Just Think Of Him As The Cbs Eye Of The Storm
When the winds howl and the seas rage, you can count on Dan Rather to be there.
While ABC’s Peter Jennings and NBC’s Tom Brokaw stayed safely in their studios, Rather wrapped himself around a pole, with an off-camera producer holding his legs, to cover Hurricane Opal live last week from Florida.
“When there’s a big story, I want to go,” says the 63-year-old Rather. “I can’t always go, but I know people understand that I’m a reporter, I don’t just play one on TV.”
Hurricanes are nothing new for Rather. In 1961, as a local Houston TV reporter, he rose to the network’s attention by chaining himself to a tree to describe Hurricane Carla from the Texas coast.
“At the time, I thought it was a damn fool idea that wouldn’t work,” he said. “I remember all the snakes trying to crawl to higher ground.”
Loose talk
Jay Leno, on 16-year-old vice-presidential daughter Sarah Gore being caught with a beer outside a party: “She told her parents she was just holding it for Macaulay Culkin.”
By now, he has to be sorry that he jumped ship
David Lee Roth turns 40 today.
She acquitted herself well before the camera
Mopping up from last week’s other big news, unsuccessful O.J. Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark has signed with the William Morris Agency to represent her in future media-related ventures. Clark says she is “at the crossroads in my life” and has not decided whether to continue in the D.A.’s office.
But she could never get him to say the M-word
Meanwhile, Mark Fuhrman’s mother, Mary, says the disgraced detective had an affair with Laura Hart McKinny - who made those damaging tape recordings full of racist slurs - before dumping her for current wife Caroline. “(McKinny) wrote him love letters,” Mary Fuhrman said. “He still has them.”
OK, guys right hands, right here, right now
Van Halen - brothers Eddie and Alex Van Halen, Michael Anthony and Sammy Hagar (who replaced original singer David Lee Roth) - planted their palms in concrete on Hollywood’s RockWalk last Friday, joining the likes of Aerosmith, Frank Zappa and Elvis Presley.
Must be all the zits he’s ever squeezed before
It pays to stay on Julio Iglesias’ right side. “Please, no, that’s my bad side,” the singer told an uncooperative photographer who shot him from the left during a weekend visit to San Antonio.
That’s like waving a red flag at a raging bully
Robert De Niro was charged with assault Saturday after allegedly bloodying the nose of a man videotaping him outside a bar. Said Joseph Ligier, who had a deal with “Hard Copy” for the tape: “He had me bent over a car. He kept saying, ‘Give me the video.’ I said, ‘No way.’ I had footage of Julia Roberts on the same tape.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 2 Color photos
The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino