like the Communist movement which had their manifestos, etc.) in 1998 finally making a trip here which lasted for twenty-four hours.

He strikes a pitiful sight, not like he was before. And from next year, he will be described as the husband of the Secretary of State, Hilary Rodham Clinton.

These organizations spend hundreds of thousands and possibly millions to bring these people over for a lightning visit, which benefit those social creatures and not those who can squeeze a bit more from them.

It is unfortunate that they are willing to do such things just to distract the public and get some publicity mileage from it even though the distance is really short.

Why did those who had invited Clinton over want anyone to see him and those who are lucky will be invited?

If Clinton is that interesting and important, surely, a selected group of people should be invited to speak with him and not to be talked down to.

And the group should comprise academics, military specialists, and others who are qualified in various fields including the arts.

But this did not happen since the organizers did not know exactly what to do with him or his expertise, if that can still be utilized, other than to take him to few places and that’s all.  

So no wonder even when Hollywood director, Olive Stone came, he said things which are predictable even on what he thought of George W Bush which he had said time and again in other forums and later still at the Dubai Film Festival.

There has not been anyone of substance that has been invited to come to Malaysia to speak and when they were at the heights of their power. All of them came when they are already down and out, and are already useless.

Oliver was also not asked to meet with the country’s top filmmakers – so he could LEARN a few things about filmmaking in today’s post-Hollywood age, so he can also benefit from it.

He has a lot to learn still and his experience fighting in Vietnam – or was it to kill innocent Vietcongs and other Asians like us was such a heroic thing to do for a patriotic American then?

Maybe, he can also be asked what sort of reaction would he want to give if the tables are turned against them, and there is a film on him that is controversial so he can now be stoned himself from all directions.

Will he now want to jump and complain?  

What’s the point of listening to Clinton speak even if it is gospel truth, when he was still president he could do half as much as what he is saying?

And why didn’t the organizers invite those who can fire him tough and tricky questions instead of surrounding him with those who are weak and cannot ask anything?

So no wonder, Stone was not stoned when he was attending the global brand forum, and only the journalists got to ask him questions which are uneducated and lame, which even students in any film school in America dared not ask for fear of being branded as silly if not stupid.

And for that matter, there was really no point in inviting the Nobel Prize laureates in Economics, for they can only say the general and nothing specific which we can use to develop our own economy.

Muhammad Yunus of Bangladesh did not say anything substantial.

But I don’t blame him or the other Nobel Prize Laureates and former US presidents or British prime ministers and Hollywood directors, because they knew they would be paid handsomely on top of the perks that they could enjoy while here because they were not expected to be intelligent, just witty and entertain.

They had come here not to enlighten anyone, but just to entertain.

And they knew that they were not whom everybody here thought they were, but just a shell of their former selves.

In fact, the shell is so thin, that the organizers had better bring in their wax statues that are found in Madame Tusaud’s in London.

In fact, the last time I was at the Covent Garden in London, which is like our Pasar Seni in Kuala Lumpur, I could see a Ronald Reagan computerized statue which can speak and sounding exactly like him with his typical gestures.

There has never been anyone who had been brought into the country when they were in their prime, and who went on to do wonders to their personal careers.

There is one exception, however.

The Bee Gees was already going out of the charts in the early 1970s. And no wonder they agreed to perform at Stadium Negara. I was sitting on the front row, so I could still remember the show which didn’t cost too much at that time with tickets selling for only twenty ringgit, which could translate to be around two hundred ringgit at today’s rate.

And not long afterwards, the same bunch of people calling themselves Bee Gees who had just performed in Kuala Lumpur, became a bigger international music group, when they changed their tune to the disco beat.

This is the only time when foreign personalities who had come before their break.

But there are no others after them.

And Clinton or Tony Blair and all the Nobel Prize laureates had better not come, because they are only showing a faint reflection of their former selves.

Why pay Blair and Clinton or the Nobel Prize Laureates hundreds of thousands of ringgit to say things that we can also say?

And as you can guess, the thrill was on those who invite them and not on them because they will treat their stop in Malaysia as just a transit point for them to move on to their bigger and more important destination.

Has Malaysia changed for the better after they had left the country?