Haven’t We Had Enough Bubbas Run Already?
Gladys Knight made Bill Clinton’s day on Tuesday with a White House concert that was taped for a future PBS special.
The president, who swayed and sang along to “Best Thing That Ever Happened to Me,” called Knight’s artistry “uniquely American” and added, “As far as I’m concerned, she could sing the phone book and I would like it.”
But the showstopper was Knight’s lone Pip - her brother, Bubba (“my big brother on my mother and father’s side”) - who performed a one-man rendition of the backup trio’s classic choreography, complete with the arm tug and “Whoo Whoo!” train whistle.
“I was standing in the back, minding my own business, and the spirit just moved me,” he explained.
Said a smiling Clinton: “I think Bubba should run for office.”
Loose talk
Self-proclaimed presidential paramour Gennifer Flowers, on Paula Jones’s claims about Bill Clinton’s “distinguishing characteristics”: “I have no idea what she means by that. There is no mark there that I remember.”
To him, the years just seem like minutes
Ed Bradley turns 56 today.
He should’ve shown some judicial restraint
Before his commencement speech at Stanford University, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer credited school president Gerhard Casper with teaching him the macarena - which he proceeded to demonstrate, as enthusiastic students shouted, “Do it! Do it!” Said Breyer’s sister-in-law, Sydney Goldstein: “My brother-in-law can do many things, including singing, cooking and remembering lines of poetry and words to songs. He even knows how to clean a house. But he can’t dance.”
Her head could certainly use some spin control
Jane Gephardt, wife of Democratic House leader Richard Gephardt, is keeping plenty busy organizing daughter Christine’s September wedding. “On a political campaign, you have people helping you,” she said. “A wedding, you do it all by yourself. Where are those political consultants when you need them?”
These houses require doers, not speakers
House Speaker Newt Gingrich has a whole new appreciation for Jimmy Carter after helping out on one of the ex-president’s Habitat for Humanity homebuilding projects. Before, he admitted, “I thought, ‘Oh that’s that kind of do-goodism that must make them feel good but doesn’t accomplish much.”’ Now, he says: “As I saw the commitment to growing a family as well as building the home, I thought it was really to me a transformational moment.”
You could say that it fits him like a glove
Former Los Angeles Police Detective Mark Fuhrman, fresh from his O.J. Simpson saga, has started shopping a book about the death of White House aide Vince Foster. The proposal says “the investigation of Vince Foster’s death has been taken over by zealots playing Hardy Boys on the Internet. It’s time to put a real homicide detective on the case.”
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