Here’s Our Advice, Ann: Just Keep It Zipped, Lady
By now, everybody knows about that big flap over Ann Landers calling Pope John Paul II a not-very-nice word for a Polish person.
But maybe you haven’t heard what she had to say about some other dignitaries in that same issue of The New Yorker:
John F. Kennedy: “He was the womanizer from hell. I mean, this guy had women all over the place. In the swimming pool, the locker room. Of course, he had a bum back, for one thing, and the women had to do all the work.”
Eleanor Roosevelt: “A great woman. A great woman. Big woman. I was amazed when I met her. I mean, she’s huge.”
Bill Clinton: “I don’t think he’s fooling around anymore. Nor do I think he will. I read that Hillary threw a lamp at him … You know something? I think she did.”
Loose talk
David Letterman, on embattled House Speaker Newt Gingrich announcing he wouldn’t run for president: “This is a little like me calling a press conference to announce that I’m not hosting next year’s Academy Awards.”
His motto: Where there’s a Will, there’s a movie
Kenneth Branagh turns 35 today.
He’s gone from throwing bombs to writing them
Newt Gingrich’s publisher, HarperCollins, has quietly asked bookstores to lower the price of his slow-selling “To Renew America” from $24 to $15, and promises a $5 rebate on each copy sold. Insisted a HarperCollins spokesman: “This is just a special holiday price … a little additional incentive.”
Being bashed around? He’s gotten resigned to it
During a recent flight, former Oregon Sen. Bob Packwood was hit by a suitcase that fell out of an overhead rack - which just happened to belong to Rep. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who’s campaigning to be Packwood’s successor. Said a Wyden spokesman: “It’s lucky for Mr. Packwood that Ron didn’t pack his bowling ball.”
He’s certainly not being very diplomatic about it
Henry Kissinger is none too pleased with “Kissinger and Nixon,” a television docudrama that debuts tonight on TNT. In TV Guide, Kissinger called it “a skillful blend of innuendo, distortion and representation … served up to a new generation unaware that Vietnam-era passions are masquerading as history.”
In other words, Ollie’s just up to his old tricks
Oliver Stone’s new “Nixon” film brought a similar reaction from John Ehrlichman, who did time for his Watergate misdeeds. “It’s not history, it’s not fact, it’s not even a dramatization of history,” he told “Late Late Show” host Tom Snyder. “It’s made-up stuff, and it’s very cruel.”
Maybe we could use a new father of our country
Stone says in Newsweek that he saw a lot of his own father, Louis, in the fallen president. The Watergate coverup is understandable, Stone said, “because of my father and that generation of men who hid these things, who repressed many of these feelings that we, a newer generation, let out … I miss those old guys, those tough guys. I do.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 photos
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino