It Was One Time Nobody Wanted To Read His Lips
In his new memoir, “Call the Briefing,” former presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater brings back fond memories of the time George Bush vomited on the Japanese prime minister at a state dinner.
As Bush swooned and fell to the floor, “Barbara Bush and Dr. (Burton) Lee were beside him instantly,” Fitzwater recalls. “The president was unconscious.”
Lee, who had treated two other people in the presidential party for the flu that night, was quick to act. “He loosened the president’s tie,” writes Fitzwater. “A nurse mentioned his belt, but there is no belt on tuxedo pants, so Dr. Lee unsnapped the president’s pants and began to unzip his fly.”
At that point, Bush “flickered an eyelid, raised his head to look down at his body, and exclaimed, ‘Burt, what the hell are you doing?”’
Loose talk
Barbara Bush, on having an Arizona elementary school named after her: “This new experience of having people want to name things after us is really quite flattering until you realize they usually do it for people who are very, very old or dead.”
He always knew how to make a better impression
Rich Little turns 57 today.
It’s been a significant part of the heeling process
Former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos, fresh from winning a seat in that country’s congress, says friends and supporters have helped her replenish the thousands of shoes confiscated when she fled the palace. “You’d be surprised,” she said. “I have more shoes now than before.”
Is that any way to talk about House Republicans?
For her upcoming CBS Christmas special, lifestyle maven Martha Stewart hung a hand-made wreath with gilded oak leaves and 50 acorns (one for each state) on the White House’s South Portico - and was asked to take it with her when she left. Explained a spokesman for first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton: “We have many hungry squirrels outside.”
Newt’s busy working on the prenuptial contract
Heather Whitestone, who was the first deaf Miss America, is engaged to John McCallum, a legislative assistant to House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Whitestone said she didn’t let McCallum kiss her for the first six months because “I wanted to get to know his heart first.”
Share a few phone numbers once in a while, maybe
Bill Clinton’s campaign masterminds have been trying to get John F. Kennedy Jr. involved in the president’s re-election bid. As a source told Esquire magazine: “He would be working with Clinton’s people, not necessarily on staff or full-time, introducing him, giving speeches on his behalf, that sort of thing.”
And he always would have finished his homework
Clinton consultant James Carville, on former surgeon general Jocelyn Elders’ suggestion that schools discuss masturbation (in Men’s Journal): “I said to myself, ‘Just my luck! Thirty years after I graduated, they think of something I could have made an A in.”’
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino