Nothing A Little Water Can’t Whitewash Away
Presidential half-brother Roger Clinton calls his new autobiography “brutally honest,” but the former drug addict says he didn’t dish up any dirt.
“There’s a big difference between human mistakes and dirt,” said the “Growing Up Clinton” author at a Baltimore book-signing stop. “There is no dirt in my family. We didn’t produce any.”
Clinton, 39, said several publishers approached him to write his family’s story, but he insisted on a positive book. “When I laid out the guidelines, it thinned the crowd,” he said.
As for Whitewater, he told David Letterman: “They had to brief my brother about it. He really doesn’t know what in the world they’re trying to catch him on … But he doesn’t tell me everything.”
Loose talk
Conservative activist Arianna Huffington, on the 1996 campaign (to Conan O’Brien): “I’m just sick and tired of these presidents who jog. Remember, if Bill Clinton wins, we’re going to have another four years of his white thighs flapping in the wind.”
His days just keep getting longer and longer
Robert Mitchum turns 78 today.
But what about their fiscal fitness?
Republican presidential front-runner Bob Dole, age 72, on his physical condition: “My cholesterol is lower than Clinton’s, my weight is lower than Clinton’s and my blood pressure is lower than Clinton’s, but I’m not going to make health an issue in 1996.”
He was family, for better or for verse
Former president-cum-poet Jimmy Carter has yet to pen any stanzas about his sometimes controversial late brother, Billy. “You could write a whole book of poems about Billy, he was so diverse,” Carter says. “He was brilliant, and a baseball fanatic, and my opponent on the softball field - and a drunkard.”
An hour later, they were hungry again
Federal judge Kimba Wood, the former Playboy bunny trainee whom Clinton nominated for attorney general in 1993, is the “other woman” in a divorce case involving investment banker Frank Richardson. In his diary, Richardson called their fireside lunch at his Massachusetts country home “as beautiful an eight hours as I have spent in my life.”
He must’ve gotten tired of his fatigues
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, whose fashion style has been strictly military, is being fitted for new suits by a Dutch designer in dark blue, grey and green - “but a much darker green,” said Merel van’t Wout, “with a hint of blue.”
It’s all up to Yasser, that’s his baby
In a bit of diaper diplomacy, Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat sold exclusive rights to photograph his new baby girl, Zahwa, to a Paris-based agency. Said a spokesman: “The Arafats decided it would be better to work just with us - that way there wouldn’t be 50 photographers fighting for pictures at the hospital.”
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino