Bush Drops By to Buck Up That Simon Guy

President George Bush blew into the Golden State last week, visiting South-Central Los Angeles 10 years after his father did on the heels of the city’s riots, and raising $4.5 million for Bill Simon.

(East Coast news media name alert: The day after the primary, USA Today called him “Paul Simon,” and last week, the Washington Post called him “Bob Simon.” Here’s a helpful mnemonic device: His father was Treasury secretary, in charge of the agency that prints the bills. Bills, get it?)

Simon, who flew from Albuquerque to LAX with Bush aboard Air Force One, descended the steps behind Bush’s chief political strategist, Karl Rove. The motorcade to First AME Church, scheduled for 25 minutes (that’s what they always say in L.A.), took 35, and at one point, on the Harbor Freeway near USC, the tail end of gridlock was only a few car-lengths ahead of the First Limo.

Sighted in deep conversation with Rove and Gerald Parsky, Bush’s No. 1 GOP guy in California: deeply Democratic L.A. Mayor Jim Hahn.

Sighted in deep crowds at the fund-raiser later that day: a cast of Hollywood characters, among them law-and-order-role actors Chuck Norris and Robert Stack, Roseanne Barr/Arnold/Thomas, Connie Stevens, Lee Majors and Rick Schroder.

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China’s Hu Dances to His Own Tune

The title of “whip” is a noun, not a verb, but last week, San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi, who holds that leadership job among Democrats in the House of Representatives, took the opportunity to try to deliver policy-lashing letters to China’s vice president and heir-apparent leader on his visit to Washington.

Pelosi, for years a critic of Beijing’s Communist regime, had petitions from the Connecticut and New Jersey delegations asking for the release of a U.S. citizen and a U.S. permanent resident, both jailed in China and both ailing. She and Virginia Republican Rep. Frank R. Wolf wrote a letter about political prisoners in Tibet, and Pelosi penned her own missive about three political prisoners.

In a meeting with Hu Jintao, Pelosi brought up human rights and laid the letters on a table. Hu, who reportedly loves to dance, nimbly did a two-step: He and his entourage literally refused to touch the letters.

Afterward, Pelosi declared herself to be “extremely disappointed that the vice president refused to accept these letters. I had been hopeful that we could at least talk about human rights issues in China and Tibet, but Mr. Hu’s refusal demonstrates how serious the problem remains.”

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Words of Wisdom From the Sage of Wyoming

Alan Simpson, the former Wyoming GOP senator whose Veg-O-Matic tongue took political hams and turned them into chopped liver, hasn’t lost the touch. At the bipartisan Orange County Forum in Irvine, Simpson sliced and diced his way across the landscape.

On 24-hour news: “Life isn’t 24/7, so how distorted is that? They’re not in the news business, they’re in the competition business.”

On Republicans: “They give each other the saliva test of purity.

On life: “If you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t, then do. ... If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.”

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Deep Throat? They’re Still Talking

The identity of Deep Throat--the super-secret Watergate scandal source christened with the name of a porn movie--has titillated Beltway gossips for a quarter-century, and it’s doing so again.

A new book argues that Deep Throat is alive and thriving in California.

In “The Bureau: The Secret History of the FBI,” investigative reporter Ronald Kessler suggests that Deep Throat is an 80-something ex-FBI man named Mark Felt, living in Santa Rosa with his daughter.

Felt’s name has been in the Deep Throat mix before, as a second-tier possible, because as a top-ranking G-man, he was miffed at Richard Nixon after being passed over for the FBI chief’s job.

Kessler’s new evidence: Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward was visiting Felt in California at a time when Woodward was working on a Watergate book. Kessler writes that according to Felt’s daughter, Woodward’s limo parked about 10 blocks from Felt’s home, then the writer/editor came in for a martini and an amiable chat.

Felt has denied being D.T., and the visit doesn’t prove otherwise, Kessler said, “but it adds to the lore,” and in D.C., they love the lure of lore.

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Groundbreaking Legislation

Before term limits, a lot of public servants’ careers weren’t buried until they were, and the state used to pony up all of $600 for their last rites.

Now Assembly Bill 2688 would raise the burial benefit for legislators and their spouses to $7,500. The author is Santa Clara Democratic Assembly member Elaine Alquist. Her husband, former state Sen. Alfred Alquist, is 94.

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The Fleeting Nature of Fame

The grand reopening of L.A.’s strikingly remodeled City Hall, illuminated by fireworks and enlivened by white-chocolate models of the building at each chair, was held across from City Hall in a spot that by now was supposed to be the last terrace of a gardened greensward descending from the Music Center but which is still just the parking lot for the Criminal Courts building.

Inside that building, of course, is where the world-watched O.J. Simpson double-murder trial was held, presided over by Judge Lance Ito. Ito and his wife, Margaret York, the top-ranking woman at the LAPD, were guests at the grand reopening, waiting in line to enter, and in the transitory nature of fame, a young receptionist checking names asked Ito, “And you are ... ?” (It’s a good bet that no one puts that question to the ex-defendant, now Florida’s most famous amateur golfer.)

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Points Taken

* Former VP Al Gore held lucrative fund-raisers in Brentwood and Beverly Hills before taking up teaching duties at UCLA, according to CNN, and in the throng at one were major players in the Wednesday Night White House, otherwise known as the TV show “The West Wing”: Martin Sheen, Bradley Whitford and Dule Hill.

* Get out your calendars, or get an extra calendar: Gov. Gray Davis has proclaimed May 2002 to be the commemorative month for Asian/Pacific Islander Heritage, Arthritis Awareness, California Museum, California State Parks, Community Residential Care, Get Caught Reading, Older Californians, Physical Education and Sports, Water Awareness, California Refugee Awareness, California Travel and Tourism, Foster Care, Huntington’s Disease Awareness, Mental Health, Osteoporosis Awareness, Safe Jobs for Youth and Women’s Health.

* A soiree thrown by the Nation magazine chez salonista Arianna Huffington late last month mixed glitterati, literati and politerati, with such figures as Gore Vidal, Tom Hayden, Tracey Ullman, Oliver Stone, Eli Broad, Carrie Fisher and federal Judge Stephen Reinhardt.

* Those happy cows in the California cheese ad are miscast, according to the People for Ethical Treatment of Animals, which, in a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, says that most California dairy cows live in dirt pens, not green pastures, and asks that the ads be yanked.

* A Hollywood-besotted Capitol Hill press release announced, “Hollywood Director To Testify Before Congress on Thursday!” Jim Abrahams, who directed “Airplane!”, was testifying about research into epilepsy, an ailment that afflicts his young son.

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You Can Quote Me

“We left after it happened. It’s turned me off the event.”

Biker dude and Los Angeles City Council member Dennis Zine, a Harley fan who, with some LAPD pals, biked off to the raucous Laughlin River Run. Zine and company were fast asleep in Needles when some of the 80,000 biker fans went even wilder than usual; a man affiliated with the Hells Angels allegedly shot and killed three in a fight with rival Mongols bikers. Zine says he won’t be going back next year.

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Patt Morrison’s columns appear Mondays and Wednesdays. Her e-mail address is patt.morrison@latimes.com. This week’s contributors include Nick Anderson, Michael Finnegan, Eric Lichtblau, Hugo Martin, Patrick McGreevy, Dan Morain and Jean O. Pasco.