Spy Magazine January and February 1991

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. 0Cameron Mackintosh learns that life imitates Mm Sa:goii, and First Boston de-

mands cash up front from a famous deadbeat. Jay Mclnerney continues to age gracelessly, while wehelp his buddy Bret Easton Ellis shop around his pornography. Rockin into the nineties with GeorgeBailey. Plus: introducing our Connie-Maury conception watch! . Q

PARTY Poor ............ QO

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Jusr SAY NooRP»l'he last time anybody looked, Lisa Flalaby was an all-American girl whom King

Hussein had made his fairy-tale queen. But now, with World War I I I imminent andJordanon the wrong side, HARRIET BAR0vIcK and AIMÉE BII.L talk to palace insiders and royal consorts whodepict Queen Noor as a bitchy would-be power broker with a hostile citizenry and a fancy new exilehomeGrace Kelly turned Nancy Reagan turned Imelda Marcos ......Q

SPY JR.: A VERY SPECIAL SUPPLEMENT FOR OUR YOUNGER READERS

, Does Santa really exist? How can you subscribe to Playboy without Iom and Dad knowing?J ust what is all that junk in your parents bedside drawer? SPYJR., our special large-type spin-off, has theanswers you won't Ii nd i n Cricket, Scholastic Scope or Highlights ........... Q

IF Ii's TUESDAY, THIS MUST BE A FORMER COLONY OF THE COMMUNIST EMPIRE

For one Reagan-administration propagandist, the collapseofCommunism was just too sweet to savor from his Virginia rec room. So he and some other right-wingAmericans went offon a $10,000-a-head we-told-you-so tour through what was the Soviet bloc. RICHARD

. STENGEL tagged along .....................................

i

BED SPREAD

Photographer HARRY BENSON likes to imagine "all the dreadful things that have tran-spired on his famous subjects' beds. Now you can, too: spy presents Bcnsoiìs most unsettlingboudoir portraits. Text by HENRY ALi0RD ................Q

THE ACCIDENTAL A SPY PRANK

When haute clothier BergdorfGoodman urged men to regard its new store as a "familiar.time-honored clubJoE Qu1INAN gleefully obliged ......Q THE COVER

Bort Simpson ¡Ilustrot.dby Matt Go.ning.

I__ Li .. g' Hond photogropb.d byCarolyn Jon.s.

J- J. HUNSECKER on the Rich-Goldberger feud at The Times; CELIA BRADY

starts outplacement planning for Michael Ovitz in The Industry; and LAUREEN HOBBS finally explainsDiane Sawyer's successes in Th. W.bs ................................ Q

HUMPHREY GRIDDoN advises Tom Wolfe i n Rsview of Reviewers; ROBERTMACKENZIE visits the Coast with sonic nerdy TV critics; and ScoTi YArIs relates the Kafka-esque tale ofan elderly New Yorker charged with a spurious Crime. . . . Q

OUR UN-BRITISH CROSSWORD PUZZLE

, Ro BL0UNr JR. contemplates God-fearingwhen there's a woman behind His handiwork ........................ Q

OVAL OFFICE DIARY: NOTES FOR A NONFICTION NOVEL

Imagine that George Bush is keeping a Dictaphone diary Now imagine wehave monthly excerpts. GEoRGE KALOGERAKIS transcribes .............QSPY(ISSN 0890.1759) is published monthly. cxtcpcJnuary anJJuIy. 1 1991 by Spy PubIishin Partners. LP.. ihe SPY Building. 5 Union Squart Wesi.New York. N.Y. 10003. Submissions: Send with SASE w same address For ¿dvrtising sales. call 212.63 3.6550. Sc.indcI*ss postage paid at Ncw York. N.Y..and additional maiIin offices. Annual subsription rates: U.S. and poasvssions. $16.95; Canada. U.S.$25; foreign. uS$35. Poactiuster: Send addresschanges to SPY. P.O. Box 57397V Boulder. CO 80321.7397. For subscription inlormation. call i-SOO338L28. Mcmber. Audit Sureau of Circulations.

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Nothing's happening. You're bored. You trya Merit Ultra Light. WHOA! You're getting real flavor from

an ultra low tar cigarette! You up another Merit. WHAT THE?lt happens again. Is this mystical or what? Hardly.It's Enriched Flavor something only Merit has.

Happens the time.

Enriched Flavor,tM ultra low tar. A solution with Merit.

F:;.o

MERITUltra Lights

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Merit Ultra Ughts

SURGEON GENERAL'S WARNING: Quitting Smoking

Now Greatly Reduces Serious Risks to Your Health.

b ing "tarn 0.5 mg nicotine av. per cigarette by FTC method.

IWhile the rest of us sleptthrough morning's weehours, HARRIET BARovick (left)

and her colleague AviÉEBEu.

were brewing coffee andplacing long, expensive tele-

phone calls to Amman,Jerusalem, Cairo,Vienna and London, the better ro re-search their profile of Jordan's QueenNoor for this issue. Barovick has since re-readjusted her internal clock to EasternStandard Time. which allows her to at-tend more conveniently and alertly to herduties as spys chief of research.

ÌL6TT GROENING is the cre-

r ator of Fox lëlevision's The

Si,n/sons, the disturbinglyprofitable animated pro-

kgram whose insouciant pro--

tagonist Bart adorns bothour front cover and the cover ofour spe-dal sri' JR. supplement, not to mentionseveral million unlicensed products for

sale along Last l4d Street and lower SixthAvenue. Groening's cartoon Life in Hellcontinues to appear weekly in The Village%/oice, among other publications.

"I am not now, nor will I-., ; ever be, working on a

.; - book,' says contributing

.

editor JOE QUEENAPI. A

/ -:r popular journeyman along.'-.,I the lines of the beloved

1970s Yankees utility infielder Fred"Chicken" Stanley, Queenan prefers rospread his voluminous OUtPUt amongdozens of periodicals, among them GQ,The Vall StreetJoarnal and ihe AmericanSpectator. In this issue he writes aboutBergdorf Goodmans new men's "club'

? Unlike Queenan, RICHARD

STENGEL is only too happyto plug a book in thisspace: the paperback cdi-tion ofJannary Sn,:, his as-

- . ' tringent chronicle of oneday in the life of a South African town,will be published this month by Touch-stone. A charter member ofspy's contrib-uting-editor corps, Stengel bas reflectedin these pages on celebrity chameleons,boring Canadians, freeloading Britonsand, in this issue, Eastern Europe. )

4 SPY FERRUARY 1991

Kurt And.,s.n E. Gon Corti,EUI1Oft.

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Lonoino CodsoiortonMAP.A(1N(i Eflitolt

Giorgi Kologs,okis'\l '.k II

Jons Collins Joanne Gruborl.\ 'P ll)I)'

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Niciti Gostin Chi-istioon Kuypirs Motth.w W.ingordov-I-IOR P11111') II 'I-.%K( III R S''.). I)IRF(TOK i" I I

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Doboroh Michel (Los Angol.,) Andric Ridi, (Washington)( I 'Kil Plr-.I)I '.1'

Aims. Sell David Bourgeois Sign. Corrieri Michoil Fish Josh Gilliet. Frank KoughonAnn. Morii Martin Loon. PO,k., Joel Potischmon

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Andy Aaron. Henry Aftord. Soro Barrett. Jock Boh, Horry B.nson. Barry Slits. Roy Blouni Jr.. C.lïo Brody.Chris Collis, Edrard Joy Epstein. Bruci Feirstein. Drew Fri.dmon. Tod Friend. Jomes Gmnt, Humphrey Greddon.

Steven Guornoccia, Peter He4f.rnon. Tony Ilendro. Lynn Hirschberg, Lourson Hobbs. Ann Hodgmon.J. J. Hunsickor, Eric Koplon. Howard Kaplan. Melik Koylon. Mark Lotsw,Il. Sob Mack. Guy Martin. Potty Mors.

Jo. Mostrionni. Patrick McMuPIan. Mark ODonn,II. David Owin. c. F. Payne. Jo. Quasnan, Store RodlouorPaul Rudnick. Lac Sonte (lissa Schopp.Il. Harry Shear.,. Randall Short. Paul Simms. Paul Slonsky, Richard Siong.l,

Eddie Stern. Taki, Jam., Traub, Roch.l Urquhort. Ellis Wein.,. Philipp, Weisbecker, Philip Weisi. Nid Z.manand Edward Zuckermon. among others

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JANUARY, FEBRUARY,WHAT'S TI-LE DIFFER-ENCE BOTH AREloaded with celebrationsv,c uifld it lLrd fl()t tO feelL!1ìhiVLlCI1t about. ¡s it dli

entirely' grand i(lct to givckids a iav ofifrorn schoolon account of the 1)irth(Iay

F of an adulterer and plagiarist. even if he was Martin... Luther KiugJr.? Are we not embarrassed that Super Bowl

- unclay haS become the closest thing America has to a- national civic ¡flOflleflt, a day of'FV watching and I)uritos

) SI..

eating that unites us more genuinely than the Fourth oføt_ July and Election Day combined? Not since around tue

- '- . sixth grade has anyone actually looked forward to Valen-title's Da Lincoln's Birthday, \X'asIiingtoiìs Birthdaythese arepretexts, not holidays. Even regular Americans aren't takingthe Old-faShiOlÌC(l pieties seriously to their credit. During theFort Lauderdale oh unity trial ofthe obscene 2 Live Crew, thejudge h.d to give the jury ofli. ial perl1ission to laugh out loud at

WitIÌCSS- es (no'here does the Consti-tUtiOn 'dV it I f your iiiììiiing peers"), and

uttI/t4I-i IVH iter a (Y good gLIIILW, the jurors t. c1uitted (.9 ther' PIF' "I 1)asically took [the testimony) as cornedy' one saidtiterward.'As we have started taking nearly all Amen-t .Lfl politics, which has become a laifle Paddy Chayefskyish

Lttk onu liners and spectacle substituting for plot. In Il-

linois a state representative III ¡ ned Ellis Levin sciit out a fund-raising letter that said bed won "special rognition by chicago

í%ia'gazine." In fact, the ni.lgazine had called him øne of thestate's ten worst legislators. A Levin aide said the letter was"tongue in cheek": in that case. au aide to Levin's opponentsaid, "they should have written ha ha' in pareiitlescs." Levin, ofcoL1rse won the election. (Fia lia.) . "X'hen Ed Rollins, a key( ;o strttegist, Lcl'ised Rpiblican candidates to repu-j iite Bush-adniinistrarioiì policy in their recent

carn)aigns, Bush was furious. .

- But Rollins jolly andsympathetic. "lt's a crazy

. -s-i tirne' he said, "and a lot of.

.- people [in the administration):are irritable. Fliey can only hate one of us

.-_;L t a ti flic. One week it was Sadda ni Hus-SI-in, one week it was Newt Gingrich, and

lII3RL ARY 1991 SPY

me today' So Rollins basically took it ascomedy. As well he should, since at presstime Hussein, Gingrich and Rollins allstill had their jobs.

Even before the American air strikeshad started in the Persian Gulf, the U.S.had grown a little bored thinking aboutitselfour minds have been abroad forsome time now. The ho domestic socialissues? Blah. When the aiìciaborrionmovement is reduced to modifying thePledge ofAllegiance to read "with libertyand justice br the born and unborn" (ata Catholic high school outside Cleveland),righteousness pro or con seems untenable.The economiccrisis? Dulisville. Besides,as a Harvard investment-banking proles-

sor (investnìcnt-banking professorships:the Afro-Anmrian Studies ofthe 1980s)reassured the Times recently, "This hugesuperstructure that Wall Street created inthe l980s will collapse, and there willbe a lot ofblood on the floor, but once ithas imploded. Wall Street will be back onL normal growth trend' Implosion. col-lapse, blood - then business as usual. Thedrug crisis? Passé. When William Ben.nett resigned his drug.czarship the sameday that Edward Lino, the Gambino lam-

ily's drug czar, was asked to tender his res-ignation (ha ha in parentheses: Lino wasfound shot to death in his Mercedes),the listless, party's.over domestic moodbecame too much to bear.

George Bush thoughtftilly suggested inhis exhortation to us to support the wareffort that Saddam Hussein was evenworse than Hitler. But he was really, really

angry that day. A week earlier, duringthe federal.budget debacle, he was appar-

ently very, very happy: he personally tooktime out to give Bo Derek a tour of thehorseshoe pit behind the White House.You can worry, or can basically takeit as comedy in the case of the WhiteHouse, a pretty good one, part StanleyKubrick and part Francis Coppola.

Kubrick, as in the "senior administra-tion official" who, sounding unmistak-ably Bush-like, explained to the Timesthat the president's threats ofwar mightnot be effective because he didn't knowwhether Saddams "antennae will be setin a receive mode, or not Coppola, as inSecretary of State Baker's chopperinginto the Saudi desert to review bewil-dered troops in formation, shaking handswith GIs as the First Cavalry marching

band belted out Lee Greenwood's "I'mProud to Be an American:'

Which is at work here, utter disin-genuousness or extreme naïveté? Ear-nestness or ha-has-inside.parentheses?A Kuwaiti newspaper reported that Sad.dam had a dream in which Muhammadtold him, i see your rockets deployedwrongly" This was never confirmed byspokesmen for the Iraqi dictator, but onthat piece ofgood news - the rumor oíadreamthe world oil price fell $5.41 abarrel the next day, the biggest drop ever.

On East 71st Streetnot ordinarilythe kind ofneighborhood prone to massdelusion (unless it involves the prices ofabstract expressionist paintings and co-opapartments) - a truck knocked a limb offa tree and exposed a six-inch-high ivorystatue of the Virgin Mary embedded inthe trunk. An aide to the local state as-semblyman helped collect hundreds ofsignatures on a petition demanding thatthe miraculous tree not be cut down."Whats nice' he says, "is that it's a reallymeaningful experience for people in acynical age' A cynical age? How on earthwould an aide to a New York City politi-cian know? We basically rake it as comedy,

part Stephen King, part Preston Sturges.Some of this winter's delusions are

more secular. Having published a best-ielling book ostensibly dictated to her byher dog, Barbara Bush has now sent a let-ter to Marge Simpson, the cartoon charac-tet i am looking at a picture ofyou . . . de-picted on a plastic cup' she wrote, "withyour blue hair filled with pink birds peek-ing out all over' Eleanor Roosevelt andHelen Keller Barbara Bush and MargeSimpson: as long as its a really meaning-fulexperience for people ina cynicalage, we're behind it.

Nutty in Baghdad, nutty¡n New York, nutty in Wash-.ìngton, nuttiest in Lagos. In

Africa's second-largest city,magically empowered penisthieves are believed to shakehands with you and pooJyour genitals disappea tobe sold later for use in thewitchcraft trade. Mobs haveattacked suspected robbers; dozens ofothers have been arrested. As they say, it's

a crazy rime, and in Nigeria, apparently, alot ofpeople are irritable. Really irritable.

Manuel Norieza. once accused by the

Pentagon ofinvoLvement in black magic,is now standing trial for drug dealing.Not only have the prosecutors and CNNtreated him unfairly, but prison stinks,too. "It's vinyl, stucco, brightly lit and[the] air-conditioning [is) ::irnedupf/l'one of his lawyers complained bitterly.And itgets more nightmarish. Accordingto another lawyer, "He doesn't get touse the tennis courts, the volleyball courtor the weight room' Yes, we basicallytake it as comedya pretty lame com-

edy in this instance, directed byJohn Landis, starring Gene Wilderas the warden and Bob Hoskinsas Noriega, a Hollywood Picturesrelease.

Speaking ofLatin dictators, doesFidel Castro still exist? His namenow triggers nostalgia (HulaHoops, pilibox hats, Fidel) morethan it does national-security anxi-ety; in this cynical age, Cuba is no

longer a really meaningful experi-ence, and the only people outside ofMiami who care enough even to humili-ate Castro are the Soviets. According toKomsornolskaya Pravda, Castro has 32houses, 9,700 bodyguards and a secret

wife by whom he has fathered five secretchildren. It's a crazy story, and Cuba isirritable: 'What a lie!» Cuba's ambas-sador to Moscow declared in a letter tothe paper. "For writing this kind of arti-cje, the author would be sent for trial inmany countries of the world'

People are irritable. (In Moscow, a leader

ofthe pro-pogrom group Pamyat was sentfor trial and got two years in prisonprompting one spectator to shout, "Thisis a Yiddish, Nazi verdict!") It's a crazy

time. (Just before Thanksgiving welearned that only 36 percent of peoplehave urine that gives offthat special sul-fur smell following a meal of asparagus,and that Random House is publishing aseries of books drenched in thematicaromasa Christmas book, for instance,that smells like cloves and cinnamon.)lt's a cynical age. ("Embarrassing?" an in-credulous Arista &cords executive saidwhen asked about Muli Vanilli. "We sold7 million albumsr) People are lookingfor a

really meaningful experience. ("God, rm gladto be out of Washington' George Bushgushed in Oklahoma. "I'm thriledto beout ofWashington') We basically take itas comedy.)

DEAR EDITORS ¡na Brown's ooey-gooey love letter to

Mike Ovitz ("Flattery Will Get You TenPages. . . Maybe," August) made for greatreading. What editorial integrity.

It also got me wondering: is the movieThe Gr:fters a CAA package deal' DoesCondé Nast own a piece of the action?The July Vanity Fair had Anjelica Hus-ton on the cover. She stars in The Grifterj.Same issue, James Wolcott profiled au-thor Jim Thompson. He wrote the novelThe Gr:jters. And the Fanfair section hada pointless profile ofJohn Cusack. Hecostars in. . . take a guess. . .The Grifi ers.

Carm Anthony Alci/oGreenville, South Carolina

Sorry, no CA/I da1 here. Neither Hutton norCusack is with CAA, and Thompson, byvirtue ofbeing dead, stands to benefit ezn less

f rom any Brown-Ovltz understanding. Wead?nireyour spirit, though.

DEAR EDITORS s an exVanity Fairsubscriber, I've no-

ticed that your own magazine featureshave begun to mimic those of VF. Surelythe introduction of a vapid Contributorssection represents a conscious effort tomock the equally silly feature in VF. Thecontinued presence of Party Poop andother picture layouts of celebrities inissue after issue, however, suggests a hid-den admiration of VF.

I suspect that all of the Tina Brownbashing in your magazine has been asham. Perhaps SY and VF are published

by the same corporation.Katharine M. Congdon

Bad Kreuznach, Germanylt's always a pleasure to hear from our BadKreuznach readers. Now: (1) Party Poop be-

gan (and continues) as a parody oft/ic sort ofphotofeature Vanity Fair runs. (2) We don'thave solid evidence to support this, but we be-lieve magazines other than Vanity Fair andSPY run Contributors sections. (3) Publishedby the same corporation as VF? As readersDrew Atkins andJohn Carron pointed out inMarch 1 990, we are apparently published by

thepeople who bring you Esquire.

DEAR EDITORS savored each detail ofTod Stiles's sketch of

Erroll McDonald's ass-kissing ways

io SPY FEBRUARY 1991

[Books, August]. 1 had the misfortune, asa former publicity director during Er-roll's early years, to promote books thatskilled Random House editors turnedover to him. This was before the Yalieboy wonder was discovered to be incom-petenc by the senior executive editors.

I experienced McDonald as less thanforthright, conceited (to use a good, old-fashioned word) and neglectful. He was apoor choice to manage books, much lessauthors' livelihoods. How ironic that hecalled André Schiffrin incompetent andarrogant. Schiffrin may have ignored thebottom line and continued publishingbooks he wanted to do (yes, you can callthat arrogant), but he was concernedabout his authors and their work.

Nancy Lt4frmann

San Anselmo, California

IDEAR EDITORS I applaud James Col-

I lins's poetic bitchi-ness ["What Passes for FriendshipToday," September) with one hand butraise a question with the other: haven'tthese truths of friendship been self-evi-dent for centuries? The history of friend-ship is the history of intrigue (political,religious, sexual or otherwise): (1) Judasand Jesus Christ; (2) Brutus and JuliusCaesar (the Platonic ideal of back-stab-bing self-aggrandizement); (3) HenryVIII and Cardinal Wolsey (no divorce, noHampton Court palace, cloth ears!).

As far as friendship goes, there were nokinder and gentler times, no golden age:

: -i X 'V

it's always been your status swap meet.Now we just have more magazines tocover the proceedings.

Robert N. StricklandNew York

We did refer to Peter betraying Christ, andas for your other examples, well, for obviousreasons, we avoided any historicalfigures whowere - or might just as well have been -played by Richard Burton. Didn't you noticealso the absence of Henry Il and Thomas àBecket, andKing ArthurandSir Launcelot?

This is the sound ofone hand clapping?

DEAR EDITORS f public-opinion pollsare correct, I believe

that 85 percent of all Canadians (myselfincluded) would thank you for placing

From the Rotisserie League Life Up-date Column. . .just kidding. That ever-expanding section still follows this one,doesn't it? Doesn't it?

Michael Will of Montreal has writ-ten to complain about our characteri-

F R O M I H E zation of him here in- September os "de-

' -

pendably Conadi-I How depend.

ably Canadian ofhim. Will claims he

M A I R O U M was "humiliated tonear-suicide" by our "scathing re-sponse" to what he admits was o"cloddish inquiry." And he wonderswhether Canadians are to become forSPY "what the Polish were for Rowan &Martin's Laugh-In." Maybe, but notuntil after our Canadian coeditor re-solves certain outstanding issues withthe Immigration and NaturalizationService.

Will's letter is the only one in thismonth's pile from a Canadian readerwho is not named Clark. (Clarkwhata dependably Canadian name.) KarenL. Clark of Toronto takes issue withDavid W. Ritchie's letter last May de-scribing Canadian cities as "clean and

relatively safe." Clark says, "Stayaway," citing increasing crime ratesand the cold weather. (Even Torontoand Vancouver, she says, are "hyperac-tive without being interesting.") AndJoe Clark, also of Toronto, has caughtus referring to the occasionally amus-ing TV series Doctor, Doctor in oneissue as "not unfunny" and in anotheras "witless." Clarkthis Clarkmustbe seriously devoted to either SPY or

Doctor, Doctor to have noticed that.We're not sure which explanationwould make us happier.

"I enjoy your magazine as much as I

can, " writes William King of Hayward,California. Who could ask for more?And here's another rabid fan:

"I have just subscribed to your mag-ozine because I was getting bored with

Vanity Fair's stupid puns," writesChristine Stapp of San Marino, Califor-nia. That's okay - magazines takethem any way they can get them, and ifthere are better reasons to subscribeto SPY than a vague disenchantmentwith puns elsewhere, we're not awareof them. So welcome. Your check

THEFALLS I5OVARICK 2129291111

K1TCHENO1EN UNTIL 1:00AM SUNDAY-THURSDAY.UNTIL 2:00 AM FRIDAY -SATtJRI)AY.

RDXY'B BISTRO

DI1\IfJER 5:00 P1v1 to I I :00 PM NightlyLATE MEIJU I I :00 PM Lo I ODAM

Sunday through WednesdayI I : DO PM to 3:00 AMThursday. Friday. Saturday

JAZZ BRUNCH I I :20 AM to ¿1:00 PMSaturday ¿ Sunday

2 1 20 BROADWAY AT 74th Street 799- 1 1 60

i: SPY i:EBRLJARY 1991

has cleared? Terrific. We noticed youwere able to squeeze a question onto

your postcard (in the space most SPY

readers reserve to tell us how muchthey liked the last issue or to ask uswhen this column is finally going to endso they can get to the RotisserieLeague Life update): "Would youplease tell me how many subscribersyou have in San Marino" We havedozensbored, to a subscriber, withVanity Fair's stupid puns.

"I must confront you with the accu-sation that you willfully provoked an-other controversy in your Mailroomcolumn," writes James E. Froeming of

Appleton, Wisconsin, sounding a greatdeal like Humphrey Bogart accusingSidney Greenstrcct of palming the$1,000 bill in The Maltese Falcon. Yes,sir, that we did. In September we in-tentionally used two spellings (provid-cd by two different readers) for thecapital of Burkina Faso"Oua-gadougu" and "Ougadougou." NowFroeming provides us with a third and

fourth: "Ouagadougou" (according tothe World Almanac and the In forma-tion Please Almanac) and "Ouagou-dougou" (UnivcrsalAlmanac). We havea feeling we haven't heard the end ofthis.

"Dear Sir or Madam or Pig"theseare the ones we love "I think yourpublication deserves a good thrashing.Every month you oink-oink at famouspeople who have actually done some-thing with their lives, be it acting orsinging or in the political arenarather than just spending their lifejerking off with pen and paper. Thosethat can do, do, and thos that can't gointo 'journalism.' Many of the peopleyou put down are people who havegiven a great deal of pleasure to me....Journalism used to stand for so muchmore than just the ability to snear andsnort. Ask Walter Cronkite. Ask Hunt-Icy and Brinkley. If you must go aftersomeone, why not go after the gaborsisters. . . .Oink Oink you febile brains!"Well put, exceptand this is whereyour whole argument falls apartChetHuntley is dead.

David S. Shukan of Marina Del Rey,California, has sent us a letter thatforces us to mention Rotisserie LeagueLife yet again. Shukan has appar-

Brian Muironey on tht- list of TyrannicalDeSpO(S in "Rotisserie Leajue Life (trade-

mark pending)" (by Jimmy Gutermanand Don Steinberg, Septernlxr].

No/aì W Evani

Giteiph. O,ite,rio. Ca'zada

DUAR EI)(R)Rc oLir list of big, scaryorganizations in "Ro-

dsserie 1.eague Life" got me thinking(llar something is afoot:

KKK CAA*

IIIiurur Alliterative (okay,assonant)

Stronghold in South Stronghold in south-

(arulina cru (:a1i1rnia

Rank-and-IIe sup- Rank-and-tile sup-i'rt lor David port fr "Duke"Duke Dukakis

Admits only white Admits only thc

ptopIe right" peopleMefl)IXÍSI1II' in- Membership in-(I(Id(5 r((lncck clucks Neil Dia-%Wifl( mlfl)(L composer

Oi"Re&LRCd

Wine

Represents Chris- Represeins Chris-

tian icoplc every- tian Slater every-where vhere

I think i full-scale investigation is inor(kr. Fel undertake it rnysdf but all mytime is currently devoted to the poetrycompendium I'm compiling for your30th-anniversary edition.

Johi PeippajohnG/ei B,,r,iie. i%1iyIane/

'Pai and lrcsent mLmhvrshp included

DIAk EI)ITORS sure am having funplaying Rotisserie

League Life. With all its scrutinizing,second-guessing and potential for sur-prises, it reminds me a little oíClue. But,be straight now, is RLL simply a play tomarket an overhyped, gimmick)', MartinMullish spy movie? O000ffl I hope not.

Paie! C. TreacyIthaca. New York

No: it's play to market an overhjped. giìì-

ìicky dild highly entertainizg SPY 900-nirni-

btr :depboìe ganie. explained on page J 6.

DL;AK El)li()RS 'd like to commenton No. 74 on The

SPY 100 [October]. Not that I disagree

DISHY. DIRTYi DIVINE.

t:,: ! :H:

.' dw * r

TI -

. SANDY

., WARNOL ' '

. ' , DIARIES t'

I ITIDIYs

s. .

PAT HMKITT S

SI*:; j____ s

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:

s NOW WITH AN AUTHORIZED INDEXss Fascinating. disturbing. .. "Warhol on Warhol. ..noble ¡n its

: decadent. ..no one emerges obsessiveness.. terrifying,"S unscathed. Variety NewYorkTimes .

: NOW IN TRADE PAPERBACK %AARNER BOOKS

FEBRUARY 1991 SPY 13

written directly to USA Today (cc:F ALLEIN E1'vIPIRE spY, and his letter drops enough of his

Rotisserie selections (Trump, Ovitz, Copideas for the decline -

Rock, Marlo Maples, Batman, SenatorDurcnbcrgcr, AMPAS, political consul-tants, Chapter 1 1, Spike Lee, Lennon)to, as he puts "pull in a quick 20points" if USA Today simply prints theletter. Clever, Mr. Shukon, very clever.But your point total for this mentionhere is, of course, zero.

In October, when we reproached Mac-User magazine's Guy Kawasaki for bor-

rowing ideas liberally from SPY, we alsowondered aloud whether we'd ever findanything to steal from MacUser. NowBruce Mewhinney of MacUser writes tosay we already hove. "I refer to your col-

orful, distracting 'infographics," hesays. "As one of the MacUser editors re-

sponsible for transforming impenetrabletechnical dota into impenetrable techni-cal charts, I have often remarked uponthe similarity between our lavish spreads

and your subsequent efforts." Maybeyou're rightwe started publishing onesuspicious year after you did.

Speaking of League Life,David R. Peterson of Washington, D.C.,faults us for listing Burma under "Chaot-ic Nation" (September). "That whichwas once Burma has been officiallycalled Myanmar since June 18, 1989,"writes Peterson. Rightwe'll countmentions of either one in the scoring,since, at least in The New York Times,the good old romantic name and thestrange unpronounceable new name are

used interchangeably.For Soniajust plain Soniaof

Lenexa, Kansas, the August sPY was her

first. She particularly enjoyed "A CasinoToo Far: Pages from the Donald J.Trump Scrapbook, 1990-96," by JamicMalanowski, and "There's a Make-be-lieve Fly in My Soup," by David Adam.But Sonia says she was disappointed tolearn that "spy has existed one yearlonger than I have and up to now l'vemissed every issue!" Sonia isthree ando half? That explains it: she hasn't yetlearned her last name.

Read our lips: no further talk of nub-bins. Starree Markham of Raleigh,North Carolina, has sent us a clippingfrom the Raleigh News and Observer inwhich columnist Ellen Crcagcr writesthat "lawn-mower sales have been

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trimmed down to nubbins." Jim Later ofDearborn, Michigan, cites a 1987 Chica-go Reader column by Cecil Adams (de-scribing nubbins as the little things thatonce were used to click into electricalsockets to keep the plug in place) asproof that "nubbins are extinct, which iswhy this nubbins question is so baffling."No less an authority than The New YorkTimes's William Satire recently used theword (in his On Language column,even), referring to a phrase that hadbeen "pared down to what seems to beits nubbin." But Jonathan Earle ofPrinceton, New Jersey, has sent us thenubbin reference to end all nubbin refer-ences, or at the very least this para-graph: in a 1980 book written by spy'snon-Canadian coeditor, there's a de-scription of a proper name that "isn'teasily hacked into a locker-room nubbinof its former self." That should bring usfull circle, no Does anyone really wantto go round again?

Thanks to all the conspiracy theoristsand conspiracy-theorist watchers whohave sent along new, crucial informa-tion, much of it previously suppressed(see "Coincidence? Perhaps," by GeorgeKalogerakis, July). One unidentifiedreader, contending that the JFK assassi-nation remains "unsolve," offers to cx-plain "What Really Happen." lt's all tooconfusing to go into here (rest assuredthere was "Government Envolvement"),but we would like to pass along thesignificance now being attached to anearby "Grassy Knob."

There's plenty more. Thanks to theanonymous person who sent us the "spe-cial genetic cross-breeding issue" of anewsletter called The Missing Link. (The

envelope, by the way, was originally ad-dressed to "SPAIGH," but wiser headsor a telephone directoryprevailed.)The Missing Link is a compelling publi-cation. One article begins, "Lots of peo-pIe are having kids these days. On April1, 1990 at about 5 o'clock in the after-noon I found out that I too, and for thefirst time, had become a father. In fact,as I was to find out shortly afterwards, afather of 34 kids with 8 more in embryoform. You see, I found out that I hadbeen abducted by UFOsETs (Uniden.tified Flying Objects or Extra-Terrestri-

als) for cross-breeding purposes ...... The

same issue includes a poem that

with your assessment; the i 990 LouisianaState legislature definitely was one of the

year's most annoying, alarming and ap-palling things. However, you state thatLouisiana passed "one bill that effectivelydecriminalizes physical assaults on flagburners. . .another that imposes the na-non's tightest restrictions on the contentand sale of record albums and anotherthat bans almost all abortion," and that"a bill outlawing spousal rape was defeat-ed: Well, that's mostly true.

When the anci-spousal-rape bill washooted off the floor as if the House ofRepresentatives was full of knuckle-walking good ol' boys scratching theirprivates (which it soon proved itself tobe), for many native Louisianans it wasthe first sign of how seriously wrong-headed their legislature was. But if ithadn't been for this unintentional earlywarning, the prochoice and proFirstAmendment groups would have beencaught off their guard later on.

For the record, yes, the abortion andrecord-labeling bills were passed, butthey were vetoed by the governor, BuddyRoemer. The flag-burning bill never waspassed as such (and probably never wouldhavegot offche House floor in any event).After the first abortion bill (which didnot include a measure for rape and incest)was defeated, che flag-burning bill was'sacrificed" and rewritten to includeabortion. Since the basic language of theflag bill centered on turning a felony (as-sault) into a misdemeanor (punch a flagburner, pay $25), auempts to rewrite itso that abortionists would be forced topay a $100,000 fine and serve ten years athard tabor were, to say the least, consti-

tutionally suspect. This piece of garbagelegislation stood the same chance ofbeing passed into law as would a bill pro-claiming abortion illegal unless the fetusburned a flag. And the anti-spousal-rapebill? A slightly altered version of the samebill was later passed without comment.

Nanty A. Collhìj

Neu' Orleans. Lwiisiana

DEAR EDITORS think No. 44 shouldhave been called

"Tone-deaf Defenses of Rap. " You adopt-ed the usual line, comparing criticisms ofrap to earlier criticisms of rock 'n roll.Didn't you ever hear the saying "An anal-ogy is no proof"? Do you mean you can

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SmailFortunes is the sad, true, uproariousstory of Jim and Pete's quests for successand a wild tour through the heartlandand swamps of American culture. Moneyhas never been so funny.

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To r('t%e a copy of the Seprcmbr issues or,inaI Rnnssrur Lcaguc I.ife article,send uc a check or money order for S I (no ,ash or credit uirds aecepted). Also. old-timers airvadv pIayin thc magazine vcrsion. now months mro their s.-ason, .an)e( wrekly ccoring rvsult for that contese by mail. at no Send a stamped.sd(-addressed envelope to si'vs Rotisserie Update. lue SPY BuiIdiig. 5 tJnionSquare West, New York. N.Y., 10003.

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This game, modeled on Rotisserie League Baseball, testsnot sports acumen but your knowledge of current events.It challenges you to assemble a roster of people, objectsand concepts that will make news more often than otherpeople's rosters. (One point is awarded for each mentionthe entry receives in USA Today.)

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acmally listen to that doggerel and say,"It's just another art form, as valid as oth-ers that preceded it"? Idiotic lyrics, pa-rhetic rhymed couplets chanted over arepetitive beat - rap is cretinous.

Not every form of music that peoplepresent to us has equal merit. People lis-ten to Loretta Lynn - does that mean Ihave to abandon criticism? Even para-noids have enemies, and even music chatis criticized sometimes sucks.

LaI) Eìibank

J Jjerso/i'i//e. 1n/iana

Yo. Lar;y!

Rap - we jJJ f endorsi,ì.

WjusI 1isui?J the peopleWho -

( Well, that : zehere u ' lost it. but z'hat zeere

t))iflg IO Jay i! ¡t UWS the fitddy-diiddyish re-actions to ap by ioe (iJ the same people whoonce embraed s otitlau' sJìirít that an-?IO)ed alarmed and appalled ni.)

Yo.'

Diai EIrroRs ive Henry Alford awell-deserved stein

of the Oktoberlest brew for his brave trek

around Manhattan's quirky bed-and-breakfasts ["Don't Let the BedbugsBite!," October). Ud love to be the firstguest at the sPi' B&B. But tell me upfront, are my sneakers going to give offtoo much negative energy?

And four stars of satirical insight toPaul Rudnick for exposing Fa#x Naïfs forwho and what they are ["Presumed Inno-cence").

Stephen GhiglioityTeqitesta. Florida

DEAR EDITORS f, as you say on theContributors page,

Paul Rudnick is the dessert at the ban-(111er of literature, I suggest that the bat-ter is getting a bit thick and you woulddo well to cut a few pounds of butterfatand molasses out of the recipe, and a fewhours ofTthe cooking time.

Rudnick's main points were well tak-en, and high-toned ridicule deliveredfrom a platform of moral outrage is, ofcourse, the reason we all read your fine pe-riodical. Nevertheless, while overkill inthe service of social satire is no vice, doesthe author truly believe he is winning

over the reader to his arguments againstcreeping cultural infantilism when heslams Sinéad O'Connor for calling heralbum I Do Noi Want What i Haven'tGot 'an honorable sentiment from any-one who has just gone multiplatinum"?We are invited to scorn O'Connor as ahypocrite for not knowing before sherecorded and titled the album that itwould take her from cult obscurity to in-ternational -celebri ty and mill ionai re sta-tus. Once an author displays a degree ofdisingenuousness this extreme, a certaindistance is created between him and thereader.

O'Connor is faulted for having largeeyes; Melanie Mayron has "matchstick"arms - telltale signs of their dishonesty,cowardice and refusal to risk. Kurt Rus-sell is a simpering Naïffor saying that hislover "has a natural desire and ability toseek out joy." Michelle Shocked has "de-fiantly mouse-brown' hair and her songsare lent "a bogus authenticity" by herhaving survived institutionalization andrape.

At this point, the suspicion dawns thatRudnick may have problems with life be-yond his problem with people who affect

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opens with "Is it oli a game to you, myalien friend?" and ends with the cou-plet "I love you, my Alien/I am yourwilling abductee."

Steve Jackson of Austin, Texas, senthis board game, Illuminati: The Gameof Conspiracy ("Nothing terrible hashappened to us yet," wrote Jackson."The March 1 incident in which the Se-cret Service raided our offices under asealed warrant was obviously just a co-incidence"). John Adams of Lafayette,Colorado, sent an excerpt from WhenWorlds Collide, a 1933 novel that situ-ates a Japanese character at a sceneof devastation in the United States onDecember 7. (Adams asks, " Prescienceor conspiracy" Well, that's one wedon't have to agonize over; but youmay recall that in November 1987 wepredicted to the day when Gary Hartwould, post-adultery-revelation, reen-ter the presidential race, and if we arepart of a conspiracy, nobody has toldus about it.) Still more readers, fromNick Wolf of Columbus, Ohio, to BlairMcKee of Winnetka, Illinois, checkedin with amusing conspiracy theories oftheir own (sorry, no room for themthat Rotisserie League Life update isjust sentences away), but the one weliked best was on a postcard sent by EliMessinger of San Jose, California. Thecard showed the destruction caused bythe "San Francisco Bay Area Earth-quake" in four photographs that werecopyrighted "1988"a year before thequake.

Finallyfinally--thanks to Mas-sachusetts "assassinologist" R. B. Cut-lcr for all his encouraging, if elliptical,mail. "Perestroika without glasnost,"he wrote in one missive, "is like...you're better at this than I." Um. . .likeRotisserie League Life without nub-bins

C O R R ECTI O N

In November's column "Judges' Ed.,"we inadvertently inflated the city ofWarsaw, New York, into a county.

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a childish or dysfunctional manner. Justas it is not permissible that MichelleShocked's harrowing life experiencesmight authentically inform her music, soit is that childhood has nothing to dowith adulthood. The man is father to theman.

In the end, Rudnick reveals his eigh-teenth-century view of children as non-persons, and childhood as forgottendowntime in the waiting room of life.The author is clearly an adult who doesnoi lack bravado and is willing to "livefull tilt and to decay with style." But his

argument decays otherwise.Andrtu' Christie

Los Angeles, California

DEAR EDITORS nfortunately yourwriter Rachel Ur-

quhart never contacted me concerningthe work that Clay Felker did for U.S.Neuc & World Report ["Voyage to the Bot-

tom ofrhe Newsstand," November].For the record, let me state that Clay

made an enormous contribution to therevitalization of U.S. News & World Re-port. His ideas svere relevant, construc-tive, valued and, most of all, reflected anextraordinary understanding of the newrole that newsweeklies must establish forthemselvesnot as regurgitators of theprevious week's important events, but asanalysts and interpreters of the most im-ponant trends and issues coming up. Inaddition, he was particularly valuable indeveloping the whole News You Can Usesection for U.S. J\Tegtr & World Report,which has been extraordinarily well re-ceived.

Mortirner B. ZiickermanEditor in chiefU.S. News & World ReportNew York

We thank M,: Zuckernian for his defense ofMr. Felke,: (Though his complaint is interest-

ing in light ofhis contention in GQ this fallthat he doesn i 'cooperate with female reporters

(because) all they really want to know is whyare?zt i ,narried to them. ")

spy u,elco,nes letters from its readers. Address

correspondence to SrY, The SPY Building, 5Union Square West, New York. N. Y.i 0003. Typewritten letters are preferred.Please include yoit' daytime telephone numbe,:

Leiters may be editedfor length or clarity.)

QUAI D'ORSAY RESTAURANT NEWSLETTER277 CIIURCFI STREEI'(I3ETWEEN WHITE & FRANKLIN), NEW YORK, N.Y. IO()13. 212 966-9881

¿i)\' .

,

FASHION RATIONPLENTY OF NYLONS ON DISPLAY TO SHOWWHAT THE GIRLS WANTED iN 19441f you are still all gammed out in Donna Karan,Ralph Lauren and Calvin you're in for a shock.When the oil prices hit the ceiling, their jet transponfrom the Far East, (where most of their clothes aremade), will drive their prices up 40% for ChristmasWith this in mind Quai D'Orsay researched theextraordinary fashion period of France circa 1944when there was no fashion and no money. Then wethrew a Liberation of Paris Party whereeverybody wore the rationed look of World War H.Women exchanged their skins for slacks and sincethere was no coal for heat or shoe leather, wore skioutlis with clogs. Electricity cuts closed hair salonsand caused turbans to come into fashion and womenpainted stripes on their calves to imitate nylons. Thefood for the Quai D'Orsay fette was tres simple andQuai D'Orsay chefs served up plenty of potatoes andbubbly recalling Hemmingway storming the Ritz,liberating the champagne cellar and forcing theGermans into the kitchen to peel potatoes.

,

OFF WITH THEIR HEADSART COLLECTORS AND CRITICSCAVORT ON BASTILLE DAYPretty madamoisellcs were laughing their beads off atthe mock constructed guillotine looming in the back ofthe restaurant at the Quai D'Orsay Bastille Day Partybut some of the collectors and critics above had prettysad faces. lt was a terrible art summer with pricesplummeting so badly that a few depressed collectorshad to be restrained from putting their heads in theguillotine. Big time West Broadway moguLs haveexperienced massive deflation with some Jaspersdown as much as 300%. This might be time to setaside some good wine from the Quai D'Orsay cellaras a hedge against further art market disasters.BRACE YOURSELF FOR HARD TIMESQuai D'Orsay initiates Brace Yourself for liardTimes Brunch 7 days a week. Let the NancyReagan idle rich keep their anorexic looks.QuaiD'Orsay patrons intend to face the Reagan/Bushrecession with a full stomach. After the healthy fruitplatters and cereals, you can carbo load on heavyorders of grits, crepes, buckwheat pancakes, quiches,polenta, 100 % Bran and Wasa Bread with assortedsmoked fish. Or if you want eggs and severalvarieties of French country ham and bacon it's here. Itwill all be available 7 days a week at a low prix fixe.

IONW


:

THEJINE PRINT

byjamie Iiialanowski

PORTRAIT OF THEMEMORAND1ST AS A

YOUNG MANWe always thought of MarkKostabi as someone lar moresuccessful as a self-promoterthan as an artist. How wrongeven we can be. Recently wereceived a copy of a prescrip-rive memo Kostabi sent tothe anonymous painters whoactually execute his works(which sell for up to

$70,000):

NOTICE TO PAINTERS'EFFECTIVE IMMEDI-

ATELYUNTIL FUR-THER NOTICEORUNLESS SPECIFICALLYAPPROVED BY MARKKOSTABI

..I. Al/figures ems; be renderedi,: high contras:: meaningeither white into black or avery light color into a verydark color. The only exceptionsarc:,. A. In the case ofa multiple

figure composition. certainfigures may not be in thestream ofdirecc light...... B. Iíyou are trying to

achieve a Deliberate Armo-spheric effect, for example:figures fading into the hazydistance, in which case fore-ground figures should behigh contrast and recedingfigures can gradually be less

contrasty.


rt

DEFAULT-DECADE DIARY: Mindful of DONALD

TRUMP'S notorious deadbeat tendencies, FirstBoston, the investment bank representing 'frumpin negotiations with the Taj Mahal bondholdershe has been trying ro stiff, made a highly unusualrequest of its client: the bank, itself in the throesof a cash crunch, demanded that Trump pay hisfee up front, in cash - no extensions or tough-guytactics permitted.

ELDERLY GOSSJPEUSE Liz SMITH is showingincreasing signs of mental disarray. This fall shesomehow got her hands on a prepublication copyof New York's warmed-over cover story on IVANA

TRUMP and became agitated over its contentionthat she'd written her Trump-split scoop with checooperation of Ivana's lawyer MICHAEL KENNEDY.

She immediately called bancy, social-climbingNew York editor ED KOSNER, and at her stridentbehest - ifyou ever want my help on any stoy again,she croaked, change that sentence che offendingline was altered to mention another of Ivana'shandlers, public-relations shaman JOHN SCANLON.

Apparently placated, Liz gushed about the piecein her column, but then she made a special pointof denying the article's assertion about her andScanlonprecisely the assertion she had all butdictated to Kosner the week before.

IN ORDER TO HOUSE HIMSELF and his entourageduring the Broadway staging of Miss Saigon, itty-bicty British showman CAMERON MACKINTOSH pur-chased a theater-district pied-à-terre - sightunseen. Alas, when the producer of the musicalabout a Vietnamese prostitute finally arrived toinspect his new West 44th Street townhouse, hedeemed it unacceptable. While pimps and prosti-tutes are fine onstage, it seems that the sight ofsimilar, real-life characters in the neighborhoodwas too much for the sensitive producer. Thetownhouse was immediately put Uf) for resale and

L. Sirrii A. LLOYD WURER J. MdNERNEY

remains on the market for S I .2 million.

WHILE TINY BRITISH COMPOSER ANDREW LLOYD

WEBBER was holed up in his New York pied-à-terre - a crinoline-upholstered Trump Towerduplexworking on Aspects ofLove, he wasbesieged by phone calls from STEVEN SPIELBERG. his

upstairs neighbor. Spielberg asked whether LloydWebber might be interested in skipping Aspects'sBroadway run and transferring the musical direct-ly to the screen - with Spielberg as director, ofcourse. At one point Lloyd Webber instructed anassistant to "get Mr. Shpielberg on the phone.""Tell me, Steven," Lloyd Webber said, "just howmuch money do you make from your films"Spielberg responded that he had taken in sonic-thing on the order of £75 million from ¡LT, andshortly thereafter the two concluded their discus-sion. 'Seventy-five million dollars,' Webber latermused aloud. 'lt hardly seems worth the bother.'

JAY MCINERNEY HAS ATTEMPTED to impersonate EScott Fitzgerald for years. And while he fails inreplicating his hero's literary success, he is havingsome luck in mimicking Fitzgerald's life-styleexcesses. Recently a respected television producerwas enjoying dinner at Elaine's with friends when

he was interrupted by a reeling, extravagantlyanesthetized patron who looked for all the worldlike Mclnemey. The fellow groped for a chair topull up beside che producer but, finding that justtoo difficult a maneuver, fell into the lap of hisintended comrade. Lithen, the former boy wonderwhispered conspiratorially, let's get your older croucitogether itith my younger crowd and really take over thedou'nioze'n club scene! As irresistible as the offer vasto the producer, be politely declined. The would-be Peter Pan had evidently forgotten that he andhis superhip pals are now members of the samegraying, thickening age cohort - 35-to-49 - asthe producer and his circle of friends.

LI 9k

STURM UND DRANG UND PARTIAL C[ARING BY MIDDAYspy Discovers an Alarming Meteorological Parable

n October3the day Berliners ' ' igiddily celebrated the

fl' (1

official reunification'

Germany Reichstag

of their country and(he return of an all-

to their citythere"'i:

its curious moniker _______________________

developed in theCaribbean a tropicalstorm named Klaus,

coming from a list ofnames drawn up by

±the United NationsWorld MeteorologicalOrganization eleven years ago. Oblivious to the"burden of history" invoked by German presidentRichard von Weizsäcker in a solemn speech given5,000 miles away, Klaus caused flash floods in the

French département oí Martinique, killing six peo-pIe, then bombarded the British Commonwealth

island nation Antiguaand Barbuda, causingfurther damage. ByOctober 5, Klaus hadbeen upgraded tohurricane status bythe U.S. NationalHurricane Center,and a few days later astorm bearing an hal-ian name, Marco,began to assert itselfin the region. OnOctober 9, Klaus andMarco actually joinedforces and moved in

toward the American coast, gusting and sprayingFloridas shores with Luftwaffe-like fury and caus-¡ng coastal floods and beach erosion. But Klaus'sterrible triumph was short-lived: not long afterhis assault on the United States, Klaus dissipated,never to be heard from again. - David Kamp

PRIVATE LIVES OF PuBLIc FIGURES

Ronald Reagan celebrates his 80th birthday.Il.LUSTRATION BY DREW FRIEDMAN

WHAT'S IN

A NAME?

Our Monthly

Anagram Analysis

NEW YEAR'S EVE

YES, EVER ANEW

SUPER BOWLBLOW PURSE

ARAB-ISRAELI

CONFLICTA TRIBAL RELIC OF CAIN'S

THE FEDERAL

DEFICITFLEECED THRIFT IDEA

PERESTROI KA

PEAK RIOTERS

Andy Aaron

THI PINI PlUM? CONYINUID

"2. All reflead light mst beeither a middle-toned color or amiddleJdark tolorneverave?), light color andnever white.

"3. Nopainting will have aftatbackgro#nd. Ailfigures rn/itt be

given someform of halalion.whether it be extrern white orredgiows or a subtle atmoipherichaze. Thin halos are out!!!...

4. lfthe Idea Person has notindicated hatkground treatment.then the painter mustfigure it outaccording to the above principles.

_5. fS]hadows should neverappear incidental or like an

afterthought. Make them strongand deliberate.

6. Do not use green. (Even tfPicasso used it.) The only p-tions are chartrtafe hid (yel-low/green), but only as a de/ib-erate acidic accent, and mint

green.

- 7. Keep orange and browndown to a bare minimum.

..8. PreferredKostabi colors:b/ark, white, ,iea blue.

tourquoise [ud, metallic gold.andin small doses: yellouchartruese (sic), purple. '

THEY FOUGHT THE LAW,AND THE LAW WON: THEYEAR IN CRIMINALSENTENCES

Sooner or later, experts say,chickens come home to roost.Leaving aside the questionof why this means come-uppance (Why shouldn'tchickens come home?), here,in our continuing effort tokeep track ofcriminal behav-ior and the amount of chick-en-roosting it engenders, isour Review ofCriminal Sen-tences 1990, in descendingorder of severity.

John List, family killer: 5life terms

William Underwood, Har-tern heroin kinj,in and for-mer manager of musicgroups New Edition andSlave: life without parole

Richard Angelo, Longlslands "Angel of Death,'


?NI FINI PRINT CONTIHUID

who was found guilty of

fatally injecting elderlypatients with Pavulon: 50years to life

Angel Diaz, who with sever-al accomplices murdered anIsraeli man in the Bronx,then traveled by subway toBrooklyn to rob and rape theman's wife and teenagedaughter: 38½ years to life

Joe" Fama, the trigermanin the murder of Yusufl-lawkins in Bensonhurst:32 years to life

Woody Limons, formerchairman ofa thrift in Texaswhose collapse cost taxpayers$1.3 billion: 30 years

Donald Lowry, of Betten-dorf, Iowa, leader of theChurch ofLove, throughwhich he bilked 31 ,000 menout of$4.5 million with taleso(Chonda-Za, a paradiseinhabited by nude loveangels: 27 years

Gregory Smith, a New Jer-sey man with AIDS convict-ed ofattempting to murder aprison guard by biting him:25 years

Ronald Longo, a dineremployee from upstate NewYork who killed a man forcomplaining about his

cheeseburger toppings: 20years to life

Mork Putnam, an FBI agentwho strangled an informerwho was pregnant with hischild: 16 years

Lorry Mahoney, the drunkendriver from Kentucky whosepickup collided with a schoolbus, killing 27 church-groupmembers: 16 years

Sandro Amos, the Mrs. Fil-berts margarine heiress, whowas convicted of traffickingin cocaine: 14 years and a$20,00() fine

Gregory Scroggins, a Geor-gia man with AIDS convict-ed ofattempted murder afterbiting a police officer: 10years

William Lozano, che Miamipolice officer whose killing oftwo unarmed blacks set offriots in Liberty City in 1988:7 years

Antron McCray, RaymondSantana Jkl Yuscf Soloom.


111 lD BE WRITING FOR YoHelping Bret Easton Ellis Find a New Home

y now we had expected American Psycho,

Bret Easton Ellis's new novel depicting extrava-gant disemboweling and sadistic sexual violence,to be proudly wearing Simon & Schuster'scolophon on its spine [see Books, December).But at the last minute, Simon & Schuster chair-man Richard Snyder announced that "it has beendecided not to go forward with the publishing[of American Psycho)," calling the decision a"matter of taste. " Confident as we were that thebook Ellis describes as a "critique of eightiesmorals and mores" would cuickly be snatchedup by another publisher, we felt terrible aboutthe reading public's having to wait even a fewmonths for the insights of the spokesman for his

generationSTo right this wrong, we decided to lend Ellis

a hand in placing his work. We sent a compara-tively mild seven-page chunk of Ellis's man-uscripta passage in which the protagonist tor-tures a sex partner and then cuts her in half witha chain sawto a number of magazine editors,proposing that they publish the section as ashort story. To make sure the material would bejudged objectively, we removed Ellis's namefrom the submission. And to stack the deck alittle, we bypassed manifestly straitlaced publi-cations and turned right to those periodicalswhere graphic writing about physical relations isroutine. Here are the replies:

Screw: "[Your piece) is not suitable for our mag-azine."Swank: "Your style and/or subject matter is notappropriate for publication in Swank."Gent: "Sorry we cannot use this material, but we

appreciate your thinking of us,"Turn-On Letters: "Too long."

Options, the [Canadian) 61-Monthly: "Your storyisn't hot. . jis) too short. . .has too much hetero-sexual content [and) violates a Canadian taboo."Cavalier: "Sorry, this story is too short for us, forbeginners. . . . It's also coo violent for our reader-ship. . . .This isn't really eroticism - it's horrorfiction with brutal sexuality. I'm not sure there'sa market for itnot in the men's magazines(too brutal) nor in the horror mags (too sexual).But, you write well!"

That last compliment made us wonder if wehadn't set our sights a bit too high. Therefore, wepseudonymously submitted the excerpt to Van-tage Press and Carlton Press, two so-called vanitypublishers. The first reply was discouraging:

Vantage Press declined - that is, even ¡j' Ellis.bee,: willing to pay several thousand dollars to pnb

his novel, Vantage had no interest in taking his mo,

Adding insult to injury, Vantage enclosebrochure that assures writers that while the copany is willing to publish controversial maten"controversy is not the same as. . .crackponism.Such material we emphatically reject." Our hodimmed, we opened the letter from Carlton Pndispiritedly. Pay dirt! "Our initial reaction is quifavorable and we think it merits publicationwrote Carlton, clearly a visionary publishing houstaffed by inspired, risk-taking mavericks. 'Tyou have more material of this caliber so thatcan consider publishing a book-length volumeUnfortunately for Carlton, Vintage Books, aimprint of Random House and no relation to Vas

tage, snapped UI) the novel, and won't charge Ellia cent. Josh Gil/en

A

SEPARATED AT BIRTH?

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Adnan Khashoggi.. and Cosmo Spacelyof The Jetsons

Valerie Bertinelli, .. and Roseanne Barr?

Warren Beotty. . . and Steven Tylerof Aerosmith?

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Tul PINI PeINT COMYIMUID

convicted of raping the Cen-tral Park jogger: 6 to 20years

Arch Moors Jr., former goy-ernor of West Virginia, con-victed ofgratì: 5 years and a$170,000 fine

Milo Holair, a Broadwayproducer who claimed shewas the wile of David Rocke-letter and defrauded investorsof$4 million: 4 to 8 years

I.iona HsImsI.y, convictedoftax evasion: 4 years inprison. 3 years on probation,750 hours oícommunicy ser-viceand a $7.152 millionfine

Mor4Iyi L Harrsil, 'RobinHUD," convicted ofthefc ofapproximately $6 million inthe HUD scandal: 46months, plus $600,()00 inrestitution

Fran Trutt, an animal-rightsadvocate who planted abomb near the car oían exec-utive whose company experi-ments on dogs: 32 months

Lionard Spodik, the "Drac-ula landlord," who refused torepair his buildings: 2 yearsand an $1 1,000 fine

Marsho Cohsn, a dentistand heroin addict convictedof burglary: 1½ to 4½ years

Lt. Harris, who posednude in Playboy with heridentical twin, and who wasconvicted of evading taxes on$686,0(X) given her by anoctogenarian widower inexchange for companionshipand sex: I year and a$12,500 fine

Morgoret Ray, who claimedshe was David Letterman'swile and broke into his hometor the sixth time: I year

Violo Douglas, who stabbedher fiancé in the neck with abarbecue fork after heperemptorily switched chan-nels to watch the SuperBowl: 10 months

Morion Barry, convicted ofmisdemeanor cocaine posses-sion: 6 months

John Poindsxtsr, the formernational security adviser,convicted oflying to Congressabout the Iran-contas affair: 6months

P.t. Ros., autograph-


:,4Ï[T!IrAk 'i ''

K ARPOY Socxs! K ARPOY Sucks!''Fhe Sights, the Sounds. the Action al a World Championship C&î.r Match

. Ost of the fun ofgoing to see the Mets at Shea Stadium or the Rangers at the Garden is beinepart oía big, boisterous crowd, shouting obscenities at the officials and hoisting a jumbo beer or two,Add to that the thrill of a pitching duel or the furious skatesmanship of pro hockey, and you have apretty exciting way to spend an evening. The atmosphere was a little different at the Hotel Mackloweduring the world-championship chess matches between Gary Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. Our report:

5:25 p.m,: The crowd: just like a high school really the main chess photographer in the U.S.)chess club nerdy, bespectacled, ill-dressed but makes bold chess predictions ("There will be noalso fat and bald. swords sheathed early, I can tell you that").5:30 p.m.: Combatants enter. They sit. Huge, red, 7:14 p.m.: Move 13. Kasparov: Bd7.backlit cardboard chess pieces give stage the feel 7:33 p.m.: An usher explains, Kasparov has aofa bad Broadway musical about chess. townhouse he usually stays in. But last Friday5:41 p.m.: Lengthy pause precedes Move 8. night, after he lost, he came back to the hotel ray-5:49 p.m.: Still Move 8. Headsets have been pro- ing and singing in the lobby. I guess he couldn'tvided for commentary by two chess experts. Corn- find the townhouse."ment: "Well, let's see. ...Kasparov's thinking." 8:17 p.m.: Move 17. Kasparov: Nb7.6:00 p.m.: Audience of200 stares silently. 8:39 p.m.: Pause.6:04 p.m.: Concession stand offers chess-themed 9:15 p.m.: Another usher, Michelle, a marketingbeverages (white Russians) and chess-themed major at Fordham, considers game a probable draw.sandwiches (the "Bishop": turkey, prosciutto, sun- 10:17 p,m.: Karpov blundersBd2.dried tomatoes, arugula). i 0:22 p.m.: Draw. Michelle prescient. Crowd dis-6:17 p.m.: Press room. Amiable Englishman perses quietlyno brawling. Plenty of taxis.Nigel Eddis ("I'm one of che main chess photog-

'V' 'V' 'V' 'V' 'V' 'W 'V' 'V' 'V 'V'

-Michael Krantz

'V' 'V'V'V' 'VV, 'V' 'V' 'V' 'V V' V' V' 'V' 'V 'V' 'V' V' 'V 'V' V' 'V' 'V' 'V' 'V' V' V' ''V' W"V 'V 'V' 'V

W lID AT HEARTA- Scoreíard

'. ,)

First name David? Yes Ycs

:ttended art school? Drop1xd out of Pennsylvania I)ropped out of Rhode Island- - --------.---. vFinaArraftc,two years .,$CbQÇILO1 Des czw years J

Early fame with huid Late-1970s experimental film, Late-1970s experimental band,!iraserhead Talking Heads

ntinuectramewirh man ''AkUffl98Os song "Television

-é.- i%lapi

Preoccupied with banal middle- Ycs Yes

class life and psycho killers?

rCrossover project

tit narnedescribes grisly lrrn

Oddly named collaborator

Material has been performed atBAM

Pwsri;'Tí6ì,i Pzb, a darklysatiric look at small-town life inWashington, close to the Canadianborder

' - -.

Wrote lyrics for album (Joke

Cruise)Yes

Angelo Badalament i

Big black suits, shirt buttoned upYs

First feature film, '1're Siorici, a

darkly satiric look at small-townlife in Texas, close to the Mexicanborder

Wrote music br ballet (Twyla

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Yes;

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Big white suits, shirt buttoned upYes.--- , -

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f141 PUlII PRINT CONTINUID

signer-for-hire, convicted offiling faIs cax rt.turns: 5months and a $50,000 fine

Robert Freemori. formerhcad ot arbicragc at GoldmanSachs, convicted of insidertrading: i year, all but 4months suspended, and a S I -million fine

Peter Bront, hoicy-coicypublisher (Jntervieu'), convict-ed oltax evasion: I year, all

but 90 days suspendedMortin Siegel, convicted of

selling inside information toIvan Boesky: 2 months

Kelsey Grommer, Cheer, sDr. Crine, who violated theterms oía probation sentenceresulting from a DWI viola-tion: 30 days in jail and IO

picking up trashThe Reverend Ai Shorpton,

convicted oídisordlrly con-duct during a Day of Rage:I 5 days

Y,esnond Bureou, Brook-lyns "Lady Goetz: '1 week-ends in jail

Joseph Hazeiwood, captainof the Exxon Vii/da, convict-cd ofonc minor charge in thedisaster: $50,000 in restitu-tion and I 000 hours clean-

ing upVønsso Vadim, the 2 1 -year-

old daughter ofJanc Fonda,arrested with her boyfriend,who was allegedly buyingheroin: 3 days' communityservice

Autsdray Bruce, Atlanta FaI-cons linebacker, who failed to

perform the community-ser-vice sentence leveled after a

disorderly-conduct convie-don: 3 Saturdays' picking uptrash on county highways

David and Ginger Twitchell.(hrisiaiì ScIcflIItS who wereconvicted of manslaughterafter refusing treatment fortheir two-year-old son, whodied: IO years' probation

Eugene Fodor, violinist,who pleaded guilty to break-ing into a motel (heroin andcocaine charges were

dropped): 3 years' probationMatthew BornweII, crack

addict and Bronx school

principal: 3 years' probationand community service

Rhdid S.cord, Iran-contra


DATEBOOKEnchanting andA Iarming Eveiis

Upcoming

Jana4 The New YorkNational Boat Showbegins its ten-day runat thejavits Center.Tomorrow's Wall StreetJ ournal has a front-pagefeature headlined "ForPenobscot BayLobsterman, CorporateBacking Is the Lure,"

accompanied by astipple drawing oíabearded rustic in anEvinrude cap.11 "A GershwinCelebration with

Bobby Short"; CarnegieHall. Coming soon: "AConnick Celebrationwith MichaelFeinstein.'18 "American Kasten:The Dutch-StyleCupboards of NewYork and New Jersey1650-1800";Metropolitan Museum.Nicely turned out 38-year-olds take theirchildren to see what

spy I.isî

Johnny CarsonJohn Dean

Clark GableJimi HendrixRon Howard

Mick JaggerDon Johnson

many other Gentiles

Johnny MathisMalcolm McDowell

Rudolf NureyevElvis Presley

Burt ReynoldsPrince William

life was like beforeIKEA.

Febriaryi Sports illustrated'sannual swimsuit issuehits the newsstands.Librarians at parochialschools draft letters tothe editor containingthe words indecent,scantily clad andimpressionable; Mari n

County feministgroups call for thepublishers' castration.2 "Age in a virtuousperson. . .carries in it anauthority which makesit preferable to all the

pleasures of youth,"said Sir Richard Steele

ofJolly Olde England.And speaking of age,Liz Smith turns anincredible 68 today!Who knows how she

manages to stay SO fullof "vim and vigor," buthot young numberslike Madonna, DeltaBurke and KathleenTurner should 'takenote" of her secrets for

a long life: frozen hotchocolate atSerendipity, cabaretshows at Rainbow &Stars and chicken-friedsteaks at Yellow RoseCafe.15 Fiftieth anniversaryof Duke Ellington'sfirst recording of 'Takethe A Train." Alas,budget constraints now

A train isn't theseamless ride it used cobe. But ifyou closeyour eyes and givethese records a listen,you'll be cruisin'UPtWfl on the express,livin' the lush life withyour satin doll. Amen,and stay cool."18 Washington'sbirthday (observed).

22 Washington'sbirthday (actual).24 Abe Vigoda'sbirthday (actualand observed).26 The final dayof "Managing

theSell," abusinessmen's retreat

sponsored by TheEconomist ; North

Horsham, England.Reticent British

dictate that theuptown-express Amake local StOPS

during late-nighthours, creating aninvaluable metaphoropportunity for anyonewriting liner notes tosome future boxed-set

EUington anthology:"The Duke is gonenow, and with him theManhattan he madeswing: the Savoy's beenstomped, and even the

executives attemptU.S.-style stress-

managementtechniques but learnonly that elastic-trimmed socks arebetter for bloodcirculation than leg

garters.)

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''OKAY, Now, WHAT'S TUE SIGN FOR DEBT?''Oar Special Donald Trump Sign-1angiiage ? rani/aith,i Giude

ver the years, srY's critics have called us harsh, acerbicand somewhat unforgiving. But these are the nineties; we havelistened to these criticisms, and we have realized that we needto turn over a new leaf. Today, we FOCUS OUf attention on the

airplane braggart ¿ decorator

I

magician milk want

needs of the hearing-impaircd. Our aim is to offer our readersinstruction in a few of the basic words of sign language, in thehope of strengthening the bonds of communication among allpeople. Here, then, are some basic words:

-.-

:,z4grab I

sg_ ILM'?

worthless

Now that youknow some funda-

mentais, USC these

words to form sen-

tences. Mix and

match them as the

situation demands,

just as our instruc-

tor does in the pho-

tos below.

To William Norwich: [My] cleorator is a magician!

To a sexy woman: I want to grab [you] and ,,fllk [you).

in tic )cst ot Cil! [)OSSlhlC worlds: i am a worthless braggart.- Henry Alfordand Micaela Porta

Translations by David Berman


uJ

TNt VINI PlUM? COKTINUI

plotter convicted oflying toCongnss: 2 years probation

AND OF COURSE, MR.MAYOR, NOTHING WILLENHANCE YOUR IMAGEMORE THAN COZYING UPTO THE REAL ESTATEBOARD OF NEW YORK

Every mayoral administra-Lion seems to generate itsown catchphrase. During theLindsay era it was Fiai City.During the Koch years it wasHow'rn I dom? Now, barely aquarter of the way throughits (dart, we say?) first term,comes che current adminis-trations tag line: Poor DasieDinkins. And, as thoughcrime and fhcal and laborcrises weren't troubleenough, the mayor hasselected as a PR adviserHoward Rubenstein, animage consultant so sensitiveto public appearances that hehas allowed his own employ-ment (and, perforce, themayor's profound weakness)to be trumpeted on the coverof the New York Post (also aclient of Rubenstein's). Giv-en this flack's knack for con-venient confluences of incr-est, it's worth noting thatwhile Rubenscein is advisingDinkins, he has also officiallyregistered with the city clerkas a lobbyist for nearly 30businesses and organizations.Among them arc many thathave contracts with the cityor that have had or couldhave dealings with it overzoning or taxes. As che citydoes business in che monthsahead, one may wish co referto the following listandhow those on it are faringbefore city agencies andboards - as a barometer ofRubensteins influence: theAssociated Builders andOwners of Greater NewYork, Carey Transportation,Gannett Transit, GuckDevelopment Affiliates,News America Publishing,the Real Estate Board ofNew York, the linilormedSanitationmen's Association,the Zeckendorf Companyand Capital Citi&ABC.

28SPYFEBRUARY 1991

'''(: /::

s

_

VHER[ HAVE A THE DOUGHNUTS GONE?A SPY White Paper Investigation Into

a Major Contemporary Law-Enforcement issue

cture a police officer. There's the badge,the peaked cap, the nightstick, the handcuffs, thesmile, the stare that accompanies the alfectiess"Show's over. " And the distended stomach,swollen from consuming doughnuts on the job.

So convinced were we of the truth of thisdoughnut-loving-cop image that we decided tohold a competition to discover the precinct thatis, unofficially, the Doughnut-Eatin'est in NewYork. SPY operatives staked out six doughnutshops, each near a precinct house, during theprime doughnut-eating hours of 6:45 am. to8:45 a.m. Their mission: count the number ofdoughnuts purchased, and crown a champion.The results? Surprising, to say che least.

During ten hours of surveillance, operativeswitnessed the purchase of only one doughnut by apolice officer. They saw fire fighters buyingdoughnuts, and cops buying bagels, and they sawa squad car slowly drive past a doughnut shopwhile the officers inside looked longingly at thecontents of the window. But that was it. Shocked,SPY contacted experts for their reaction.

"Cops are eating healthier foods," explainedDetective Joseph McConville, spokesperson forNew York Police Commissioner Lee Brown."Myself, in lieu of a doughnut I have a branmuffin." AI O'Leary, spokesperson for the TransitPolice, agreed with McConville, saying, "I cantell you, from the point of physical well-being

''HnP! I'M A PRISONER IN AN

OFAY ViORD!''

"I really thought hewas stealing a linefrom Spike Lee in an'I'm going to get you,sucker' strategy" - for-mer colonel HarrySummers, on the AirForce chief of staff'spredictions of massive U.S. bombings of Iraq,referring to the Keenen Ivory Wayans film i'mGonna Git You Sucka

"As Spike Jones says, you have to do the rightthing" New York State Assembly SpeakerMel Miller, trying to comment on the Kore-an-deli boycott in Brooklyn)

-4,d'á/;4f,A

although it will be belied by a small segment ofus who may be overweight - (we at) the TransitPolice are very health-conscious."

Other, more surprised experts greeted the meremention of doughnuts with something akin tothe nostalgic reverie that a madeleine set off inProust. Gerald Arenberg, executive director of theNational Association of Chiefs of Police inMiami, was astonished by our findings. "I wouldsay on a [doughnut-eating) scale of I to 10,[cops) probably rank somewhere around a 10½,"he said. "The problem I find with jellies or theother kind chat ooze out is that they drip overyour uniform. Unfortunately, now I'm a diabetic,so I've stopped [doughnutting], but [my favoritehad been a] chocolate doughnut. You start outton the force] with a 32 waist; [nowj I got at leasta 44. It's just doughnuts are a comfortable treat,and you're able to gulp them down. 1f there's sud-denly a call on your radio, you can toss themaside." And Frank Rizzo, the bellicose formermayor and police chief of Philadelphia, practicallygushed as he discussed the days when cops atedoughnuts and got respect. "Let me tell you thatwhen I was a cop - even though I had my break-fast at homethere was nothing I liked morethan a big, thick doughnut and a cup of cofFee! You

got out there, walked around, rolled in the streetswith criminals [and burned) the calories off,"

- David Bourgeois andJos/, Gillette

EDITING AN OFAY MAGAZINE Is

THE BEST REVENGE

Number oftimes Spike Lee's name is mentionedin the October Spin, which he guest-edited : 43

Number of times his sister, Joie, is mentioned : I 6

Number oftimes his father, Bill, is mentioned : 3Number oftimes his brother Cinque is

mentioned : iNumber of times Mo' Better Blues

is mentioned : I 2

Number of times Do the Right Thingis mentioned : 9

Number of times She's Gotta Have It ismentioned : 9

Number of times School Daze is mentioned : 9Number of timesJungle Fever is mentioned : I

Number ofvisual representations ofSpike Lee : 8- Luanne Parker

u __

Ii's Owiï B[FORD FALLS

(BUT I LIKE Ii)Our Holiday Gftide to Rock n' Roll Hepnw

-I-he holidays. . .and our thoughts

turn to holiday music. Sort of. There's al-ready a downtown New York band calledZuzus Petals; we thought we'd save therest of Amends musically inclined youththe trouble ofcannibalizing lt's a Wonder-

fai Le/e (or band names. And, for goodmeasure, we named their first singles.

Band: Hard-Skulled CharactersSingle: Miserable Failures Like You"B Side: You're Not Paid (To Be aCana ry )

Band: Discontented Lazy RabbleSingle: "No More We Live Like Pigs"

Band: Money-Grubbing BuzzardsSingle: 1 Don't Want Any Plastics"B Side: " Papa Dollar and Mama Dollar"

Band: Warped, Frustrated Young MenSingle: "You Can't Hide in a Little TownJL 'Ilils"B Side: "A Pox Upon Me (For a ClumsyLout,)"

Band: Silly, Stupid, Careless PeopleSingle: '\Xfhy Ì'1ust You Torture theChildren"

Band: Scurvy Little SpidersSingle: Your Money's inJoe's House"

Band: Sentimental HogwashSingle: "I)on't I Itirt My Sore Ear Again"B Side: "I'm the Answer to Your Prayer"

Band: Flaming Rum PunchSingle: (I Feel) Like a Bootlegger's Wife"

Band: 'l'he Old Granville HouseSingle: "He's Making Violent Love toMe, Mother"

Band: Two Pixies

Single: "(She's Just About To) Close Upthe Library"B Side: "This Is a Pickle"

Band: Men ofHigh IdealsSingle: "I'm All Right, I'm All Right"B Side: 'Busted che jukebox"

Band: Bedford Two-Four-Seven

Single: "Hee Haw and Merry Christmas"B Side: "Happy New Yearin jail"

Michael Hainey

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IOR K ING

GIRL: 'NHY

SAWYER HAS Before ABCsM E T FI E R Prinie'I,,,,e Lizie hic

M A T C H A Tthe airwaves lastscason, insiders at

PR/ME TIME the network tout-L i y E ed the Diane Saw-

--- yerSam Donald-son pairing as

Miss Priss vs. the Terminator. But 'hilc-

Donaldson is a bullyboy on the air. thereal ogres at PrimeTime Live have turnedout to be Sawyer herself and the slwwsexecutive prodticer, Rick Kaplan. Thesetwo are on a collision course.

Sawyers career has been marked by an

unflagging ability to fail upward. Beinga press aide in the Nixon White I louseor nuzzling 1.arry Tisch's ear in publicmight be enough to destroy any otherjournalis(s credibility, but the foriìerAmericas Junior Miss survived both(and a fondling by the late Bill Paley)without so much as a blemish. Indeed,she has a reputation for skill and mcdli-

gence, though no one points to manyscoops or memorable interviews on lierrésumé. The real secrets of her rise havebeen these: In failure, find a scapegoat -and better yet, ensure success by flirtingrelentlessly with important men.

Back in 1983. when she was on TheCBS zlowing Neuí and the show was aratings disaster, Sawyer ran to manage-ment and unfairly blamed lier executiveproducers - first George Merlis, thenBob Ferrante. Their careers wobbledwhile Sawyer's reputation only grew. Herventual ticket off the doomed morning

show was Don Hewitt, executive produc-er of the news divisions casti cow, 60i%li,iiites. Hewitt would írecuent theMorniig Neui set and, in the words ofone former staffer, stare at Sawyer like adog stares at a piece of meat. " In kind,Sawyer once responded to his presence byturning what was supposed to be a blithe

o SPY FEBRUARY 1991

R'NIIL D:aic Ri1A

human-interest piece on the congression-al campaign ol Nancy KuIp, the womanwho played Miss Hathaway on The Bez erlyHi//billies, into an inappropriate hatchetjob. Sawyer ravaged her nonplussedguestthus demonstrating to Hewittthat she could hold her own with MikeWallace. Sawyer soon tired of Hewitt,however, and began a series of long lunch-es with ABC News president RooneArledge, which culminated in her jump-ing networks for her very own star vehicle.

Now, as the occasionally interestingPrimeTime Lite continues to hover near thebottom of the ratingsit typically ranks66th out of 101 showsexecutive pro-ducer Kaplan looms as Sawyers next fallguy. But he is no patsy. Aside from hishulking physical presence, the 40-ish pro-duccr shares Sawyers penchant for blam-Ing others when broadcasts fail to measureup. For instance, during the October1989 San Francisco earthquake, Kaplandeployed his PT Lite shock troops to setup a segment for a show airingtwo days afier (lie iliesday-nightquake. Needless to say, broadcast- "I Wi

ing live is complicated enough;broadcasting live from a national were

disaster area is almost impossible.When a slight technical problem the e:

arose during the broadcast amistake that viewers clidnt even exe

notice Kaplan, watching fromNew York, lost his cool. Within pro

minutes the phone of ProciticerDavid Doss was ringing in San

SCE

Francisco. When Doss (who hadscrapped a vacation with his ailing wife to(IO the broadcast) picked up the phone,everyone in the vicinity overheardKaplan's tirade. I wish you were (lead!'the exc i t able execu t i ve prod tice rscreamed. In TV news this sort of behav-ior often passes for leadership.

Kaplans compassion extends to man-

made disasters as well. In 1989 hisChristmas holiday was titit on hold sothat PT Liz'e could broadcast from thePanamanian war zone. When staffers dis-appeared in country, a decent fellowmight have worked the phones trying tolocate his MIAs. Not Kaplan - he leftthe offices and requisitioned the Capital(;ities jet so as to salvage the remainder ofhis vacation.

Prior to PT Live, Kaplan was theexecutive producer of Nightline, where hemeasured the success of his broadcasts bywhat lie called the Fingerman Poll,named for his neighbor in New Jersey,one Mrs. Fingerman. Kaplan would callle womanhis pipeline to Mr. and

Mrs. Americaand ask her for athumbs-up or -down on the morning fol-lowing a broadcast. To Kaplan this wasno joke, and his NighiIi,ie staffdrew littlecomfort from knowing their professionalfate lay in such hands.

Ac Pl' Lizie, Kaplans populistinstincts do not sit well withSawyer, a former Wellesley girl

ish you who would rather interviewWilliam Styron than Maria

dead!" Maples. Now that Sam Donald-son co-anchors the show from

xcitable Washi ngton , happier with. realpolitik than the backstage

cutive sort, Sawyer has no one left totangle with but Kaplan. She has

ducer overruled his attempts to cut her

' dtiresome ten-minute segments toamea more watchable length, and hehas already thwarted one lull-

bore COUI) attempt. But the eventual out-come is clear. You can move producers,the thinking goes, but you can only tar-nish starsespecially those costing thenetwork more than $2 million a year,and extra-especially those who haveRoone Arledge wrapped around their lit-tie finger. - Lau.eez, Hobbs

i

THE BABY WATCH

NEVER STOPSThe L.aiest frodi Connie and Mali?)'

'tI h,i.chane/ Mall))' Povich and

i) are taking a Ve?) aggressive approach to

baying a baby' - Connie Chung, in "I

Want to Have a Baby," che People coverstory oí August 20, 1990

Week I : We call CBS. "Has Chung con-ceived?" we inquire. Chung's assistantj!ayfully pushes telephone buttons andsays, "Do you like my song? We have nocomment. Thank you for calling."

Week 2: "I have no idea [what measures

they're takingi," a spokesperson says."Let's PUt it this way: I'm sure they'retrying alt the latest methods." We dis-cover that the Poviches have gone onvacation.

Week 3: "Are Connie and Maury doingit?" we ask delicately. "We're not corn-mencing on that now" is the reply.

Week 4: "Are you going to call me everyweek until the end of the millennium?"

Week 5: No news. "Is Chung spendingall of her cime, you know, around theapartment?" we wonder, "No comment,"says the spokesperson. "She's in NewYork working. This is her own personalbusiness,"

Week 6: The New York Post reports thatno conception has yet occurred. "Is shemaking efforts to look more, you know,attractive?" we ask CBS. "She's alwaysbeautiful co me," says a spokesperson.

- Aimée Bell

.

ATTENTION STUDIO

!'-p L I C I S T SIIllna1.

I Lt UtU SPY continues to tally che. ---fiflood of referendum bal-

lots that readers havesent in to determineWalter MonheitiM's pro-fessional fare. We willpublish the results next

month. Mr. Monheit's suspension fromactive movie-blurbing continues for theJuration of the tally period. )

,, V

_l II I.IuJ:la

Is1jL_4J4JF

Uviu

CHRONICLES

PARI XXII Th' Man W/m%7ft/(/ !3e Kiì,:

A K I U T O M I K E : SLII! btir

''PHONE HONE''

- .. - -- -- Ovitz dra's hisagentin career

to a close. his (efl-percenters bloodlustsOít:,n(d by a rnidd1e-aed desire ro run amovie studio officially and thercby serve amore authoritative, (Iignificd function inche creative food chain. No Prfl0t111Cement has yet been handed down by Cre-a(ivc Artists Agency. but rhn. theKremlin was less than forthcoming whenLeonid Brezhnev left otfice in 1982.

What we do know (about Ovitz. notBrezhnev) is that he has relinquishedmany oi his day-to-day responsibiliies attue agency. lic now rarely attends CAAs

daily staff meetings. Queries regardinghis lt clients - Robert Redford. l)ustinHoffman. even best pal Barry Levinson -are more often than not referred to Ros-alie Swedlin, one of Ovitzs feared andrespected deputies. The evidence pointsemphatically to the conclusion that Ovitzis readying himself for a new job, and theconventional wisdom has him our olCAA within a year.

Rut Im getting ahead of rnyselíFirst of all, its not entirely clear

lìere Mike is headed. The long-heldassumption, of course, is that Ovitz willstep into MCA/Universal chairman Lewthe Legend' Wassermans loafers now

that the studio has completed its dealwith Matsushita, since lie was advisingand even representing the Japanese intheir negotiations with MCA. lt is fur-tuer presumed that CAAs copresident ofmotion pictures Jack Rapke will followhis boss to MCA and take over SidSheinbergs job as studio head. Rapkealready enjoys something of a pupil-mentor relationship with Ovitz, alonz


f:A ¡C;:

che lines of the one Jeff Sparky" Katzen-berg has with Michael Eisner at Disney.In fact. its fìir tu speculate that the rea-son Rapke didnt leave CAA years ago tostart his own talent agen(v or accept anyof the attractive studio jobs offered him.is that Ovitz him a Katzen-bergesque role in a grander. more power-amassing scheme.

The speculation about Rapkc- is further

encouraged by the last-disintegratinggoodwill between Sheinberg and W-as-serman, servant and master for almost tV()decades. B ut the Wasserman-Shei nbergrift doesnr make the Ovitz-Rapke asccn-Sinn a done deal. The wild card here isDavid Geffen. In 1989. MCA boughtGelTen Records in an equity-for-stockswap that left Gellen as a major share-holder in MCA. Gellen has told intimatesthat there is no way in die world' hewould work for Ovitz. much less approvehim as chairman of his companY.

There is another twist in the Matsushi-ta buvout al IlCA : many arewondering just how serious GeffWasserman reall' was about

en

acquiring a new partner. As a intimatessavvy husi nessrnan , Wassermanknew that even Ptrtial Japanese is no wcownership of L. 'i: , Bruce theShark and Steven Spielbergs the woiAmblin Entertainment wouldprompt another wave of protec- he wouldtionist outcry. But with RobertStrauss. Jody Powell, Albert Gore for

jr. and Bill Bradley as his Wash-

ington mouthpieces, that mayprove not to he a problem. 1-le was alsoaware of Geffens coiitempt for Ovitz - acontempt that has been dulled by a puta-tive reconciliation. Wouldnt you turn theother cheek in exchange for $720 million(which is what Geffcns MCA stock is nowworth)? What Wassermafl reall wantedwas to inflate the price of MCA stock

which sank as low LS $34 a share earlierthis year. As recently as November, Mat-stishita was o11tring $7() a share: 'X'asscr-man vas looking for $ I 00. and vetMCA's stock was hovering in the mid-50s. l investors then believed tha \X'as-

serman really vatiu.-d to sell votildnt thesItare price have been higher? In othervords, did the whole thing start off as a

stock-price-goosing ruse?A year ago Ovitz was said co have con-

siderc-(I the top job at Sony/Colunìbia. theone rha 'vent to Peter Gober and JonPeters. Ovitz turned the pest downI)eCLLISe he real ized lie had iore '''er at(:AA. BOt there was an even heftier hit ofrationale Íor Ovitzs decision: he knewthLt the real oer would still rest in thehands of die nian who initiated the(1Çtl - \X'alter YetnikofE the erratic headOl(:Bs/cOlumbia Records.

\Vell...YetnikofF is gone. collapsedunder the weight o1 his own personality(4tiid an unfortunate. sexuality-related

comment about Getï&-n). and the

told 1tiasi -Yetn ikoflian Jon Peters has

been all but exiled from

"there umbia his three remainingreslx)nsibilltics beitig ( I ) produc-

1 ining a New Kids ou the Blockmovie; (2) investigating clic jxssi-

rId" bihity of building a (:.ltinibia Pic-tures theme j,ark in an L. A. sub-

work orb: and (3) keeping his name outofthe papers.

'ittAll of which explains why I

VOLLldflt b surpris(-(l it Ovitz andRapke ended up at Columbia aller

ail1. (At least there Ovitz would be abk toget stock options. \'larsushiita. on the oth-er hiaiid. is privately lwld.) Fhien. 1Lt least

ex-Marine Ron Agrtic Mcyer MeyerVOLild finally be able to realize his dreamof becoming the ÜIirchicf of CAA.

See you Mondas night at Morcons.- Celia B'wdj

jodic IU5IeF / floth011y llollkin5 / 5c011 glenn

tne silence of Ihe lambsfrom the terrifying best seller

jouIkii ftiiiiiic iicurc/ 1oth iD1r/QftoDy hfliD5/5OI} Ion / "the of Ih Ih"/lc levÌc/ll5Ìc y hwr hO[ /rOUCliOD iIICF Fi5}i

öiic}oí o hoIorhy l IllpOIo /ethlel y ci c./ XCOHYC 1OD1 CIlIIfl/ hd5Cd 01100 Ih iiovgl by tho rFi5/crccoIy y 1e fdlly/

R jiìi IiIDflueI1 by kIh oli CWdí XOOffl[fl bolffldn I cicl byjoIhdo Fuc. °°"

H: .I: ::!.n i.kiì'i . .:iiJ fi::d Ii MCA I i] JlId .1

February 14, 1991

$1*1L4 :;Ip

Frank Patti

he longtime friendship attempt an impish shot across the Times's che new culture czar, assuring the theaterbetween architecture bow. But first he fired off an outraged critic that no such humiliation wouldcritic turned culture missive to publisher Punch Sulzberger have arisen ifhe, Gelb, were still runningeditor Paul Goldberger pointing out that Witchel "whispered to things. Goldberger, meanwhile, turnedand Frank "die Butch- Mr. Rich [and giggled] throughout the to assistant managing editor Al Siega!,er of Broadway" Rich performance. At one point. . .the woman who discovered that the ad had not been

lies in shambles, the casualty oían unfor- sitting in front of them had to turn properly vetted by the advertising-tunate chain of events involving Gold- around to hush them. ' Merrick then acceptability department and managedberger's job promotion, Rich's main placed a retaliatory advertisement to run to get it killed.squeeze, Arthur Gelb's ego and David in Monday's arts pages. The ad featured a Despite Goldberger's eleventh-hourMerrick's latest musical. giant heart framing two anti-Merrick efforts on Rich's behalf, the Merrick ad

It all began when Rich padded into quotations, one from each article, and made it into an early edition of Mondaysthe Richard Rodgers Theater to review above the heart read the declaration AT Times, prompting Rich to declare himselfOh, Kay!, Merrick's revival of the old LAST, PEOPLE ARE HOLDING HANDS IN THE an enemy of Goldbergefs. In the news-Gershwin musical. The show received THEATRE AGAIN! room a few days later, Witchel screamedgenerally good notices from other New Paul Goldbergcr, who just a few at Goldberger that he wasn't her

York critics, but Rich wrote up his usual weeks earlier had been appointed the editorthat honor belonged to Johnsmart pan, employing characteristic hati- paper's culture czarin charge of Arts Montorio, the new Weekend editor.teur and gleeful putdowns C. . .likely to & Leisure, Weekend and the daily arts Goldberger was thus required to writeleave more than a few theatergoers coverage, the first Times culture editor Witchel a note explaining that sinceshrugging their shoulders and asking, since Gelb to have such broad power Montorio reports to him, Witchel mustDidn't I doze through that a couple of spotted Merrick's ad Sunday evening. do so as well.

summers ago in a barn?"). One page Distressed by the ad's personal bent, he The deeper unpleasantness ofthe deba-away from Richs damning review, Alex nevertheless understood that executive de is that Goldberger and Rich liad beenWitchel's On Stage, and Off" column editor Max Frankel had signed more than in-the-trenches office-carried an item about a discontented offon it. Still, Goldherger decid- Gelb sought mates. Goldberger had been a vit-member of Oh. Kay."s cast who liad criti- ed to ca! I R ich at i O: I 5 that tuai second father to Rich's chil-cal words for Merrick. night and left word of the ad on to maximize dren since Rich's divorce, and Rich

It was just the sort of frustrating one- his answering machine. himself had spent many holidaystvo punch the theater community was Rich called back a few mm- friction with Goldberger and his flimily.coming to expect and fear from Rich and utes later and is said to have Rich told the friends whoWitchel. Broadway had hoped that when showered Goldberger with a between Rich lined up on his side at the Timesthe Times hired a new theater reporter, he broad range of expletives and that henceforth he would haveor she would provide a respite from accusations of betrayal. Rich and the nothing to do with Goldberger,Rich's acidity, or at least a slightly less immediately telephoned the his boss, and little to do with therigorous regard for the art form it's only semiretired Gelb, now the do- new cu turc

Times - that lie would simplyshow business, after all. Instead they got nothing chairman of the New attend plays, turn in his copy andWitchel, late ofEIle, 7 Days and Mirabel-

czarYork Times Company Founda- otherwise avoid West 43rd Street.

la, a woman whose high-handedness and don, to complain about his plight. In His ire has been fortified by regular callstetchiness are already legend in the Richs whinings, the aging, still-power- from his old boss Gelb, who as si'y wentthird-floor newsroom, a woman who mad Gelb saw an opportunity to rein- to press had wedged himselfinto a dinnerisaieee!the human being by whose state himself as a player in the Times's Rich and managing editor Josephside Frank Rich sleeps most nights. senior-level politics. Jealous of the 40- Lelyveld were having as a first step

For 78-year-old David Merrick, the year-old Goldberger's ascent to his vacat- toward ending the war between theOh, Kay! double whammy from the the- ed position of power, Gelb sought to paper's theater critic and his old friendater-crit Ceauescus was occasion to maximize the friction between Rich and turned new boss. -J.]. Hunsecker

34 $PY FEBRUARY 1991

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r:i SovÖÌgH DwarfTHE INSIDE STORY OF JORDANS ALL-AMERICAN QUEEN

MRS. KING HUSSEIN DURINO THE COUNTDOWN TO WAR

A ND EXILE"My LIFE NOW REALLY CONTAiNS. . . ALL THE ELE-

1..

Science Monitor in 1985, after seven years of her element-filled,

ments that I had ever set out as being desirable forthe way E wanted to lead my life' Lisa Halaby told the Christian

desirably led life as Queen Noor al-Hussein ofJordan. Herbasic story is familiar. In 1978, after what has been por-trayed as a whirlwind six-week courtship, she married itsy-

; bitsy King Hussein, the longest-reigning monarch in the

.-Arab world. She was 26; he was 42, marrying for thefourth time and already the father of eight. She wasAmerican. Washington- and Fifth Avenueraised,

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Princeton-educated and (everywhere but in official por-traits) taller by a head; he was . . . well, he was the longest-reigning monarch in the Arab world. Together they

were Grace and Rainier for the eighties. It wasthat's: righta Fairy-tale Romance.

At this juncture it is customary to wail, LiSAWHAT- -

up wi th Hou' did a perfectly nice young A merican woman come to findWENT WRONG? And, ifyour lungs are good, maybe to follow

sahdtaIIer than her

he-selfan Ilnpopu/at iihappy queen in a shaky desert monarch)' . . . andu'ith a highly affected new regal manner. to boot?

Regular official insistence to the contrary, Lisa Halaby has not1hewor/d1ieretheqveen had an entirely easy

usband left. the tomertime of it as the VJ4wi.a.et Ç'.aii.o.ii4cL

lisa Halaby, right. herqueen of Jordan. WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY AIM(E BiLL

tiny husband


And now, as her husband, ever the appeaser, has taken thewrong side in the Persian Gulf prewar maneuvering, hisYankee baby-boomer wife finds herselfin an awkward position:J ordanians resent her, in part because she is a high-handedAmerican, and Americans are coming to dislike her becauseshe is a haughty anti-American mouthpiece.

Despite a grasp of policy no one calls acute, during thecurrent crisis Noor seems to be fulfilling her not-well-disguisedambitions to he an important player and actually wieldingsome significant, Nancy Reaganesque influence over the tinyking. She has been the conduit, via faxed groveling notesfrom New York and Washington, for various big-time U.S.journalists seeking an audience with Iraq's Saddam Hussein.Ted Koppel had a three-hour dinner with Noor and KingHussein en route to Baghdad, and according to another well-known reporter who recently spent time with the royal couplein Amman, Noor did nearly all the talking. Ac one lunch withWesterners, she passed the king several notes during the meal,one ofwhich said, "Stop smoking so much' At the sametime, her public presence injordan has been toned down inresponse to the crisis. For a month after the invasion, shewas invisiblereportedly sent out ofthe country more thanonce by the nervous king. Whatever happens in the Gulf,though, Noor is probably now on a precarious perch winor lose, the U.S. and its Arab allies are unlikely to prevent theoverthrow of the quisling King Hussein. "She may havewanted to be Nancy Reagan,' says a veteran Middle Eastreporter, "but it hasnr worked out that way

ThERE HAVE BEEN DIFFICULTIES FROM THE BEGINNING.

She purports to be an Arab through and through (herpaternal grandfather was from Syria; she converted to Islam;she is, after all, queen offordan), but Noor is basically the all-American yuppie, che girl next dooronly next door happensto be a palace in Amman. She has no natural constituency


and is generally excludedto her dismayfrom formalmeetings of the king and his advisers, the queen has pointedout, 'l have my own ofFice [andi most ofwhat I've done hasbeen rather revolutionary, as far as someone in myThat occasionally includes officially disavowing her past. "Inever felt American when I married' she told People in 1980."lt's not that I'm rejecting America, but. . .1 felt from the startI belonged here'

By most accounts there is real affection between the couple.Still, Noor is wife No. 4and, some rumors have suggested,merely part ofa continuing series. The king has a well.knownaffection for young, attractive women and has made no greatsecret of his passions. Before he had divorced his second wife,he was wooing his third. Not long ago he was smitten bythe TV journalist Kathleen Sullivan, who coyly referred tothe episode on The Tonight Show, although without namingHussein. Most recently, the king is said to have fallen for a 23-

year.old Palestinian-American living in Jordan; the youngwoman is said to have been shipped offto the U.S. (Intriguingly,when si"i contacted thejordan Information Bureau's pressoffice in Washington, a female press officer with the samename as this supposed object of the king's affections becamehostile.) Queen Noor has acknowledged, albeit in an entirelydifferent context, her husband's great appreciation of "thecapabilities of women:' They have had two sons and twodaughters together, although as half-Americans the boys areunlikely heirs to the throne. The king is said to have lobbiedduring the last couple ofyears for a fifth child, an idea Noorhas apparently resisted. And when the notion of possibleseparation came up, according to one account, Husseinthreatened her with a more or less permanent estrangementfrom their children. (Hussein divorced his first wife whentheir daughter was an infant, and mother and child were keptapart until the girl was seven.)

She's King Hussein's fourth wife, and she may not be his last,

but she is, aoruiiig wher ItrIìer, American-born businessman \ajecb "Jeeb" 1-lalab);the utmosta cjueen in every respect' (And asJeeb cold sP'',

I'm a very critical father.') Well, certainly in sorne respects:she quickly became master of the banality that seems to afflictrayais whenever a public utterance is required. For instance,in 1980, on her first return trip: "[Washington] looks verygreen, especially coming from a more parched environmentAnd despite protests to the contrary, Noor and her frantichandlers have an overweeningly monarchical regard for thepress, seeking to exercise strict control over her coverage. Onejournalist who had gone through an extensive screeningprocess was surprised to find the queen carefully demandingthat a reference to her "streaked hair" be deleted from the story.Accuracy on the couple's respective heights has been another keyconcern. One American editor trying not long ago to preparean uncritical profile of the queen says he was interminablyharassed from Amman and Washington by "a stream of faxes:''The tone of ali the communications:' he says, "became reallyshrill and threatening. And it was basically going to be a puffpiece anyway' The photographer for the story, based in London,was persuaded byjordanian government agents to give overhis film. For a Vanity Fair profile written in November, Noorclaimed she had been promised the right to approve her quotesand raised a ruckus when the magazine declined to let her.'The press [in Jordani is free:' Noor told one

____________American visitor only three years after becom.

ing queen, "except the government steps inwhen there are distortions of truth:'

Queen Noor has said chat one of her keygoals is to "be able to integrate into any environ-ment Judging from scores of interviews con-ducted for this article with people who havewatched her in action both before and since herascension, inside che palace and out, she has integrated butstill doesn't quite fit in.

and in New York. She was sent to boardingschool (Concord Academy, near Boston),where she was evidently a lonerprivate,guarded, the one who (at one party)would not go skinny-dipping wheneveryone else did.

Her first glancing fame was as a memberof Princeton's first class of undergraduatewomen, starting school in the fail of

' most accounts, a friendly, perky, outdoorsy,tionally bright girl. People say she gave thehe was meant for bigger things. "We all felt: had some sort ofaspirations of grandeurS. Her senior-year boyfriend, Pat Patterson,'directed' One friend was impressed by

But her direction was, typically for her age

' unspecificshe simply wanted to be aceand her risk-caking experiments withded to fall well within very safe bounds (in

1d' t 1 1' WOK 1 year off to study photography and workas a waitress in Aspen, a family vacation spot). She livedcommune-style for a time in a house off campus with sevenfriends, one ofwhom, Huntley Stone, describes her as "verycontrolled"congenial but remote, and difficult to get toknow. She was either weirdly well rounded or confused: thisearly-seventies communard also took up cheerleading, thenabandoned it after four football games. She graduated in 1974without honors. Her B.A. in architecture made it possible forher to be misrepresented, in the years that followed, as anarchitect. (In a partly unpublished 1981 interview withjournalists Carl Glassman and April Koral, the queen referredto architecture as "my profession:')

After graduation she tried unsuccessfully to get into radiojournalism, at National Public Radio and several other networks.Instead, after a couple of years at various jobs overseas, shetook a position in the Middle East with an organizationcalled Arabair Services. She said she was "instinctively" drawnto the region. Also, her father, in conjunction with theJ ordanian government, owned the company.

Halaby arrived injordan with Dad in late 1976. JeebHalaby was involved in importing Western technology to theMiddle East and was working in particular on design for theJ ordanian state airline, then called ALlA. "I never could figureout exactly what her job was:' a friend of Lisa's said to The

Washington Post about her position with thecompany in Amman. "But she was alwaysrunning off to meetings with importantpeople' Shortly thereafter, she became head ofthe design department for ALlA. Unable tofind a suitable apartment in Amman, she wasforced to stay at che Intercontinental Hotelpart ola hotel group run by a family friend,Paul Sheeline.

"Something in me just felt it belonged [there)' she saidyears later, referring not co the Intercontinental but to Jordanin general. "One ofthe reasons I remained is,Jordan is avery dynamic community in transition - [being there is) farmore exciting than living and working in an environmentwhere people feel they've found all the answers.'

NOOR HAS TAKEN TO

THE ISRAEL-BASHI NG

PARTS OF THE JOB

WITH SPECIAL RELISH

"SHE WAS A LITTLE SPACEY. IT TOOK THE JOB OF QUEEN TO

get her to commit"an old Princeton boyfriend

Lisa Halaby was born in 1951 in Washington and raised there


By 1978, howeverJordan's king and Lisa Halaby, B.A.,would find some of the answers.

Lisas father, whom she adores, and who had requested herpresence abroad, was he link between King Hussein and thefuture Queen Noor.Jeeb and Hussein were old friends andbusiness associates as well as fellow aviation nuts, and Lisafirst met the king soon after her arrival. AsJeebinnocently describes it now, "1 was there [doingbusiness at the airport) with the president of theairline, and [Hussein) saw this very handsomeworking architect and came over, and we in-troduced them, and . . . " The rest is history? "Yes!"

In February 1977, Hussein's third wife, Alia, apopular queen of Palestinian descent (Jordan'spopulation is 60 percent Palestinian), was killedin a helicopter crash. It's uncertain preciselywhere Lisa and the king first hit it off and when.But they began their "whirlwind six-week courtship' Or theirneat merger, depending on how you look at it.

It was, in any event, a good time for Hussein to marry anAmerican, and if there was any doubt about the "fairy tale'the king offered clarification: "It's not a sudden developmentor an emotional one,' he said in 1978 to The New York Times."But more than that, it's . . . logical' Long disparaged as a cravenprinciple-free survivor, the George Bush of Middle Easternmonarchs, Hussein had just seen his $750,000 annual retainelfrom the CiA cut off by Jimmy Carter. And there was alwaysthe lure ofthe Western savvy his new association might providePlus, there was his lifelong weakness for pretty young women.

For their wedding there were no parades in Amman, nofestivity apart from a few posters hung in shop windows.The locals' lack of enthusiasm seems to have echoed thebridegroom's. Describing the honeymoon to a reporter, Husseirrhapsodized, "The reason I chose Scotland was because I'dbeen there before. . . .This time the weather let us down [but)we went fishing once, and I caught a salmon'

Lisa struggled through her first press conference asQueen Noor. Hussein had publicly estimated his bride'scommand of Arabic at 85 percent, though in fact, when areporter asked her to say just one word, she looked baffled.Facing reporters, she said, in English, "My language ismakes me unable to communicate. I cannot answer yourquestion right now:' But she belonged here! Yes, it would befir more exciting than living someplace where people feelthey've found all the ______________________________

royal wedding, Queen Noor reflected on her new life. "It isawesome' she exclaimed to Macleanr. "Just the concept, thetitlethe queen!"

And then theformer Lisa Halaby set about becoming royal.The change was clear after the birth ofher first child. She

insisted on being called Your Majestya habit that promptedone well-known visitor to squirm: "She'dignore you otherwise. . . . It's a very difficultthing for a democratic person. . . . It's

embarrassing" Her late predecessor, thepopular Queen Alia, had preferred the morecolloquial Sitti, a nickname meaning roughly"madam" (or, in the masculine, "sir") thatgovernment officials still use with the king.

The queen, already beautiful, decided amore regal physical profile was needed. It wasachieved through cosmetic surgery. The nose

job completed, the press photographers were given a coupleof weeks off. The rhinoplasty was seen, at least by one palaceinsider, as pivotal. "She not only changed features, her wholecharacter changed with them,' she says. Before long, accordingto one source close to the queen, Noor was applying pressureto variousJordanian institutions that had been named forAlia and her children to rename themselves, preferably for herand her children (in 1988 the airline ALlA became RoyalJ ordanian; a garden named for Alia's son was renamed forNoor's oldest son). These demands were made in a brand-newvoice. The queen cultivated what she apparently imagined tobe a regal accentmade up ofequal parts pseudo-British-,pseudo-Arabic-accented English and authentic pretension.

Until Noor, the royal palace had been allowed to remainsmallthey were "squeezed in like sardines' she told onevisitorand so she has expanded and improved it to reflect acertain level ofsophistication. And when Queen Elizabethvisited in 1984, there were further renovations. After awall was knocked down to expand the guest quarters, thelawn at Aqaba (where she and the king keep a seaside palace)was uprooted and replanted, and new uniforms were orderedfor everyone.

Noor is a hands-on manager.Once, when a servant had left a pole

"IT IS AWESOME,"

NOOR HAS GUSHED

ABOUT HERSELF. "JUST

THE CONCEPT, THE

TITLE- THE QUEEN!"

answers.

B MANY ACCOUNTS,the new Queen Noorwas, for a year or two,as unaffected as she hadbeen at home. When sheburst into tears aftergiving an early publicspeech in Arabic, theJ ordanian public wascharmed. (She is nowfluent.)

A few months after the

4OSPYFERRUARYI99I-

'A TOAST TO lEE FOURTH REICH LIMO TO

you, iebchen. . . ': Noor with, left to

right. Kurt Waldheim in Vienna; the

Shriver-Schwarzeneggers and Wolfgang

Puck at Spago in L.A.; the Duchess of

York at Wimbledon; and downtrodden

Kuwaitis at a relugee camp near Amman

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sticking up in a palace garden, she berated the footman in frontoía visitor. "I told you to rernovc these' she screamed, grabbingthe pole and waving it. "They're in the way.' Before long, servantswere calling her Lisa no doubt affectionately behind her back.

The palace staff of more than loo needed alterations. Thenew queen hired more British and Americans, though fouractual )ordanians currently work in her office as well. For anofficial photographic portrait of the royal family, the queeninsisted on hiring a British photographer, explaining chatJordanians werenc yet advanced enough to get it right.

Q ueen Noor also learned the importance of appearingregal to those who didn't have the benefit of regular personalcontact. She developed che habit of keeping people waiting,sometimes for days, for scheduled appointments. (This isalways useful when establishing an aura.) And she knewenough not to ruin the effect by apologizing. On one occasiona journalist who had flown in from the States specifically tosee her waited four days for her to return from Aqaba.

Back in the States, the extendedjordanian royal family shareii) che miracle. Alexa, the queen's sister, took naturally to regalways. One college acquaintance who saw her after che weddingnoticed a marked new sense ofsuperioriry. "Alexa had sprungfrom the head of her sister a full-blown princess' anotherfriend recalls. The sister basks happily in Noor's reflectedglow. "This is major climbing' says one Washingcon journalist.Alexa, now 36, had already been chasing a half-Kennedy(Bobby Shriver) and soon moved on to William Hurt andGeorge Lucas. A business associate who worked with Atexaon a project concerning Noor says, "She tends to get involvedas her sister's surrogate. While she may have had to call QueenNoor 'Your Majescy that doesn't mean Alexa isn't similarlyimperious with nontitled Americans like rnyselC

Lisa's mother, Doriswhom one friend describes as a "sweetUpper East Side matron'bragged about the 'glamour" of thejob and encouraged her friends to refer to her new son-in-law asKingy. Mrs. Halaby was also impressed with the political natureolLisa's new post andseerned to delight in the opportunity it

a strain of extra-energetic Israel-attacking in the context, ofcourse, of supporting Palestinian rights and contributing tothe international dialogue.

Noor herself has taken to the Israeli-bashing parts of the jobwith special relish. She has read staff-written speeches aboutthe "Israeli war machine" and criticized the U.S. for seeming to"reward [Israel] for its belligerence' Her husband counts amonghis vast automobile collection a gold Mercedes-Benz used byHitler (thejordan Information Bureau maintains the car belongedco "the German Army"), and the couple count among their friendsthe charming Kurt Waldheim (as well as Waldheim's Americanpal Arnold Schwarzenegger). And Noor has, on at least oneoccasion, appalled guests by sneeringly mimicking the accentsofherJewish neighbors on the other side oftheJordan River.

QUEEN NooR HAS FREQUENTLY REFERRED TO HERSELF AS A

"humble civil servant;' a "working queen" with a "modest" wayoflife and "no time to worry about [our) own safety" In additionto the palace in Amman, the palace in Aqaba and a new lavishprivate residence outside Amman bought this year, the royalcouple also own a country estate in the hills above Viennathis is thought to be the future residence-in-exile, and theyhave poured some $5 million into restoring the place, in theprocess equipping it with an elaborate security system thatincludes guard dogs, a video camera at every entrance, and awraparound electric double fence. The couple have alsomaintained homes in England (one ofwhich they lent last winterto Charles and Di when they were renovating), Cannes, theCanary Islands and Maryland; a year ago Noor was apparentlyhouse-hunting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, and in Novemberreportedly in Palm Beach, Florida. In 1982, Noor rented Trees,the Long Island summer house then owned by Carl Bernsteinand Nora Ephron. With two Lear jets at her personal disposal,it's no wonder Noor reportedly spends so little time (no morethan a month a yeai by one report) in Amman.

Because che royal couple travel so much, extravagant displaysof affection toward each other and their children are crucial.

Once, when Noor and Hussein were vacationing in London, theyloaded a Royaijordanian jet to Amman with a precious cargoof Big Macs and french friessurprise! On a visit to L.A.with Hussein, Noors eye was caught by a piece ofjewelry inthe window of a hotel shop. The fact that it was the wee hoursofthe morning and the shop was closed made her sad...untilshe remembered that she was a queen. The royal couplepromptly awakened the stores manager to show them the jewels.

Although the queen is, as we've learned, an Arab now,she exhibits a healthy interest in the infidels' popular culture.Trivial Pursuit, Dallas and French fashion magazines arepastimes. Most ofall, she and the king like to relax in thepalace cinema with some tacos or cheeseburgers at hand.(Queen Noor has said they simply watch leftover videos fromAmman movie theaters, but she is being unnecessarilymodest; in fact, the royal library contains some 4,000 films,and additional shipments of up to 50 videos per week arrivefrom the States as needed.) The queen even introduced HisMajesty to country-and-western music and rock n' roll, whichthe five-foot-three-inch Hussein sometimes cranks up toenergize himselfbefore important political events.

After breakfast the queen might have her three-times-weeklyaerobics lesson with her personal trainer while the king takesan imaginary spin on his exercise bicycleor possibly a realspin around the palace with his wife or the kids on one of his30 motorcycles. (He also owns 175 cars, counting Hitler's goldMercedes, more than 40 boats and several royal jets; he recentlyacquired a $20,000 14-foot Surfrider Sport Speedboat. Eachofthe couple's older children owns a miniature motorized car;and then there are the presumably special-occasion-only,nanny-chauffeured mini-Porsches.)

A queen must look right, and Noor's taste in clothes runstoward Yves Saint Laurent and Pierre Cardin. At the palace, achambermaid is employed to attend exclusively to Her Majesty'swardrobe, which is distributed through several rooms andincludes is this the fin de siècle indicator ofimminent exile?hundreds of pairs of shoes. Every item has been photographed,and the photographs are organized into albums co makepacking easier Which frees the queen to spend more timecontributing tojordanian society.

IN 1989 THE QUEEN WAS ONE OF THE GRIEVANCES

precipitating riots that broke out injordan as the economybecame more and more unbearable. As a result of thediscontent, the well-loved king instituted an electedparliament for the first time in 22 years, which in turnresulted in the election of a powerful minority of Islamicconservatives. A rising faction injordan since 1984, theywere becoming yet another cause for concern for the ever-appeasing kingthey particularly objected to his new wife.

In some ways Queen Noor ran afoul ofher subjects fromvery beginning. She spent too much money; she was thoughtto be condescending and patronizing. "People in the Jordanianstreet, she has said, "want co touch us, they want to feel us, theyfeel we are their family' Her handlers' desperate efforts to keepher quiet and low-key were a source ofamusement for onlookers.In the late 1980s, one Amman resident says, she went through

a two-year period oflooking like "your aunt Bessie"longsleeves, dowdy outfits, generally Iess-sparkli ng-looki ng.


The queen says she was "completely surprised" by the eruptionofher subjects' unloving feelings, but she told people that in time,J ordanians would learn to respect her. It may be a long wait. Adozen years into Noor's reign, Abdullab Hasafet, an editor at thepro.HusseinJordan Times, finds the queen genuine" but still a bit...unprepared. "It's not easy for Queen Noor to, um, comprehendeveryching' 1-lasafet says. "She does not have the gut feeling,you know, you have when you are born here and you know theconflict and you've lived with it' Her recent public appearances,such as the photoop visits co Kuwaici refugee camps, are socontrolled that it's impossible for the press's enthusiasmShe'sbeautiful! She cares! not to outstrip reality. In October she,not Hussein, visited New York (for the UN conference onchildren) and then Washington, where she gave a speech atthe liberal Brookings Institution. It seemed a good idea tosend the queen and not the king. Amman's streets were fillingwith anti-Western, proSaddam Hussein protestors - if warcomes to the Gulf, a U.S. official told The New York Timesrecently, "the American embassy in Amman will probablyburn"and some locals were detecting a political statementin Jordanian television's first-ever airing of The Ugly American.So she headed for Washington.

FOLLOWING HER BROOKINGS SPEECH, DURING A QUESTION-

and.answer session, someone asked aboutJordans Israelpolicy. After the queen's evasive response, her host interceded."If we're going to dwell on the past:' the Brookings womansaid while the queen stood by approvingly, "we're never goingto move into the future' The regal effect worked this time: thequestioner later apologized to Noor.

The main, $100-per-ticket reception for her visit, held at theJ ordanian embassy to raise funds for Kuwaiti refugees inJordan, was completely ignored by the U.S. government. Luckily,Jeeb Halaby was therealong with other political hard hitterslike Catherine Shouse, founder of Wolf Trap - to offersupport and imbue his daughter's visit with the import itdeserved: a number ofwell-known magazines hoped to coverthe event with photos in their social pages, but those sorts ofphotos, Dad implied, were just not serious enough. Happilyfor the Halabys, The Washington Post did cover Noor's officialvisit. Unhappily, they did so in the Style section.

Is it too much to ask that a queen be taken seriously? Shereturns again and again to Washington, the one place ¡n herhomeland where titular importance ought to count for a lot. Inthe corner of a social gathering thrown by friends back home,the former Lisa Halaby Queen Noor ofJordan - sits all alone.The guests, perhaps reluctant to be seen as toadying, perhapssimply not interested, are just not going over to talk to her.Please, the hostess begs one after another, pleasejust go up to herand chatforfive min#tes, each ofyou. You can talk about anything.But the queen (whom one participant will later describe as"fundamentally boring") remains isolated, apparently uncertainofhow to proceed - unable to engage the attention ofher formerfellow Americans, unwilling to wade in among them and riskdiluting the queenly aura. Wherever she is these days, Ammanor Washington, Aqaba or London, she seems a little awkward,a little out ofplace, unloved. "For us' said a Western journalistcovering the Middle East, "shes the Blond Queen. Injordan she'sjust not playing a big role. She has only to be very careful')

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Parents stretch che truth.Surely you've sensed

this. But, possessing onlya fifth-grade education orso, you probably haven'tbeen able to catch themat it. Here, then, are theexplosive truths they don'twant you to know. Studyup good.

Don'tplay with sticks/pencils -you'll put your eye out.

Not likely. According cothe National Eye TraumaSystem, most eye injuriesare caused by "projectiles'not "sharp objects:' Indeed,a 1989 study published inthe ArnericanJouirnal o/theDiseases o/ Children foundthat balls were the greatestcause of childhood eyeinjuries.

Clean your plate people arestarving in India.

Yes, people are starvingin India and elsewhere inthe developing world. Butrelief organizations likeOxfam say that the U.S.contributes to the worldhunger problem by usingup more than its fair shareof the world's resources.So maybe your parentsshouldn't have bought,cooked and given you somany Brussels sprouts in thefirst place! Also, makingyou eat things you don'twant could lead you downthe path toward juvenileobesity. As Karen Miller-

Bart Simpson's

the Excuse to the

t THING YOU DID EXCUSE

1. Sent president picture of butt.2. Tore off label from every food

can in house.3. Answered phone as raccoon.4. Ordered musical treasuries for

strangers.5. Disrupted Air Force fly-by.6. Ripped last page from every

book in house.7. Tried to turn humidifier into

robot.

You Did"

A. "Grandma started it,"B. "I blame the economy:'C. 'A man on the radio said

to do it"D. "I was at a movie alone."E. "I've already punished myself."F. "Let's say no more about itG. "Gypsies did most of it.'

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LAU REN BACALL, Yes.

a famous 1940s movie star: Hello?spy JR.: Hello, Ms. Bacall?

Yes?

Um, I was wondering ifyour refrigeratorwas running.'X'ho is this?Richard Hurtz. I'm just wondering if

your refrigerator is running.[Bacall, a famous 1940s movie star,hangs up.)

SUSAN SEIDELMAN, director of amovie starring Madonna: Hello?SPY JR.: Hi, is Susan Seidelman there?

Speaking.Hi, uh, Ms. Seidelman, this is MichaelHunt. I was wondering, is your

refrigerator running?Is my refrigerator running?

Uh, I don't knoWant me to checUh, yeah, that would be good.

Okay, hold it.Thanks.

[Thirty-seven-second pause)Hello?Yes?

Yes, it is.

It is. Do you think you'd better gocatch it?!?

[Sighs) That was very funny.Okay.

Okay, very funny. Very clever.Have you heard about the idiot who

says, "What?"

[Sighs) Goodnight.Goodnight.

[Seidelman hangs up.)

The Usual Suspects

A conflict arose during the filming of amajor movie sequel's climactic scene. Aconcerned crew member complained tothe director that the scene was beingshot in such a way that audiences mightsee one character start an action and asecond character complete it. Thesesorts of errors are called continuityproblems, and on most movie sets theywould be cause for embarrassment. Butnot on the set of Teenage Mtaant NinfaTurtles II. Said the nonchalant director,

The only thing that tips people off towhich TURTLE is which is the different-colored headband. And in this light,who can tell?" Ads on TV will soon be

urging you to see this carefully crafted,not-at-all-exploitative film.

An actual mom writes: Recently I wasmaking the rounds of Manhattan's pri-vate preschools, trying to find one suit-able for my child. While standing on the

rooftop playground of the Upper EastSide's posh ALL Soui.s SCHOOL, I was

shocked to see one three-year-old child,

Jimmy (not his real name), sobbing un-controllably. The reason? He was encir-cled by his classmates, who were chant-

ing, Jimmy doesn't have a coun-try house,J immy doesn't have a coun-try house!

Pp4vate Lives nf Public Figures

Bert and Ernie enjoy a break from their hectic taping schedule.

Kovach of the AmericanDietetic Associationsays, "Forcing kids to eatmore than they wantdefeats the natural hungermechanism:'

Cross your eyes and they'llget stuck that way.

We asked Dr. GustavoColon, a Metairie,Louisiana, plastic surgeon,whether eye crossingcould cause permanentinjury. "It is completelyimpossible' Dr. Colonsays, "unless you crossedyour eyes and somebodyput pins in your eyesto hold them in that

J list say no.Just? Easier said than

done. According to theAmerican MedicalAssociation, addiction isa disease, not a choice.And recent studies showthat a tendency to abusedrugs and alcohol can beinherited. Tell your parentsyou're worried about this,and ask them how manyalcoholics and/or drugaddicts you're relatedto. Insist on your rightto know. Ask aboutschizophrenics too. )

SPY JR. VOCABULARY BOILDERS

Brussels sprouts: leafyvegetables with a bittertaste, traditionally dislikedby kids in the days beforefrozen pizzas and take-outChinese food.schizophrenic (skitz-oh-fren-ick): medical word forweird.

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ustard and Dig-italis Dept.:

Every reader of Mad knows whatbosomy, eccentric publisher BillGaines looks like: stringy long hair,salt-and-pepper beard, stainedshirts, heavy glasses, huge gut.Readers know this because Gainesis regularly drawn by the maga-zinc's inside-joke-loving artists.So be on the lookout this year fora brand-new, skinnier Gaines. He'shad a pacemaker installed, and ondoctor's orders, the well-fed 68-year-old has actually been dietingand avoiding wine,

Gaines's new health regimenmeans he will have to pass up im-portant office activities like lastyear's "Dog-OuI1' Associate editorJoe Raiola challenged his boss andthe rest of the magazine's staff totaste-test three regular hot dogsand three soy-meal dogs. ToRaiola's dismayhe was trying toprove that health food tastesnormaleveryone could tell the'difference between the real dogsand the fakes. Gaines, a connois-seur ofsorts, was even able to iden-

cuy the different brands ("This one'sHebrew National, this one's OscarMayer, and that one's a Sabrett's")!

Hence the pacemaker.Otherwise, the millionaire pub-

usher's busy, busy days continueto be filled with showing off theauthentic human skull in his officebookcase. (He claims it's his fa-ther's, an oddly Oedipal jest for a

man his age.) Gaines also likes topoint out a pair of cherished oldphotos he keeps in a hinged frame,At first glance, visitors often mis-take the man and woman in thepictures for Gaines's parents. Infact, they are none other than FattyArbuckle and Virginia Rappe, afamous Hollywood couple from the1920s. Ask your parents what thejoke is.

situation in thesian Gulfand the editors' fear thatthe climate in this country is suchthat their readers - or theirreaders' parentswould neverstand for anything remotely satin-ca! concerning patriotism. Thecover that didn't run is picturedabove. - Roger Kaputnik

TricentenniaiBliies Dept.: Ifyou've SPY JR. VOCABULARY BUILDERS

already seen thejanuary Mad, you eccentric: nice word for weird.

know that the cover for the maga-zine's 300th issue features AlfredE. Neuman as the 'Sexiest SchmuckAlive." What you don't know is thatthe original 300th-issue cover wasscrapped at the last minute be-

Oedipal (ed-uh-pull): a reference to Oedi-

pus (ed-uh-puss). a character in Greekmythology who accidentally killed hisfather and spent the night cuddled upin his mother's bed. Ring any bells? It's

okay, you're supposedly ,zormal.

Fuchsite, Fucivorous...

Our Monthly Excerpts from The Oxford English Dictionary

Butt-head: see BUTT. ...

Turd (tid). Not now in politeuse. .

1. A lump or piece ofexcrement; also, excrement,

Hitler ...

ordure. . . . 1553 BALE VOCaCyofl...

Yet will a toorde be but a scinkinge

toorde, both in smele and syght. ...

1761 Brit. Mag. . . . Thatch your bouse

with td, and you'll have moreteachers than reachers. )

Separated at Birth?

and Julia Roberts?

eeek ct

Goofus and Gallant

1:

'

.:, :-

Goofus Roseanne Barrdisplays vulgar mannersin front of millions.

Goofus Ed Koch runs thecity into the ground.

: --' \\.Ç, N/::'

4:

: . : \ <'>/

Goofus Pete Rose makesa little kid pay $50 fora signed baseball.

\

Gallant Roseanne Barr isthe star of a top-rated,money-making situationcomedy.

Gallant Ed Koch gives thenew mayor helpful advice.

Gallant Pete Rose sells hisservices to the federalgovernment for only 11cents an hour.)

The SPY JR. Annotation

Your parents' bedside table draweris their most private, top-secretplace. Many of the objects theremay be unfamiliar to you. Theymay even frighten you. Others mayseem familiar. But to adults, theyhave unusual uses.

Sex manual. Having sex is a lot...more complicated than you prob-ably think, and for a lot of rea-Sons (some ofthem not even dirty).What would be reallygreat to knowis which parent bought this.

Wash'n Dri's. lt's a lot grosser than_you think, too.

Room freshener. Much, much....Jgrosser.

Scarf. Left over from anperiment.

Nose-hair scissorS. When people/become adults, long black hairsgrow out of their nosesnot justreally old people, either. It's true.

Contraceptivefoam. This is not an/extremely effective kind of birthcontrolyou may be proof. Funfact: the applicator works on thesame principle as a GhostbusterGooper Ghost.

Va .um. Mom would cry even moreif she didn't have these.

Embarrassing photo of your par-Ients, probably from before youwere born. Ick.

i-: :-;'±'JTA -H;I

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Photó of Dad's parents in their counsel or clergyman imme-jt

on e coffee table.

tìIer home. 1-low come photos diately/ / ,I

7 ,MMom's parents on their sailboat / / / Bo,k about screwed-up ch ren..

7 are out in the living room? Mchbkfromfancyrestaurant./ Uoh./ I X{om aAd Dad got taken here once. /

Therapist's business card. This is, A lop7g time ago. Ad for military academy. Dot 1

why you 1avc a baby-sitter every / /uh-oh.'Y'ndav night. I$rd-to-understand book. Dad/

Ic;as read the first three and a half Vaseline Intensive Care Lotion

A marijuana-cigarette butt/ pages about four times. Sometimes This is probably just for Mom's dry

("roach"). Inform OUf guidance when people come over, he leaves skin. Probably. )

vu II%IIt,s ' -

. .I u-.s ?

U__kLJY

c

you believe in Santa Claus?This is a complex theological

question that each child must decidefor him- or herself. Until now, that is. With theaid of computers, spy JR. hasconducted a rigorous statisticalinvestigation into the questionof Santa's existence. Be fore-warned: you may not like ourconclusions. ...

We begin our investigation byassuming that Santa Claus reallydoes exist. Now, ifyou've learnedanything about human nature,you know it's highly unlikely thata normal man would choose, forno particular reason, to devotehis life to making toys and deliv-ering them to boys and girls theworld over. But this is an objectiveinquiry, and questions of motiva-tion aren't relevant. We want onlyto know whether such a mancould accomplish his mission.

Santa's first obstacle is that no known species ofreindeer can fly. However, scientists estimate thatout of the earth's roughly 2 million species ofliving organisms, 300,000 or so have yet to be

classified. So, even though mostof these undiscovered speciesare insects and germs, we can'trule out the slight possibilitythat a species of flying reindeerdoes, in fact, exist. And thatno one besides Santa has ever

ANYBODY HOME? No toy-manufactur-

Ing facility or elf living quarters arevisible in this aerial surveillancephoto taken over the North Pole.

seen one.A bigger obstacle for Santa

is that there are 2 billionchildren under the age of 18 inthe world. The good news isthat he needs to deliver presentsonly to Christian children, ofwhom there are approximately378 million (according to figures

provided by the PopulationReference Bureau). Let's assumethat 15 percent of theseChristian children have been

«:_i

ON, DANCER, ON-AIEEEEE"! Artist's rendition of Santa's

hypersonic gift-delivery vehicle

bad and are thuslike Muslim, Hindu, Jewishand Buddhist childrenineligible for giftgetting. Still, at an average rate of 3.5 childrenper household, Santa has a backbreaking91.8 million homes to visit on any givenChristmas Eve.

Fortunately, Santa has 31 hours of ChristmasEve darkness to visit all these homes if hetravels from east to west, thanks to the rotationof the earth. Unfortunately, this still worksout to 822.6 visits per second. So, for eachChristian household with good children, Santahas just over a thousandth of a second to land,hop out of his sleigh, jump down the chimney,fill the stockings, distribute the rest of thepresents under the tree, eat whatever snacks

Chave been left out, get back up the chimney,climb back into his sleigh, take off and fly tothe next house.

lHow fast is Santa moving? Assuming all

: 91.8 million stops are spread evenly over theearth's landmass, Santa must travel 0.79 milesper householda total trip of 72,522,000miles. (This is a conservative estimate. It doesn't

include trips across oceans, feeding stops forthe reindeer, etc.) Given the 31-hour timeperiod, Santa's sleigh must maintain an averagespeed of 650 miles per second, or more than3,000 times the speed of sound. To give youan idea how fast that is, the fastest man-madevehicle ever built, the Ulysses space probe,travels at a relatively poky pace of 27.4 milesper second, and conventional, land-boundreindeer travel at a top speed of 15 miles perhour. But let's just assume that Santa's flyingreindeer are somehow able to reach hypersonic

speedsthanks, say, to the magical spirit ofChristmas giving.

Let's take a closer look at Santa's vehicle.First of all, assuming a cheapo 2 pounds ofpresents per child (that's like one crummy Legoset), the sleigh must still be able to carry a loadof 321,300 tonsplus Santa, an overweightman. On land, a reindeer can't pull more than300 pounds of freight, and even assuming thatflying reindeer could pull ten times that amount,Santa's massive sleigh has to be drawn by214,200 beasts. They increase the weight of the

overall Santa payload to 353,430 tons (notincluding the weight of the sleigh itself). Thisis more than four times the weight of the Queen

Elizabeth ocean liner. Imagine: Santa skimmingover rooftops in a gargantuanhypersonic aircraft with even I

less maneuverability than aBig Wheel.

of a second.As for Santa, he will be subjected to

centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater thangravity. A 250-pound Santa will be pinned to

the back of his sleigh by4,375,015 pounds of force(after we deduct his weight).This force will kill Santa

instantly, crushing hisbones, pulverizing his flesh,turning him into pink goo.

PHOTOGRAPHtC

EVIDENCE!

This sequence of snap.

shots, by a spy ji.

Here's where things get fun. reader in western Ore-

Three hundred fifty-three thousand gon, purports to showtons of reindeer and presents are goingto create an enormous amount of airresistanceespecially at 650 miles persecond. This air resistance will heat

actual parents setting In other words, if Santa tries to deliverout presents and eating presents on Christmas Eve to everycookies left for 'Santa' aualifìed boy and 2irl on the face of

the reindeer in the same way that spaceshipsare heated up when they reenter the earth'satmosphere. According to our calculations,the lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3-quintillion joules of energy per second each.This means they will burst into spectacular,multicolored flames almost instantaneously,exposing the reindeer behind them. As Santacontinues on his mission - leaving deafeningsonic booms in his wakecharred reindeerwill constantly be sloughed off. All 214,200reindeer will be dead within 4.26 thousandths

FLJI%I.LJ I Y

the earth, he will be liquefied.If he even exists, he's already dead.So where do the presents come from? Weirdly

kindhearted intruders? Stupid robbers? Magic?

Your parents, maybe?We worù insult your intelligence with the

answer. )

spy JR. VOCABULARY BUILDERS

statistical: this is an almost always meaningless word that is

frequently used when people want co make something that

is vague and haphazard sound authoritative and scientific.

objective: see statistical.

How does Santa fit down a chimney if hes so fat?

How does Santa deliver presents to houses and apartments that dont have

chimneys?

Assuming reindeer have aerodynamic lift, what is che minimum speed a

reindeer would have to attain in order to become airborne?

The SPY JR.

j- I..

110WTO .1:.,'/

Handbook

Your Own Copy of Playboy

Every Month!

INSTEAD OF DEPENDING ON UNCERTAIN

suppliers - older brothers, creepyclerks at the Circle K, the top of

.

Dad's closetyou can, no matter how: young you are, become a subscriber

to Playboy. This way, you'll get notonly the magazine but also neat junkmail from other sophisticated men'smagazines and from sophisticatedmen's mail-order catalogs.

Step 1: Establish your own mailingaddress. Most cities have commercial

post-office-box agencies, whichoperate out of stores and typicallycharge between $25 and $35 permonth. Check the Yellow Pages andcall for more information. 1f the clerk

says you're awfully young to be rentinga box, suggest that your situation iscomplicated but has something to dowith your parents' divorce and yourmom's being "in .tiì institution:'

.;

Step 2: Subscribe. Although theofficial rate is $26 per year,subscriptions are actually available

: for as little as $2 I just send arequest, with your name, post-office-box number and a money order(probably available for a fee of $1at the place where you're rentingthe post office box) to PlayboySubscriptions, P.O. Box 2003, Harlan,Iowa 51593. Happy reading!

Next Month : Staying home from school

the Physicians' Desk Reference way! )

Our Un-Aflult Crossworfl

Puizle

1. Prizzi Honor costar;Sis's shame. (6)

3. Aftermath of 7Across. (4,4)

4. Nice word forretarded. (4)

5. MetropolitanMuseum o . (1,3)

6. Dumb mistakeespecially in swimtrunks. (5)

8. Mountain rangedividing Asia and

Europe. (5)

lo. Gross stuff. (3)

2. Grandpa's specialty.(7,3)

5. . . . round the corneris made. (5)

6. Amusing color. (5)

7. Wedgie, e.g. (7)

9. TV's porcelain-busdriver? (5)

i 1 . üllow River

author. (5)

ri LhIvI0Jy K1v

NMo4:.IanI'1

.Lv I ° I °' .Li .

SPYJR. STAFF: Fdited by Brace t1and %Vriiien b)' Kurt Andersen,Josb GiI/eue,

J oanne (,ruber Bruce Hazdy.Jarnie MaIanou'ki. George Meyers. Susan Morrison.oel Potisebman. Designed by Chri.rtiaa, Kjypers. !.?a'iicaiional co,:sultani: ¡be!?ei'erend I!art Powell, D.D., Ph.Ed. )

V

L-

AUth011y larassi BLIss1tJ!.LY FREE OF THE high seriousness that infects so much

I.-Ihaute couture, the Italian-born, Berkeley-educateddesigner Anthony Tarassi draws his inspiration fromI-1 IU_F I Jean de Brunhoff's Babar books and the works of

54 spy FEBRUARY 1991

y

i )/IIIj.L IRI-

L 1

()

J.R.R. Tolkiensources more commonly associated with cherished blankies and outcast teenagers than with Women's

Wear Daily and Linda Evangelista. '! have a lot of Babar books, and I still read them before I go to bed," explains the

28-year-old Tarassi. "So it just occurred to me, God, I should use Babar!'" 7 Here, Tarassi has photographedsome inhabitants ofCelesteville in his spring and summcr line, available at Louis, Boston and Bergdorf's.

For mori information. .s peg. 71.

I It's Ïuesflay,3 ) -

Gary enraptures phIis Scta1ty

This Musi

4ifleratefliU

eaSammy lives in a

Polish waorks,thFíank!

JOIN A SANO OF HICO AmEHICAN

WAKNING AOAINSI E1FAHE, HAND

FOrmer C

ovìei

Mighty capitalists are we!

56 SPY FEBRUJARY 1991

ony

-

tOD gives oui rnerican iiags

E111P1re

9 ack in the good old days of the Cold War, aguy like Jack Wheeler wouldn't have beencaught dead leading a bunch of Americantourists on a sight-seeing trip around thecolonies ofthe Evil EmpIre But here he was

Jack Wheeleç the all-American boy, the Indiana Jones of theright, the man Izvestia once described as an "ideologica] gang-t;' a true believer who had launched Stinger missiles with the

mujaheddin in Afghanistan, dodged bullets with the contras inNicaragua and downed brews with 011ie North at a dive nearthe White Houseon the Hungariari-Romanian border witha Mercedes busload of ill-tempered American tourists.

J ack was, as ever, dressed in safari gearbattered khakijacket, khaki shorts, khaki-colored Reeboks (his khaki hat withthe porcupine quill had been filched some days earlier in EastBerlin). On the middle finger ofhis right hand was a mollusk-size gold ring, embossed with a Chinese character, that he hadbought in Saigon when it was still called Saigon. ("ft's the sym-bol for happiness and virility' he says.) Jack stood at thefront ofthe bus and surveyed the squadron ofAmerican right-wingers with a pair of mischievous, narrow-set blue eyes. Hischarges were filling out their exit cards.

Profits were split between Wheeler and the Council.J ack Wheeler, I soon learned, was a professional adventurer

whdd been credited by The Washingtrn Post with dreaming upthe Reagan Doctrine after spending a few years hooking upwith anti-Soviet insurgents in Africa, Asia and Central Amer-¡ca. One night in Afghanistan in 1985, he'd baci an epiphany:rebels were rising up and fighting the Soviet juggernaut all overtheglobe.Jack hightailed it back co Washington, gave a breath-less talk to the White House speech writers - and presto,Reagan was extolling the moral equivalents of the FoundingFathers who were fighting Commie bastards everywhere. Jackbecame the brash, blue-eyed boy of the conservative move-ment, a rock 'n' roll Republican in the Lee Atwater tradition.

J ack wanted to know if! was interested in the trip. There wassilence on my end of the phone. "Itll be bitchin'," he promised.I had to admit that I was curious to see a group of conservativeAmericans square dance on the grave of their mortal enemy.

"Sign me ap;' I told him,

THE RONALD REAliAN GREEO-IS-OOD VICTORY TOUR

Tanya. The name conjures up a slinky, smoky-voiced Slavic spywho smuggles microfilm across the border in her black satin

RIGOl-WINGEBS AS IOEY OOCK 'N' KOL ¡HH000H EASIEON EUKOPE-GOAIINO, PAHIYIN,

ING OUI ¡11E SlABS AND SIHIPES, DOWING KISSES ¡O RUMANIAN 1100KEOS, ANO MUßE!

'Hey, Jack' someone called out from the back of the bus.What do we write under REASON FOR VISIT?"

J ack paused for a moment. «KCA' he said matter'of-factlyover the bus's speaker system. «KCA'

"What's that?" one ofhis troops asked.Jack grinned, and then grabbed the microphone as though

he were launching into a sweaty encore in a Vegas lounge. KickCommie assl' he cried. "Kick Commie ass!"

Suddenly, backstage behind che disintegrating Iron Curtain,where nervous Americans once kept their heads down andspoke only in whispers, the bus literally rocked.

"KICK COMMIE ASS!""KICK COMMIE ASS!

Several weeks before I joined up with Jack Wheeler's merrybuscapade, my eye had been drawn to one of those tiny adsburied at the bottom of the front page of The New York Times:

CAPITALISM HAS WON! VIP tours to East EuropewI former Reagan oflicials.

I called the 800 number and got Wheeler straightaway. 'Thisis not some American Express tour to see the sights' he told me."This is current history, and we!re going to meet the people mak-

¡ng that history' The tour, sponsored by a conservative Washing-ton think tank called the Council for Inter-American Securitycovered six countries East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland,Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, in that orderand each of thetrip's three legs would include about 15 or 20 travelers of the"conservative disposition' The price was just under $10,000.

bustier But Tanya, our guide to East Berlin, was a breezy,T-shirted 20-year-old from southern California who had livedin Germany for exactly three weeks. Her familiarity with thecity was slight (she knew where all the McDonald's were inWest Berlin), and her knowledge of World War II seemedto be derived mostly from Hogans Heroes reruns.

Tanya was a keen disappointment to our conservatives, whopeppered her with well-researched questions about the rangeof the SS-20 missiles based in East Germany, the number ofSoviet military personnel still stationed in Warsaw Pact coun-tries and whether former East German leader Erich Honeckerhad been an international drug kingpin.

There were 19 people on this leg ofthe trip, 15 ofthem men.There was Gary, an earnest, bespectacled jeweler from Indi-anapolis who wore goLd chains and thought pornography wasthe source of all crime; Bill, a ham-fced businessman, alsofrom Indianapolis, who proudly told me he was the first personto buy a Playboy Club franchise, back in 1960; Bud, a real es-cate developer from Orange County who, everywhere we wentin Eastern Europe, made a point ofasking about land prices.Later we would be joined by right-wing celebrities like PhyllisSchiafly and her daughter; Ry Clin; the former deputy direc-tot of the CiA, who referred to the rest of us as campers;another mother-daughter team, Bobbi and Lisa, from Her-mosa Beach, California; and Lynn Bouchey, the garrulouspresident of the Council for Inter-American Security

Most of the men, Jack told me, were "ìnvestors One thing Iknow they invested in was subscriptions to arcane journalslike intelligence Digest, which they pored over on the bus.

FEBRUARY 199! SPY 57

Sample conversation:"1 read this article on nuclear deterrence in Foreign Affairs'

No, I think it was Foreign Policy Review'

«No, Foreign Affairs"

"Wanna bet?"These fellows were not in lockstep agreement on the wholeae of conservativera i

sues, but they had oundeviating, inflexibipoint of principle:Commies were theroot of all evil. Thiswas essentially theRonald ReaganVictory Tour. Theyhad been told all theirlives that Americanvalues would triumphin the end, and theyhad come to see it TbEndfor themselveThey were bumptious andproud of. . . well, of free-dom and democracy and high-yield corporate bonds.

several of the others piped up, 'A month, Bill, a mon:h'Don't mess with them on Soviet stats.That night at dinner our speaker was the managing director

of an East German printing firm. (He affected the popularEast German style ofwhite socks and black sandalsj He wasa gung ho capitalist with the enthusiasm of the newly con-

verted. He told us how he wanted to privatize hisfirm and sack a bunch of employees. 'They are abit, you know, what you call, ¡azy,' he said, and theyworried about welfitre for unemployed workers.

Welfare! The hands shot up. Diamond Garylaunched into a practiced harangue about how wel-fare undermines the desire to work. Others lec-tured the East German about how welfare de-stroys family values. In Eastern Europe the conser-vatives might not have the Commies to pick onanymore, but there were still the big-spendingliberals back home.

A prostitute solicits the former CIA deputy director.

WILLKOMMEN TO YE O[DE HAMMER-AND-SICKLE SHOPPE

Everyone on the bus cheered up when Tanya delivered us to theWall. The Wall, or what is left ofit, has become a kind of out-door Communist nostalgia mall, Ye Olde Hammerand-SickleShoppe. Dozens ofmen were hawking chunks ofconcrete neatlypackaged in plastic. There was also a bustling market in Sovietmemorabilia like genuine Red Army belt buckles. Our groupwere gluttons for all of it. I watched two of my conservativecompanions sling Red Army belts over their shoulders andcrouch down low, pretending to fire phantom AK-47s.

None of this tame, tourist stuff for Jack Wheelex though.Tousle-haired, pigeon-toed, with a cocky, athletic walk, Jackwas a 46-year-old Tom Sawyer. He had been the youngest EagleScout in America (age 12), swum the Hellespont naked (à laLord Byron), ridden elephants across the Alps, hunted theman-eating tiger of Dalat and sky-dived over the North Pole.He wasn't about to pay hard currency for some,penny-ante,plastic-wrapped, tarted.up keepsake of the Berlin Wall. He'dget his own.Jack moved down to a less popular precinct of thewall and, with his bare hands, pried offa 15-pound wedge andhoisted it onto his shoulder, his Cold War trophy.

From the Wall, we went directly to a State Departmentbriefing. State Department professionals were naturally re-garded by my colleagues as effete, Ivy League, striped-pantsweenies. In East Berlin our contact at State could have been amold for the rest: fair-haired, pasty-faced, a moist handshake.He blushed when he told us that the East German foreignminister had been a nudist.

My macho-foreign-policy leathernecks tried to trip up theman from State. They wanted to know where, for examjle, allthe East German secret police had gone. One fellow got a biglaugh by beginning a question, "According tojane Fonda..."Playboy Bill cleared his throat and said, "Gorbachev is stillpouring $350 million a year into Kabul. . . " Before he finished,

8 SPY FEBRUARY 199

THE TRIUMPH OF THE FREE-MARKET HIPPIES

In Prague, people were tickled to see us. TheCzechs looked us up and down as uwe were char-acters from Dynasty, trying to guess the secret, how

we had done it in America. They ius, they really liked us.The Civic Forum headquarters in Wenceslas Square seemed

more like a chaotic student union than like the offices ofCzechoslovakia's new ruling party. We spoke with two partyleaders, Dr. Tomas Jezek, an adviser to the finance minister,and Martin Palous, a foreign adviser to Vaciav Havel himself.J ezek was a rumpled, shaggy-haired fellow who was an adher.ent of the ultra-laissez-faire Austrianschool ofeconomics. "To be a socialist'said Jezek, "means not to know eco-nomics.' Music to everyone's ears. Butwhenjezek described himselfas a liberal, people in our groupwinced. My comrades never quite got used to the idea thatanyone called a liberal didn't want to soak the rich and stifleincentive.

Martin Palous looked as though he had just wandered infrom Max Yasgur's field at Woodstock circa 1969. He worefaded blue jeans and had long, stringy hair and an untrimmedbeard. Palous was also a disciple of the Austrian school, andone of the first things he told us was, "We were very grateful toyour president Rsnald Reagan when he started to talk aboutthe Soviet Union as an empire ofeviCJack and everyone elsebeamed. Here was a foreignera long-haired foreigner, noless - uttering the magic words.

We heard from a succession of such long-haired economicconservatives over the course of the trip, and I came to thinkofthem as Free-Market Hippies. What united these men andour group was a mutual loathing of Communism and a rever-ence for a kind of libertarian capitalism. But culturally,aesthetically and sartorially they were polar opposites. Afterall, Vaclav Havel had appointed one of his heroes, FrankZappa, to be a special trade representative, and not once dur-ing the trip did I hear any ofmy colleagues talk about the semi-nal influence of Zappa's Uncle Meat album.

On our last night in Prague, Jack wanted to go to a placecalled U Flacos, because that's where his buddy, the right-wing

California congressman Dana Rohrabacher, had told him hehad been in 1968 when someone slipped him a message thatthe Soviets were going to invade. According tojack, Dana hadpassed the information to che State Department. "Of cou rse'said Jack, "nothing happene&'

ANTI-COMMUNISTS ANONYMOUS

"Squares' che ruddy-faced fellow sitting next to me at dinnerwhispered. "Commies love squares' lt was our first night inWarsaw, and my dinnermate was Lynn Bouchey, che presi-dent of the Council for !nter.American Security. Lynn had aresonant, glee-club sort of voice, a boyish face and a deeplyconspiratorial manner. He also had had a few vodkas.

Moments later, Lynn tapped his spoon on his glass and roseto speak. "On behalfofthe Council, I just want to say that werehere to have a look.see, walk-see, touch-see tour of the fall ofCommunism. This is a tour where we won't know what we'redoing from one minute to the next, because history is changingthat fasC Then, lowering his voice and looking cautiouslyabout the room, he said, "There are still a lot of Commiesaround. Don't be fooled. I saw some myself at the airport.

"I admit it, I'm a cultural imperialistan Aristotelian byway of Aquinasand Fm not ashamed to want to imposeit on others. That's what Jack and I are here to do: drive astake through the heart ofCornmuni.c7n!" Jack shifted in his chair,a little uneasy.

On the other hand, Bobbi and Lisa, the duo from HermosaBeach, were riveted. Lisa, the blond, statuesque daughter inspandex pants, seemed star-struck. "Wow,' she said.

"Listen' she asked me in a hushed voice after dinner, do you

girls in black tights were morosely shuffling on the floor whiletheir bell-bottomed boyfriends sat around smoking. Jack be-moaned the fact that Europeans produced such terrible rock'n' roll. Jack is partial to the old-fashioned, hard-core, all-American version. Jack's only real quarrel with the conserva-tive agenda seems to be that there is not enough fun in it. "Doyou know Glenn Frey's 'Better in the USA?,"Jack asked me. "It'sa bitchin'song' And then, in a disco in Warsaw, he sang it for us.

They look to the East.They look to the West.The Third World wonders which way is best.We've got freedom; we've got soul.We've got blue jeans and rock-and-roll.It's better in the USA.

PHYllIS SCHLAFIT'S OWN MARSHALL PLAN

Phyllis Schiafly has great posture. Her carriage is enhanced byher hairdo, a meticulous French roll in the shape of a Midget.man missile. While her daughter Ann has a wry manner,Phyllis doesn't have an ironic bone in her ramrod body. Ann isa professional cook, Phyllis is a professional antifeminist, andthey joined us in Budapest.

Istvan, our Hungarian guide, did his best to please a groupofcapitalist crusaders: "That really ugly building over there isthe Communist Party headquarters.' In the old days EasternEuropean guides were flacks for the socialist way oflife. Istvandid take us to one statue commemorating the Red Army, but"for the view, only' he said. This did not mollify Gary. "Whatthe hell are we doing here?" he demanded. To register hiscontempt, he boycotted Istvan's lecture about the Russian lib-

LOOKED US UP AND DOWN AS IF WE WEHE CHAKACIEOS FROM ßYNAS1 TRYING TO GUESS 0DB SECRET

know where I can find an AA meeting in Warsaw? I don't needto go. I just like to sometimes:'

EVERYTHING'S BETTER IN THE USA

Our first morning in Poland, Eva, our sweet, nervous guide,told us how Poland was always surrounded by enemies andhad been invaded countless times. "You know what Poland'sproblem is?" said Bud, the OrangeCounty entrepreneur, whorelentlessly applied the tenets of American real estate to geo-politics. "Location. Location. Location'

Later, Lisa and Bobbi took Eva aside and had a heart-to-heart: Eva, you're a lovely woman, but that silver eye shadow and

brown lipstick have got to go. They then initiated her into theelaborate cosmetic rites of California, putting Eva through acomplete make-over. gave her cheekbones,' said Lisa proudly.

That night at dinner, the leader ofthe Confederation for In-dependent Poland, Lescek Moczulski, droned on through theentire meal about domestic prices (rising) and industrial out-put (falling). During dessert, Diamond Gary stood up andasked a question. 'Look, can I get offthis micro subject and aska macro question?" he said irritatedly. "Is there anybody in this

country good at making money?"After dinner a few ofus went to a local disco. It was a dark

and joyless place, with elevator music on the sound system, afew anemic flashing lights and a closet.size dance area. A few

erators and instead marched off to urinate on the side ofthe monument.

We met Gaspar Tamas, a founder of Hungary's Alliance ofFree Democrats, who spoke with a crisp English accent andcould have played a boulevardier in a British drawing-roomcomedy. Gaspar was very gloomy. "You know' he said, round.ing offhis remarks, "l've been advised never to say There's nohope' to an American:' Then he calledjack aside and put in thehook more smoothly than any Texas savings-and-loan officer."Jack' he said, 'there is a very important conference in Vienna;if I am to attend, I must have American currency......

Phyllis heard chis and immediately spearheaded a fundrais-ing drive. Gaspar made a valiant attempt to appear sheepishabout accepting money, but Phyllis pressed it on him. "The firstof the American handouts to Eastern Europe' Bud grumbled.

SHOPPERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

Bobbi and Lisathe Girls, as some took to calling themhadbeen suffering acute shopping withdrawal. (Bobbi complainedthat she was running out ofoutfits.) But Budapest proved a veri-table galleria. After a day at the stores, Lisa, a former cheer.leader, broke into an exuberant cheer: "Give me an S' shechanted, jumping into the air. "Give me an H. Give me an O......

At our last supper in Hungary, I found myself seated nextto Mrs. Schlafly. About halfway through the meal, she turned


to mc, wagged a finger at my chest and said, 'You deservebetter.' i was having a little trouble concentrating. becausea gypsy waitress just behind Phyllis was dancing while balanc-ing a bottle of wine on her head. All I had told Phyllis, whohad for a decade quaroerbacked the national STOP-ERA cam-paign, was that I was willing to change a diaper every nowand then. "You deserve a woman who will stay at home, raiseyour children for you she said. "lfshe's nor willing to do that,then you dont want her. Do you understand?"

Bobbi was scooped up by the dancers for a kind of Hungar-ian tarantella, which she performed with great enthusiasm.Later she came over to Phyllis to borrow an emery board,Phyllis found one in her capacious bag, handed it to her andsaid, smiling, "You've lost all sense of propriety, my dcar'

J ack, moved by the high-spiritedness, stood up and tappedhisgiass. "Lt was 1956'Jack said, "and J was 12 years old, I waswatching television, and I saw the tanks rolling into Budapestand students throwing rocksrocks!at the tanks, and Ithought, I'm going to fuck these guys - um, what I thought was,Someday I'm going to do something about thi.0

A CI.OSET LIBERAI FERRETS OUT A ClOSET COMMIE

After crossing the border into Romania, we sat down to an out-door lunch by a muddy river on which a lone water-skier wasslowly gliding. My tablemate was Ray CIme, a former deputydirector oltbe CIA, a bluff, hobbitlike man with a Santa Clausbeard. "I'm affiliated with the four most despised institutionson earth' CIme said by way ofintroduction, "Harvard, Oxford,the State Department and the CIA'

Also joining us was an earnest, mustachioed fellow fromCalifornia named Bob, who eagerly declared that he had beena member ofheJohn Birch Society since 1963. He announcedthat he had been fighting international Communism all his lifehut that this vas his first trip outside North America, He hadthoughtfully brought along with him one gross of Americanflags to dole out to the natives.

That night, at a smoky restaurant in the dismal city ofTimi-soara, we dined with a group ofRomanians who seemed beatendown, depressed. (Romanian restaurants have two sections:smoking and chain-smoking.) "We are a sick people," the womannext to me said. "We've been living like animals:' She bright-ened a bit whenJohn Birch Bob presented her with an Amer'ican flag and a ballpoint pen with the seal ofCalifornia on it.

We set offthe next day for a town called Sibiu, At one point,as we wandered the Transylvanian countryside, the bus pulledto a stop by the side ofthe road. A horse-drawn cart went trun-dung by. Suddenly, John Birch Bob leapt off the bus and gavechase. Seconds later, breathless, he thrust an American flaginto the hand ofthe mystified wagon driver.

Sibiu was the hometown ofthe murderous Nicu Ceauescu,son ofNicolae. My roommate in Sibiu was Ray Cime, I have anamateur's interest in espionage, and I asked Ray about thepostwar British defectors - Kim Philby, Guy Burgess and theircircle. "The British never vetted their people properly' Ray saidblithely. "They relied on the old-boy network and family rda-tionships' Then he raised one eyebrow and looked at me curi-ously. "What you do when you discover a double agent is' hesaid very slowly, enunciating each word carefully, "you wraphim in a cocoon so he can't hurt you' Perhaps I was being para-

('O SPY FEBRUARY 1991

noid, but I informed Ray I had just remembered I'd left some-thing iii the lobby, and excused myself.

Our first morning in Sibiu, we talked with the newly electedNational Salvation Front member representing Sihiu. (Jack,never an early riser, slept through the meeting.) The Front isbasically an organization offormer Communists who deposedCeauescu and now run the country. Wearing an Italian silksweater and tinted sunglasses, the new MP, whose name wasRomeo, could have played a hit man in The Godfather. He hadan equally sinister-looking translator who actually called himBoss. Romeo told us he had worked for the government andthat Nicu Ceauescu was not as bad a fellow as people said,

i looked around in wonderment at my companions. It wasobvious. This fellow was a Communist in slick capitalist cloth'ing. But what were my friends doing? Lobbing him softballquestions about inflation and privatization. For halfrhe tripI'd felt more socialist than the Eastern European ex-Socialists,and now here I was, filled with more anti-Communist bile than

my crusading anti-Communist companions."Isn't it t;' i challenged Romeo, "that the Front is mainly

composed oflormer Communists?" He responded disdainfullywith a single word: "Foolishness' I looked around, ready for myfreedom-loving fellow travelers to rise up in support againstthe oily provocations ofRomeo, But all that happened was thatsomeone raised his hand and said, "When do you expect yourcurrency to he convertible?"

ills CIIMMYN/SMUL! JUS COMMLINISMUL!

Our hotel in Bucharest was the sleaze capital ola shabby city:money changers buttonholed you in the lobby, bellboys snig-gered at you as you lugged your bags upstairs, prostitutespatrolled the halls.

In rhe lobby the morning after we checked in, an attractivebut deeply unwashed woman in a red dress waved to Ray Cime.The former deputy director of the CIA gallantly blew her akiss. A former operative? No, Ray explained that she had wan-clered into his room earlier and raised her dress over her

AFIEB 111E $iOES IN 000APESt USA DROKE

head - the international sign for Wanna date? "She wanted a lit-tie quick sex, but at my age I don't have time (or quick sex"

The first morning, we trooped offto see the U.S. ambassadorto Romania, Alan Green, a hearty, heavyset fellow with a veryred face. An old-line conservative from Portland, Green prelaced almost everything he said with the phrase "I'm just a busi-nessman' He was upbeat about the situation and didn't seemto rhink the Front was so terrible. "You know, being a Corn-munist in this country was the only way to get a job;' he said,

One of our group, a fellow from Sweden, began a questionby saying, "Well, you Americans messed up at Yalta ..... Am-

bassador Green acted as ifhe'd been accused ofchild molesta-tioI.i, "Hey, wait' he said, raising his arms, "I wasn't even near

Yalta.' Conservatives, I discovered, never accept responsibilityfor something they didn't do with their own two hands.

That night a number ofus headed over to University Square,the scene of the continuing demonstrations against the Salva.tion Front government. About 10,000 people were there. From

a fourth-floor balcony lit by strobe lights, a young, beardedspeaker was telling the restless crowd that the election had beenstolen by the former Communists of the Salvation Front, andthe mob agreed.

Earlier in the day,Jack and Lynn hadgot word of a dream-come-true: theywere invited to speak, from the klieg-lit balcony high above the crowds, at ,.the square that night. Driving a f. ..

-

stake through Communism, indeed!.

\(John Birch Bob heard aboutche invitation, figured one more .

-American couldn't hurt and draftedhis own remarks.) Despite the crushat the door leading up to the balcony, -.

Jack, Lynn, John Birch Bob and Iwere ushered in when the studentsheard our American accents. Theroom next to the balcony was thick

.

a

with long-haired young men in bluejeans smoking and talking. Free- .

Market Hippies. "This is a kick, isn't . . '.

ic?:'Jack said. . . :

At about ten-thirty the speaker was (\telling people to calm down. "Don'tgive [President] Iliescu a chance toshoot you' he said, then motionedfor Lynn andJack to come outside. Suddenly, there was Lynn,in his navy-blue blazer and horn-rimmed glasses, in the spot-light. "The century of the Evil Empire is over;' he began en-couragingly. "And the Council for Inter-American Security ¡sgoing to help you' Confused silence.

It wasJack's turn. He nervously bounced on the balls of hisfeet. He was wired. "In the eyes ofhistory," he proclaimed intothe microphone, "Marxism is dead. History is now on the sideof democracy:' Scattered cheers. Then he cold them that the

night we took a long table ¡n a fancy hotel restaurant to casta backward glance. Next to us were two Englishmen at asmall round table, one damp and snouty, the other old andlecheroushe was busy pawing a Bulgarian girl. During thecourse ofche meal, the younger Englishman leaned toward our

. table and engaged Tom, the toy manufactUrer fromICalifornia, ¡ri conversation.

.____J"So, are you businessmen?" He was red-faced, obvi-

ously tanked."Some of ;' Tom said."What are you doing here?" he asked.«Weil, we're sort of fact finding' Tom replied."You mean you're just businessmen, right?" A little

more aggressive. Tom was silent."What you're doing here is raping the bloody coun-

try, aren't you?" he said, putting his red nose in Tom's

I

face.. Tom could see this was heading in an unfortunate"

direction and said he preferred not to continue the con-. . versation. "Well, ifyou don't want to talk to us' said thep Englishman, standing up, "fuck of, then'

Tom, a quiet, burly man who had been a Marine inKorea, grabbed the Englishman and shoved him, send-

\ Ing him spinning for about ten feet.\> We had spent weeks in Eastern Europe, and the

first full-blown anti-American asshole we had encoun-tered was an Englishman. The whole episode put ourtable in a fine humor. People gave toasts and remi-

nisced about the trip.Amid all the gloating, though, I detected a kind of mourn-

ing that last night in Sofia. Suddenly, wich the transformationsof Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, these people didnthave the Commies to kick around anymore. For decades thesemen had been locked in psychological combat with the specterofCommunism. Now their enemy had thrown in the towel. ltwas going to be awfully lonely without those bastards.

"FTC'Jack said, holding his glass aloft in a final toast. Fuck

"Ñck Commie ass!,' Jack the

Romanian mob.

INTO AN EXUSERANI CHEER JO ¡HE JOY OF SHOPPING: "GIYE ME AN GIYE ME AN II GIVE ME AN L"

American people "did not like Ion Iliescuhis gang ofStalinists can go jump in the Black Sea' This got a roar. Thenhe raised his fist. 70S COMMUN1SMUL (Romanian for "Kick

Commie ass"Y"Jack yelled again: "JOS COMMUNiSM UL!"Thecrowd picked up the chant. 70S COMMUN1SMUL!»

Whenjack finished, Lynn came out to embrace him. (JohnBirch Bob was waiting in the wings, but a Free-Market Hippietook the microphone.) Later,Jack and Lynn were very excitedto learn that a CNN camera had been in the square.

LOVING THINE ENEMY AS THYSELF

We were bullish on Bulgaria. All excepcJohn Birch Bob. At theborder station, he extended one of his American flags to theguard. The guard stared at it for a moment and then said sim-ply, "No' lt was Bob's first rejection, and he took it hard.

Sofia, Bulgaria's modern, charm-free capital, was our finalstop. Having driven the stake, having danced on the grave, hay-ing said "We told you so" for almost a solid month, on our last

the Communists!" he bellowed, and he drained his beer. But thespirit seemed to be lacking.

The Commies are gone, but there is a consolation. EasternEurope, I realized that night, had become a kind of Stalinlandtheme park for visiting Americans. No more boorish, brutishYankees; we are the enlightened models of democracç thesteadfast prophets of freedom, the inventors of money-marketfunds. The Russians are the new Ugly Americans.

It felt awfully grand to be an American in Eastern Europe.My colleagues and I never felt apologetic for the Stars andStripes. So why go to France or England, where they barelydeign to speak to us? Why trek to the Third World, where we'restill loathed as big-footed imperialists? Come to Eastern Eu-rope, where Americans can walk tall and not have to apologizefor being businessmen out to make a buckthat's what thesepeople want. Eastern Europe, I discovered, is the last placewhere Americans can really be Americans, We even dress bec-ter than they do.)


For three decades, HARRY BENSON has been taking not-a Itogether-flattering pictures of famous people in bed. Is this a peculiar obsession

of the celebrated, or the work of an incredibly persuasive photographer?

IOr both?

. 'Ii I CAN PHOTOGRAPH SOMEONE IN HIS

bcdroom says Harry Benson, whose workhas appeared n almost every major Amen-

can and European publication and whose

book [larry Bensonc People will he publishedthis spring, "then I feel I have weakened his

resolve. I've gotten into the inner sanctum.

And then, when you look at [the photo-graph), you can imagine all the things that .L!!L![AT[ES

have gone on in that roomall the dreadful things Ben-sons first legendary photograph that featured a bed was his

shot ofthe Beatles having a pillow fight in a hotel room in

Paris in 1964 (above), and he has returned to the theme

again and again. The people on the following pagesh-ave strong feelings about their beds. "Enlightened asyour rivals may be writes Helen Gurley Brown in 1!aving

and I used to share a cot in the living room!

Thaic pover:j 'c The photographs hereshowcase their subjects' more animal-like

attributes: some (Leona Helmsley, Helen

Gurley Brown, General Schwarzkopf) are

Lflt, as if awaitingsome (John Mal-

kovich, Burt Reynolds) are languid andcarnal, happy to luxuriate in their own

musk; and some (Truman Capote, Margaret Whiting)are beached and immobile, separated from theirpods. Beds, indeed, are the dominion oltbe id. Their

cushiony expansiveness and sheer familiarity seem toprompt the pure expression of self; beds are coucheswithout the responsibility. And yet, pictured on their beds,

these celebrities seem a bit uncomfortable, almost as ifII A/I, "do you suppose there's any comparison between they were burdened by the dreadfulness to which Bensonyou in [your) bed with your need to please. . . and other refers. lIbe had wished to, Benson might have taken much

women in their narrow or fat little beds?" "You want toknow about poverty? Fil tell you about poverty!' Ed Koch

screamed to an interviewer in 1989. "My brother, Harold,

(2 SPY FEBRUARY 1991

more flattering photographs in the same setting, for bed

is, after all, the place where so many people are at their very

best: asleep. - Henry A/ford

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HELEN GURLEY DROWN

Brown has declared ¿bat 'i delicately rosy, silky-satin, somehow innocent, always vulnerable erect penis is probably

the most fascinating object in the world."

TRUMAN CAPOTE

Capote once saw a

derelict sleeping

beside a pier and

said, "Ob. you're not

very inviting. You'reGore Vidal's type."

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64 SPY FEBIUARY

CYNDI AUPER

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GENERAL H. NORMAN SCHWARZKOPF

The commander ofthe U.S. forces in

the Persian Gulf

BURT REYNOLDS

Reynolds has

said, "1 know how

to work hard, and

bow to play hard,

but l've never

learned to relax."


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FIRR: SPY

do-French pseudoplayboy JOE QUEENAN checks out the clothes, has

nicure, sends faxes, hounds the help and uses the putting green

rgdorf Goodman's swanky, elaborate new store pour/'hornrne.

£MEET Al

I'LL

WHEN NEW YORK'S haute clothing retailer BergdorfGoodman opened its 'ultimate

store for gentlemen" late last summer, it implored its clientele to think of it not as a

department store but, well, as a "familiar, time-honored club: a masculine, elegant The brochure, left, and "M. Forrestier," right

place where busy executives can feel comforrable' Plush armchairs, stately fireplaces, fine woodwork, solicitous personnel

and even a tiny putting green would all enable the harried plutocrat to take refuge from his cares. And yet time and the mar-

kets do not stand still. So Bergdorf would provide an office suite with complimentary fax machines, telephones, quottons,

a secretary and a computer. Cellular telephones would be available on all floors.

Since membership in a men's clubactually, in any organization that could be called boh masculine and eleganthasalways eluded me, L turned up at Bergdorf Goodman Men and moved in. Fragments of the store's brochuremy helpfulguide - are reprinted below.

L. _ed environment in which . gdorf Goodman Men was

conceived to be a special haven for the man with a busy agenda. lt is a men's

club as much as it is a store and every effort has been made to ensure that men feel

comfortible and at ease, whether in serious search for a new suit or just casually

'L A SELF-EMPLOYED WRITER whosewardrobe runs mostly to sweatshirts and

weIl.used basketball shoes, I feared that if! presentedmyself at my new club without some modificationofmy appearance-and even my identity-thegenerous welcome the store offered me ¡n full-pageads in The New York Times might be revoked.Therefore, i was attired in traditional Euro-investorgarb (dark sport coat, excessively pressed bluejeans, bluejermyn Street shirt with French cuffs,Hermès tie, burgundy loafers and an inexpensive


Swatch that I wore, insufferably, over the cuff of myshirt) when ! reported to the concierge's desk at theunderstatedly elegant 58th Street entrance. My hairwas moussed straight back in the style of all Frenchhommes dafaire.r. Idencifyi ng myself as Jea n-MichelForrestier, I seized an understatedly elegant phoneto let my girl Aimée know where I could bereached. This call was not strictly necessary sinceAimée, a member of the py editorial staff who wasmy girl only for purposes of this experiment, knewperfectly well of my whereabouts. I then asked theconcierge to arrange for a limousine to pick me upat 3:00 p.m. and ferry me to the Gorham Bar &Grill. It was now time to find an oversize armchairon the weHappointed second (loor and beginstudying the Financial Times.

I prowled through the pink sheer, as we call iton the Continent, without interruption, and to allin my vicinity I believe, I appeared to be baskingin this civilized respite from the pressure and paceofniy hectic schedule. No one fussed or fretted asI pulled out my microcassette recorder and madecomments in horrendous French about Britishmutual funds and the decision by WaterfordWedgwood to move part of its manufacturingoperations out of Ireland. I was so undisturbed thatI might have napped, spreading the paper over myface, but I knew that the traditional time for suchthings at a men's club was after lunch.

rcomputer and a (ax

,ephone lifl a reCePt111St1eCTe' setVis

vt2hle telePh0fl are available shoulda cUStOtT

The saleswoman was impressed when I hurled thechange from my crisp $100 bill disdainfully into anoversize Bergdorf Goodman bag. Just then, a youthburst in.

'Jean-Mi! Jean-Mi!" he exclaimed, his mockurgency having produced the real thing in theconcierge who led him. "These formsyou mustsign right away!"

I signed, and then with a wave ofmy hand Idispatched him to return to the ostentatious officesof sp'', chagrined, no doubt, that our little rusedid not allow him to remain longer in this worldofuiet, masculine refinement. But then, whatwould a club be if just anyone could repose thereindiscriminately?

-- kinø fttò for a neW SUit. In

a call while haV11 lunch, gettiflpreSSi

or SpOt cicaflifl S lust thC t'P' rarely aCL . S / tflCfl S SflO.his shoes siiflC uiTnacrn1" L

inclement weathers OU fac' eren1y te"..... ' Where the psonal serviceand attenÜOfl ifl

other stores end, Bergdorf

I,N TIME, i marched downstairs, past rowupon row oftraditional, natural-shoulder

clothing by a heralded young designer who seemedto me, and to the BergdorfGoodman Menbrochure, to have an uncanny eye for mixing colorand texture. I asked a clerk for a telephone.

"You can use the phone right on the counterS heassured me, but I waved him away. "Zis is a bit of aprivate matter, and I need a secure lineS I indicatedin an accent that would have made Peter Sellersgag. He nodded in a conspiratorial manner andescorted me to an empty portion of the boutique,where he produced a cellular phone, on which hepolitely dialed my number. I thanked him, andwhen my girl Aimée picked up the receiver, Ibarked, loud enough to be heard a few feet away, "IwantJean-Claude or Pierre-Louis to take a look atMarks & Spencer's UK Select Portfolio. It's tradingat 84.64; 1 am interested in it at 83.72. But nohigher-83.72. Ho-kay?" The clerk was clearlyimpressed, and I suspect that within minutes hisinternational broker received a similar call from

this very spot.

., with teaid to sCMC, IS the

Goodman begins.tito detall, CSC1d1I

cornerstone on which BergdorfCOOdmaI Men was built.

gGLIDED THROUGH the second floor, whereu, a lavish selection ofsuits by Brioni and

Hickey-Freeman and Oxxford were on display, andsome salesmen quite understandably associated mypresence in their departments with a desire to buysomething. They were mistaken. I did ask in thesalon if I could have a manicure before lunch, anda shampoo and haircut afterward. While I waited,Nella, a Colombian hairdresser who had spent nineyears in Stockholm, tried to figure out my accent.

«You're from Sweden, right?""No' I said, alarmed that my French accent was

that bad. But what can one expect from a Colombianhairdresser who has spent nine years in Stockholm?

'Germany?" she inquired.

'1 know' she brightened. 'Australia"I assured her that I was not from the land down

under but from Southern Morocco. "I am a pied-noirone of the very few white people from SouthernMorocco' i explained. "You know. . .zee

sowedustoCrCate paid for the manicure with a crisp $100 bill,1jointmeIll$, IB U1- . -

an CflViTOflh1Kflt with that ratified, fraternal atmosphere. An elegant store where leaving Lali, the Soviet manicurist, a big tip, and

men may enjoy and embrace the experience of shoppmgfOr clothes. disdainfully hurled the change into my shoppingth fur"

'

hag. Everyone was impressed.ali in Bergdo Gomfl Men does not stop Wi

sors ui wnich we've sto. uise spor cotton knits, oui goll professional is onS__3 hit

OME OF BERGDORF'S adroit purveyors ofuncommon haberdashery were starting to

give me the once-over, so I figured it might be agood idea to purchase some understated furnishings,accessories or both. I stepped into the sockdepartment. A protracted discussion ofanomalies incontinentalAmerican sock-size equivalencies endedwith my purchase ola marked-down pair of GiorgioArmani hose and some fire-engine-red HanroEurobriefs that were the size of an audiocassette.

hand at the department's own putting green for those golfers in need of a little

expert instruction on their putting.

Over the ", Ikrgdorf Goodman - h..L.

I,T WAS NOW TIME for lunch in the Cale 745.After coffee and pastry, I paid for the casse-

croìte with a crisp $100 bill and, as had become myhabit, threw the change disdainfully into myshopping bag. After a few minutes of futilely tryingon berets, I reported to the putting green, where asalesman who doubled as the house golf pro gaveme a brief lesson.

FEBRUARY 1991 5PY69

"You just want to roll the ball on a line towardthe hole' said the convivial chap, contradictingeverything Ud been told at thejack NicklausAcademy of Golf in Orlando 18 months earlier.When he told me co address the ball, I very nearlylaunched into my Edouard Norton imitation("Bonjour ¡a balle"). I resisted this urge and stifflybattle.axed the ball, missing the hole widely.

"That's good' said the pro. "The important thingis not to get caught up in all the mechanics' I wasdiscouraged by my performance, but I consoledmyself with the thought that a Frenchman whoplayed golfwell would just arouse suspicion.

Le putting

- .. .. ...aremi COflS1UCLdOfl for a man's every need,and our sales staff has been trained to respond to all requests. Should a man stainhis tic at lunch, hemay come in for a loaner while we dry-clean his soiledone. A proper coat check is provided, and we think ¿nn'»'

"tivc's busyI.

Ç

WAS NOW READY for fiiy 2:00 p.m. haircut, but first nipped into the café long enough

to drip coffee all over the tail of my Hermès tie.Reporting to the quietly elegant salon, I explainedthat the tie badly needed cleaning. À toute vitesse.

"You can hardly see it' protested the manicurist,but I explained that the tie belonged to mybrother-in-law, who had a keen eye for spots, andthat I really had to insist on its being cleaned.Disappointingly, no one offered to let me wear a"loaner" as promised. Ten minutes later the tie, nowstainless, was returned to me.

Nelfa, the voluble hairdresser, told me my hairhad been butchered the last time it had been cut,and that I put too much "grease" on it. I explainedthat I had spent two months in a remote, heavilywooded region of France recently.

You are an archaeologist?" she asked."Real estate I countered. I did not elaborate. She

asked if I lived in New York. "I live a leetle bit here,a leetle bit zayr i explained. I paid for the haircutwith a crisp $100 bill, then hurled the change intomy shopping bagdisdainfully."I" cmcri, ...... crvice. Forei5, ianguage SIh4JcuI; Siit., .. aj

available if needed. On the second floor, an office suite allows access to privatetelephone lines, a rccptionist, secretarial services, a personal computer and a faxmachine. Portable telephones are available should a customer need to make

_!,MADE YET ANOTHER call on a cellular

, phoneinforming mygirl Aimée that IlikedWal-Mart at 37. 1 then reported to Kimberley Kiss,the charming young woman who ran the Bergdorf'office' Earlier she had gregariously helped me fax aclipping from the Financial Times to Aimée. I hadtold Aimée to fax back the previous days foreignstock closings in The Wall StreetJournal, and I askedMs. Kiss if this communication had arrived. lt had,but as I checked the overhead stock ticker outsideher office I was dismayed to see that UAL hadtaken another nasty tumble. Perturbed, I asked Ms.Kiss if I could borrow her NEC personal computer


to jot down some important investmentnotes to myself. She created a file, showedme how to use the computer and left theroom while I wrote the following:

::'eil vraiment merveilleux. Je suis en train('ecrire cette histoire sur un ordinateur qui

: ele prete par Bergdorrrff Goodman. Cesens sont vraiment tres sympa. [This is reallyvonderful. I am in the process of writing-lis story on a computer lent to me by

Dergdorrrff Goodman. These peopleare really great.)

When I finished, I asked her to print out a hardcopy and destroy the file. She did, though I wassomewhat annoyed to see that she had read whatI had written on the screen. Oh, well, c'est la vie. Inow requested a personal wardrobe consultationwith the appropriate individual.

"I'm the wardrobe consultant,' beamed themultifaceted, enormously cooperative Ms. Kiss.

"I am not so sure about zis tie," I confessed,fingering with displeasure the Hermès neckwearthat only minutes before had been the object of somuch solicitude. "A lot of people say it does not gowith my blue eyes'

"lt looks great,' she said. 'It's a classic look'"You t'ink it looks all right?""It looks fine' she reiterated. "You have very good

taste.'These words, sadly unfamiliar to my ears,

aroused in me a feeling of devotion and respecttoward Ms. Kiss that could only be described aslove. However, it was getting close to limo pickuptime, so I hastened downstairs.

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,' given to.,

11I.,R. FORRESTIER,' the conciergeinformed me, "your car is waiting.

It's No. 47. It's parked right outside on Fifth Avenue'I tanked" everyone and made my way to the

door. I was sorry to be saying goodbye to my club,but I knew I would always be welcome here, free toputt, to fax, to get my tie cleaned, free to receivea complimentary wardrobe consultation with adistinguished haberdashery professional, free toread the paper in a big leather club chair and freeto make unlimited phone calls. Masculine andelegant, Bergdorf Goodman Men would serve mejust the way White!s and the Garrick ¡n Londonand thejockey Club in Paris have always servedtheir members: as a civilized, fraternal alternativeto the office and to home. And my club also offersso much more. Just try to buy Armani socks atWhite's! )

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PHOTO CBoth covers: The SimpsonsTM & © 1 990 20thCentury Fox Film Corporation.Page 2: Hussein/SIPA Press (Noor).Page 7: Ewing Galloway (people); UPI/BenmannNewsphotos (footbollers); Frederic Lewis(snowman); P. Durand/Sygma (tanks); Photolest(Catholic girls).Page 9: AP/Wide World Photos (Bush).Page 20: Marino Gamier (Smith. Mclnerney);Smeol/Galello, Ltd )Webber); H. ArmstrongRoberts (Naked City bond).Page 21: AP/Wide World Photos (Berlin); GaryWilliarns/Gamma.l.iaison (hurricane).Page 22: © 1990 Universal City Studios Inc. andHanno.Barbera Productions (Spaceley) ; KellyJordan/Galello, Ltd. (Khoshoggi); Ron Golel(a, Ltd.(Bertïnelli. Barr, Beatty); Kevin Mazur/LondorsFeatures Intl. (Tyler); Photofest (chain saw).Page 24: Frederic Lewis (chess); AP/WideWorld Photos Lynch).Page 26: Photofest (Vigoda).Page 27: Drawings from the book American Sign'Language Dictionary. by Martin L.A. Sternberg, ©1990 by Martin L.A. Sternberg. Reprinted bypermission of HarperCollins Publishers. From left toright, Ron Galella, Ltd. ; Marina Gamier; MarinaGamier; Ron Smith/LGI; Mario Ruiz/PictureGroup; Bauer/Galella, Ltd.; AP/Wide WorldPhotos; Albert Ferreira/DMI; Ron Galello, Ltd.;Albert Ferreira/DMI.Page 28: Antonin Kratochvil/Onyx (Lee).Page 33: Sara Barreft (Monheit).Page 36: Harry Benson )Noor).Page 37: iussein/Zohrab/SIPA Press (Hussein).Page 38: Robert P. Matthews (cheerleading).Page 39: Vjllard.Dekeerle/SIPA Press )Chonel(;Udo Schreuber/US Press (house).Pages 40-41: Udo Schreiber/US Press(Waldheim, Shriver); AP/Wide World Photos(Fergie); De Mulder/SIPA Press (refugees).Page 43: H. Armstrong Roberts (Santas); T.Grahoni/Sygma (Princess Di).Page 44: Gostin Family Archives (Naked Cityband); Bauer/Galella, Ltd. (Bacall, Seidelman).Page 45: Alan Morkfíeld (turtle).Page 47: AP/Wide World Photos (Hitler);Smeal/Galella, Ltd (Roberts).Page 52: Nancy Simmerman/Bruce Coleman(North Pole).Pages 68-69: Marina Gamier (Queenan(.Pages 78-79: Rose Hartman (Saltzman); AlbertOrtega/Galel)a, Ltd. (Shriver); Smeal/Galello, Ltd.(Reagans); Scott Downie/Celebrity Photo (Fisher);Greg De Guire/Celebrity Photo (Dully); TommieArroyo/Celebrity Photo (Hasselholf); all others,Marino Gamier.Page 80: AP/Wide World Photos (seal).

FASHION CREDITS JPages 54-55: Trumpeter Hand.knit 3.buttoncrocheted gilet in Sea Island cotton, long.sleevedcoflon jersey T.shirt with embroidered pocket, nonpleated pant with curved pocket in i 00 percentcotton. Violinist. Hand.tailored silk.and.cotton 2.button jacket with bellows pockets, batik canonbutton'down shirt, nonpleated pont with curvedpocket in 100 percent cotton. Trombonist: Hand.painted short'sleeved cotton 'ersey T'shirt, two-pleated Bermuda short in fine Tasmanian woolPiccolo trumpeter; Unconstructed Fortuny blouson,woven cottonandsilk shirt with unconstructedcollar, Bermuda short with inverted pleat in 100percent canon. Conductor: Hand.tailored 3.patchpocketed suit in wide windowpane check of SeaIsland cotton, striped fil.a.fil shirt in 100 percentcotton. marbleized silk tie. Anthony Tarassiclothing is available at Louis Boston, New York;Bergdorf Goodman, New York; Jimmy's, Brooklyn;Wayne Edwards, Philadelphia; Holt Renfrew,Toronto; Ultimo, Chicago; Lucho, Houston; ButchBlum, Seattle; Button Down, San Francisco.

FL[4RLARY 1991 SPY

I_,'v II

Has the progenitor of New Journalism

become old hat?

BY HUMJi4REY GREDDON

Tom Wolfe, author of Metuvé Gloves & Madmen. Clutter & Vine, among other books,is an energetic and imaginative reporter. He possesses an often witty prose style.True, his taste for white suits is horrifying, especially since he considers himself a

dandy (unaware, perhaps, that Beau Brummell wore dark brownR E V I E W and black), but Wolfe has consistently displayed genius over the

o F quarter century of his fame. He has some hobbyhorses, however,REVIEWERS . .and one often wishes that, as they rust, he would turn his agile

mind to fresh material. No one who has read him and followed hisinterviews could have been surprised by his essay in Haper.r about the modernnovel. Hes been saying the same thingover and over and overfor 20 years. Noone at all familiar with his work who read the cover story on him in Esquire this fallcould have been surprised by his re-marks there about status. He has beensaying the same thingover and overand overfor 20 years. And evenwhen he recently wrote a Iighheartedarticle for Hoase & Garden, one heard

an irritating, persistent scjueak asWolfe repeated a too-well-loved idea.

Wolfe considers himself an amateurarchitecture critic, in the style of hisaesthetic soulmate Charles "I'mThinking as Fast as I Can" Windsor.For HG, he wrote the text that accom-panied photographs of a townhouseowned by Eddie Hayes, che streetwiseIrish lawyer on whom Wolfe based thecharacter of Tommy Killian in The

Bonfire of the Vanities and who becamethe attorney for the Warhol estate.Wolfe luxuriated in self-satisfaction ashe described for this status-obsessedmagazine the house of someone whosemodest fame he himself had created;nevertheless, he took time to give ussome history: "The Museum of Mod-em Art was the American missionary


outpost of Europe's Bauhaus movement,which became known locally as theInternational Style. The Bauhausers'doctrinaire ban on ornament. . .

" Here

we go again. Starting 20 years ago whenhe made fun of the famously uncomfort-able leather-and-steel chair designed byLudwig Mies van der Rohe, Wolfe hasbeen on the case of those beatnik mod-em European architecs with their nutty,far-out theories. In 1981 he wrote abest-selling book mocking them (ProwBauhaus to Our House), and he has pur-sued the issue ¡n countless lectures andinterviews. The Painted Word, which hewrote in 1975, had used exactly thesame intellectual template to discusspainting. Not unpredictably, then, thepoint of the story in HG was to praiseEddie Hayes for bringing in stonework-ers and bricklayers and tile masons toadd highly wrought decoration to hishouse. Wolfe bewailed the scarcity ofsimilar patrons. As if no one had everheard his call before, and as if everyone .

but hementally stalwart in the man-ner of Captain Kirkwere still brain-washed to like only denuded white Z

spaces, Wolfe once again sounded the .

alarm about those insidious Bauhausiansand their "ban on ornament." t

Perhaps Wolfe would never revisitthis subject if he simply turned to the E

story in HG that followed his. Hewould see a room described as a lighr-filled gallery, rich in architectural anddecorative flourishes,' and a page or twolater he would see eighteenth-centuryEnglish paneling; a page later, twistedgilt curtain poles. And then, slowly, tominimize che shock, Wolfe could lookat the rest of the magazine. Not a Mieschair in sight.

At least Wolfe has strongly heldopinions. Writing about MTV inEsqilire, Michael Hirschorn asked aquestion: "Has MTV hastened the endof Western civilization... ?" And heanswered it: "Almost certainly not. " Noreckless assertions here! I supposeHirschorn thought that, where the endof Western civilization is concerned, await-and-see attitude is always best.

I wonder ifRichard Lockethe firsteditor of the revived Vanity Fair, backin its commercially unsuccessful,preTina Brown dayswent to Oxford.I imagine he did, for he wrote the fol-lowing sentence in his adoring WallStreetJournal review of a collection ofprofiles by Kenneth Tynan: "This ispure Oxford Union debating style, thereductive certainty, the flashingdichotomy, the precise wit that runs toparadox and aphorism. Surely Lockesdetailed knowledge of the habits ofmind on display at the Oxford Union isdue to his personal familiarity with thatinstitutionand yet his description hasthe ring ofcomplete fantasy, the typicalswooning over anything English by anAmerican with literary pretensions.Oxford! Why, when l9-year-olds atOxford debate, they must surely employflashing dichotomy and precise wit thatruns to paradox and aphorism.

Is anyone else worried about John J.OConnor, the daily TV critic for TheNew York Thnej? If watching televisionrots the mind, what does writing aboutit do? Reviewing a dramatization of theCharles Stuart murder case, O'Connorwrote, "Like most other docudramas,[Good Night, Sweet Wife) bobs andweaves in a manner chat a good manystudents of the form find troubling."Students of the form? The form of thedocudrama? Scary. Of course, O'Con-nor's critic reflex may have involuntarilytwitched out a long, pseudoserious,quintessentially Timesian phrase whereone wordthe difficult word is, as in

"is croubling"would have served per-fectly. Sdil, we cannot ignore otherwarning signs. Of Fresh Prince of BelAir, O'Connor wrote, "This one was, inthe words ofone executive, going to hitthe ground running. Ir didn't, at leastnot right away." In other words, thatutterly unremarkable show may becomean instant hitin a little while. AndO'Connor devoted a big piece to prov-ing his bold, controversial thesis that"TV Sitcoms Do Little for the Educa-tion Crisis." He actually wrote the sen-tence 'Mr. Reynolds [he means Burt) isback in top form." And tuîice recently hehas almost giddily discussed StevenBochco's interest in urine. Scary.

Really, Nancy Collins is at just aboutthe same level in the celebrity foodchain as Debra Winger, isnr she? Oneis a middle-aged movie-magazine writ-er, the other a beautiful, sultry, talentedmovie starso, yes, one is abOut as fas-cinating as the ocher, especially if youconsider that the movie magazine isVanity Fair. (Vanity Fair is the printequivalent of MGM in the old days.)J ust in case we were confused on thisissue, however, and thought chat possi-bly Nancy Collins was less importantthan Debra Winger, Nancy Collinsbegan her profile ofWinger like this:

it is Friday night when the phone ringsin my apartment in Nkw York.

l-Ii, its Debra. I'm in town.",. How are you?"

'Um having an identity crisis.

"Could you save until tomorrow so

we can get it on tape?"

"Debra" calls Nancy, and Nancy getsche best lines! You know, actually,maybe Collins is more important thanWinger.

In Rick Hornungs review of Outrage:The Stoy Behind the Tawana Brau'leyHoax for The Village Voice, he criticizedthe authors for their supposed claim tohave found "THE TRUTH, as if therecould be one unified account of this sadepic. " Uh-oh! readers gulped. Here comesa Rashomon reference! " . . . As in Rash-onion, point ofview was more important,and more revealing, than narrative."Whenever writers wish to make thecommonplace observation that differentpeople see things differently, they seemto think that mentioning Rashomon willa least make the idea sound exotic.

They also hope to imply that amongtheir many other fascinating, rarefiedcjualities is a profound appreciation ofJ apanese film, even - or especially - ifthey are not film critics. Luckily forjournalists, no subject is immune to thistreatment. Rudolf Bing's divorce? ANew York version of 'Rashomon,according to Marianne Yen ofThe Wash-ington Post. The Joel Steinberg case?"More realities than 'Rashomon,' " saysPatricia Volk in The Neu York TimesMagazine. In December's Vanity Fair,Paul Rosenfleld describes Hollywoodspreoccupation with foretelling how andwhether CAA chairman Mike Ovitz willreplace MCA chairman Lew Wasserman."Overnight," Rosenfield writes, "theclub game became Rashomon." (This isan interesting refinement of the cliché,referring as it does to people's differingperceptions of an event that hasn't evenhappened.) Describing the approach of ahook abotit Walter, John and AnjelicaHuston, the ubiquitous omnicriticDavid "Son of Sontag" Rieff offered anew coinage modestly. The book, hewrote, uses "what might be called theRashomon' method of biographical nar-

ration. ' Leslie Gelb, former second toCyrus Vance at the State Departmentand now Op-Ed editor at The Neu' YorkTiiies, had such confidence in the star-tling freshness of his 1?a'shonion analogythat he thought he had better take noth-¡ng for granted. In a piece about Pana-ma, Gelb observed interestingly that"Americans operate by the law of non-contradiction. That is, you can't havetwo truths in the same place at the sametime. ' Then, as day follows night, camethis: "Rashomon,' a 1951 Japanesefilm, shows just how natural it is to havemany truths, as four characters tellfour. . . " Why is it always Rashomon andnever The Seven Samurai? "As in TheSezn Sanmrai, it rai ned a lot.'

So brief was its presence in theatersthat you may be wondering what Peter

Bogdanovich's comeback-sequel-flopTexasville was like. Well, according toTexas-born pundit and essayist LizSmith, wearing her ten-gallon fllm-crit-ic hat, it was like "seeing Twin Peaks inan open-air drive-in in the no man'sland that is Route 80 between FortWorth and El Paso. " Those canny Tex-ansopen-air drive-ins. Shoot, as Lizherself might say, there's a notion. ft


Li l%I - - I I I-I

c:

w i

ACROSS

i . Ihc Íuiìiiy bear lU question is Pooh. l'uthim back inside u, which is another word frtiny, and you have uboopet. whkh is a kind oftrick cushion. A Whoo Pee cushions some-thing that you slij under someoncs seat, andwhen char irson SitS down on that cushion, itmakcslcrs not mince wordsa fart noise.PI/ìp/pp/, something like that. Lately a biogra-phy was published of A. A. Mime. who wrotethe Winnie-the-Pooh books. This biographymade it clear that those books, cherished byme as a lad. exploited Christopher Mime, theauthor's son. And Christopher Robin lookedso cute in the illustrations. Even whimsy maywell entail drawing blood, often the authorsown flesh and.

i i . Taxi ¡i/ed rearranged (helter-skelter").i 5. lia,, backward, running into gator togive us one who plots a course (plotter").i 8. i,, Sis setzt.2 1 . To (011fb IS tO express.

25. In depictions o1 eternal torment, thehands-on devils are generally shown having awonderful time. In truth, the work probably

grows tiresome. Setting up essentially thesame gags over and over, like writing a TVseries in its third year. Or first. No doubt

theres pressure to keep coming up withfresh wrinkles, but not too fresh - "What'sthat Look, if it's over their heads, these peo-PIC are iot going to suffer from it." Thedamned keep getting more and more jadedand the imps struggle to come up with moreand more violence and weirdness until theylose all sense of what they are up totheDavid Lynch syndrome. At any rate, don'tthink the ordinary guy on the line gets toluck with Roy Cohn or Mussolini. The bigdamned souls get minimum-security deals,or they're trusties. Would hell be fair?

DOWN

2. Box on rearranged ('somehow'), plusJOLIs.

3. A bit ola bloom.4. CE after sixteen rearranged. Perhaps 'Com-

mon Era" would be a better clue (than 'civilengineer"), since that term and its abbrevia-tion. CE. , seem to hc replacing Itsmo Domini,or tt.D. Scholars are also saying B.C.E., forBefore Christian Era, instead of B.C. , for


Before Christ. What Jesse Helms makes of all

this, I can only imagine.5. Any word beginning in Bo seems an obvi-ous opportunity for reference to Bo Jackson,but I have an aversion to 'Bo knows" jokes.Recentlybecause I am curious to knowwhat it is like to do things toward which Ihave an aversion - I posed, along with othercomedy writers, in a fashion shoot for anoth-

er magazine. There we were, cooling ourheels for hours watching one another submitto all sorts of menswear indignities for no

money and extremely dubious recognition,and the guy in charge of the session I)Ut useven more deeply in our place by telling ushow Bo Jackson had behaved when he finally

agreed to submit to being photographed forthe cover of the magazine. Bo walked in thedoor of the studio and, without saying aword, held up five fingers. In fact, he loos-ened up and gave them ten minutes, andthen he was out ofthere. Bo knows posing.18. An incubus is male, because the wordcomes from the Latin "to lie upon," and asuccubus is female, from "lie under. " There'sa good 1 inc i n the movie Strictly Dishonorable,

which Preston Sturges wrote the pIa)' for. A

judge says to a sprightly young woman,"That's immoral." She replies, "I read in abook of psychology that there's only onething that's really immoral." "And what isthat?" "Oh Lordy," she replies, "I forgot."20. Latin and Cii (copper), "wild."24. it l)1U5 X

l)lLL5 JO plus il. What's axi-omatic anymore? What statement can posai-

bly hold up as reliably true. as time goes by?Well, a kiss (even if it is X in a puzzle) isstill a kiss, a sigh is still a sigh. In his com-mentar)' on The Book off, Bloom speculatesabout how, exactly, Yahweh went aboutbreathing "the wind of life" into 'a mud pieor clay figurine" to create Adam: 'Does Yab-weh set his mouth to the earthling's nostrils,or is this a nostril-to-nostril inspiriting? 'l'he

(juestion is grotestue, and perhaps unneces-sari,', since Yahweh works up close and either

way kisses us, even if Eskimo-fashion."1-lere's looking at you, kid. j

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BY SCOTT YATES

There are 7 million scories in the NakedCity, we've been told, and about 18.1-million in the Greater Naked Metropoli-

tan Area. Every once ina while, ir seems, Franz

C R I M E Kafka reaches out fromthe grave to write oneof them,

Arkady Horn is a perfectly benign64-year-old grandfather from BrightonBeach, Brooklyn. He was born in theSoviet Union, served in the Red Armyat the end ofWorld War II, worked on afarm most of his life and had to struggleto win permission to emigrate. Heobtained that permission in 1979 so hecould come to America to receive treat-ment for a heart condition, one thatafflicts him to this day. He still speaksEnglish poorly and wich a heavy accent,Until one day two years ago, an ordinaryday during one of the hottest summersin New York City history, ArkadyFlom's was a cuiet life, its greatest tur-moi! long since past.

Flom's favorite diversion was playingchess. Several times a week, when Flomdidn't have to see a doctor about hisheart condition, he would take the sub-way to midtown and play chess on thesidewalk of 42nd Street near the NewYork Public Library, much as old men

have been doing in New York for a cen-tury. On that hot day, a Tuesday, hischess-playing days ended with an mci-

dent chat Flom describes as "one for amillion.'

Flom arrived at 42nd Street aroundi 1:00 a.m. and, as was his custom, tooka seat at one of the rabies to await apartner. Soon a clean-cut young manapproached; without much conversa-tion, the two began to play.

Flom, by his own estimation, is nogrand master, but he plays well; still, hefound it somewhat surprising to dis-pense with his challenger in just a fewminutes. The young man played sopoorly that Flom proposed a deal: if thetwo would play again, Flom would givehis opponent some pointers in exchangefor $2. The fellow agreed, they set upthe pieces, and Flom described theknight fork and other gambits. Twentyminutes later Flom had his opponent incheckmate. As agreed, the fellow paidhis money; then, as soon as Flom pock-eted the cash, the clean-cut young maninformed the pensioner that he wasunder arrest. All at once, a team of NewYork Citys finestar least four of-ficersswooped down on Flom fromseveral directions, slapped him in hand-cuffs and read him his rights. ArkadyFlom was under arrest for promotinggambling in the second degree and forpossession of a gambling device, hischess set.

He was loaded into a paddy wagonand cuffed to a chain. Soon he wasjoined by other public menaces; thewagon became so crammed that when itstopped, everyone inside tumbled ontop of one another. After five hours atthe precinct house, he was moved to acity jail, where he was pushed into aholding pen so crowded that there wasno room for him to sit. The small cellwas not air-conditioned. Flom says hepleaded for water; only after severalhours was he given some, in a cup "noreven clean enough for dogs. ' Worst ofall, the police took away his heart medi-cation, the pills he is required to takethree times a day.

Flom spent all Tuesday evening inthe packed cell. That night he wasallowed to place his one phone call. Hecalled his relatives. Having been readhis Miranda rights only in English, theold émigré did not understand that he

was allowed an attorney, and the ideadid not occur to Floms relatives. Nordid they come to get him out.

At 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday, Flomand 15 other prisoners were shipped toanother city jail. There he remainedthroughout the day. That night, after30 hours in custody, Flom became over-whelmed by a heart seizure and wasfinally taken to hospital. He wasexamined by a physician, who instruct-ed police to give the old man hismedicine.

Flom was returned to a smaller cell,a single-person unit that he was forcedto share with another inmate; at least irhad a concrete bench for him to sit on.On Thursday he was taken to court. Hisappearance before the judge lasted twominutes. Floms court-appointeddefender asked the judge to dismiss thecharges for factual insuciency, corn-menting, "The cop must be out of theacademy for two days." The judgequickly agreed, ruling rhat proof ofgambling was not spelled out clearly inthe complaint.

The proceeding zoomed past Florn.When everyone stopped talking, hespoke up. The official transcript cap-tures his confusion: 'They arrest me for48 hours. I am a very sick man. I gottwo heart attacks. I told them and nowI gotthey arrested me. I am not agambler. I play chess 40 years. I neverwas a gambling. They put my casenowwhat does this mean?'

"I think you ought to talk to yourlawyer," the judge replied. And withthat, Arkady Rom's first bout withAmerican justice came to an end. Flomnow has an attorney of his own, a chessplayer who frequently represents Rus-sian-speaking clients. He has filed awrongful-arrest suit on Horn's behalfagainst the city. For their part, thepolice say they just acting on com-plaints about the chess players alongthe crowded street. The cops alsothought that since money had changedhands, it was gambling.

When Flom was finally released, hewent home by cab rather than take thesubway as he usually (loes. "I had chestpains," he says, "and I didn't go to thebathroom all day." His doctor saysFlom's heart condition has grown muchworse, and he hasnt played chess sincethe day ofhis )

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c: ii-u '

Twice a year TVS V/Ps

mo//ycoddle the reporters they Loa/he

BY ROBECKIP1ZE

Dance "Da Butt" with CBS BroadcastGroup president Howard Stringer! Beaddressed as "asshole' by Whoopi Gold-

berg! As everyoneknows, there are many

T V free lunches, open barsand cruises to the Cay-man Islands available

for hardworking journalists; but there'sonly one biannual (January and July),two-and-a-hal f-week , all-expenses-paidtrip to L.A. for TV reporters and criticsfrom around the countryonly onepress junket where they get ro minglewith industry VIP5 (who ordinarilywouldn't return their phone calls), pre-view new shows and 61e exotically date-lined copy promoting those shows.

In olden days the networks picked upthe tab entirely, even staking guests theoccasional hundred bucks to hit the race-track when things got slow. Eventuallythey realized fluff-hungry papers wouldspring for the airfare and hotel bill, andthat al! they had to cough up was thefood and drink, a dazzling array of part-i ng gi fts (logo-emblazoned T-shirts,mugs, tote bags; books by Jackie Collins),and a parade ofquasi-interesting celebri-ties (Patty Duke) and preoccupied execu-tives (god-of-NBC Brandon Tartikoff).

The 100-odd members of the augustTelevision Critics Association, of course,cannot be bought. Many, however, canbe rented for a few weeks, providedthere's a fleet of stretch limos ready todeliver them to a free dinner at Spago.It's an epic con, even by the standards ofHollywood journalism, and the likes of

76SPYFEBRUARY 1991

Tom Shales steer clear of this event.Tragica!ly, the ongoing union troubles atthe New York Daily News kept strange,ancient Kay Gardella away in Ju!y; cheothers had ro do without her alwaysintriguing press-conference questions("Were those live corpses?" she asked oneyear, after screening the Auschwitzscenes in War and Remembrance). Indeed,the biggest tsh on hand were the unas-suming Matt Roush of USA Today andNeu York Times TV reporter Bill Carrer,who is che spiritua! leader of a clique ofratings-obsessed nerds whom their s!ap-clash peers have unaffectionately dubbed'. che Mensa Men."

H1, Bill!," Connie Chung chirpedwhen Carter asked a question duringher press conference; no one asked whya Tirnesman had traveled 3,000 miles totalk to a network star he could probablylunch with any day of the week in NewYork. At the Mensa table during a CBSlunch, an understandably impressedEric Mink of the St. Louis Post-Dispatchsaluted Howard Stringer and called him

"Captain."Days are filled with interminable con-

ferences with the producers and talent.Complete transcripts of these mass inter-views are made available later, ensuringchat dozens of virtually identical storiesfull of insinuations of exclusivity "AsMs. Fawcett told me. . .

" appearnationwide in the months to follow.

At night there are wacky theme par-ties (bowling night!) where family menfrom the Midwest can be seen sniffingat starlets in push-up lingerie. At aTwin Peaks fete last summer, a pack ofreporters hovered for hours aroundSherilyn Fenn, begging to know if shecould really knot a cherry stem with hertongue. This is an example of the ritualthat network publicists call "beingcrushed by nobodies."

When Peter Weller spotted one ofthose nobodies seated near him at a din-ner, he became enraged. "I don't wantanyone at my I don't know," hehissed at a columnist from the NewYork Times Syndicate. "And I don'tknow you." After describing a projectcalled When the Swelling Goes Down(don't ask), lovable old Mickey Rooneymouthed the words "Fuck you" to acritic whose questions he didn't like.

No, it isn't all fun and games. Butground-breaking journalism rarely is,)

,%I I%I

I/ejw',ake1h . . . ji/st like a ¿toman

iN-::-B Y R T JR.

I don't quite know what to make of thisidea that a woman made up Yahweh.

On the one hand I say, "Of course!Why didn't I see it be-

T H E U N -fore? Behind erny great

BRITISH .

CROSSWORD manisawoman(rollingPUZZLE her eyes). She didn't

make up a woman God;she was too droll for that, What is Godbut someone to blame unhappiness on?"On the other hand I say, "Now, wait aminute."

J ust as we're about to go to war withIslam (we who, incidentally, have adeeply disaffected underclass here athome featuring people named Raheem),along comes Yale literary theoristHarold Bloom wich these propositions:

that J, ancient Hebrew author of

what is now known as The Book off

(from which Genesis and other parts of

the Bible derive), created not onlyAdam and Eve but also Yahweh, lacerto become Jehovah and Our HeavenlyFather, not to mention Allah;

that J was a woman, a friend ofSolomon's son;

"chat J's account of the Creation andthe Old Man Himself includes a gooddeal of the old tongue-in-cheek.

I bought the new translation ofThe Book

off by David Rosenberg wich interpre-tation by Bloom, and I must say I'mjealous. All I could think to do in my lastbook was make up a first female presi-dent and male first lady. Bloom's madeup a woman who made up God. It willbe cenhjiries before the dust settles enoughfor someone to take the next step and

make up Bloom.If only Bloom could

take J on tour. Wouldthat be an Oprab! Proba-bly Jd have to speakfrom behind a screen, topreserve her anonymityso she wouldn't have togo into seclusion like Sal-man Rushdie; but thatwould just make hermore fascinating. As sheno douL)t realized.

Its true that J's Yah-weh makes a man first,Bloom points out, but itsalso true that "her child-like Yahweh" makesAdam out of mud, thenblunders around making

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birds and fishes and snakes while tryingto come UP vith a partner for Adamthen, after lots ofpr4ctice at making ani-mais, he carefully fashions, from Adam'sbone, what was called for all along: awoman. "Misogyny in the West is a longand dismal history of weak misreadingsof the comic J, who exalts womenthroughout her work, and never morethan in this deliciously wry story of cre-

% -:

ation." If that's not a book-selling point,then I don't know the first thing aboutpublishing.

Bloom first wondered whether J wasa woman 'when I heard yet once morethe familiar contention of feminist criti-cism that my own theories of influenceare patriarchal." This ought to hold thefeminists awhile, you sly dog, Bloom. I

wonder whether in his heart of hearts hedoesn't occasionally think ofJ as hisMolly. Sometimes he does overplay hishand a bit, referring to "reading J as J"with such zest that I'm reminded ofJonLovitz andi Dana Carvey on SatiodayNight Live, as gushy French TV criticswho seize rapturously on Quincy Jones'severy utterance with exclamations of "LeQ!" But Bloom is smoother, Catch this:

"J charmingly evades both patriar-chal misogyny and feminist resentmentwhile insinuating a kind ofShavian witnot exactly shared either by Yahweh orby Adam." Whom does Bloom see as"the modern writer most in J's spirit"Kafka. Ah.

If Bloom has left himself sittingpretty, however, I still feel, myself a bitat a loss. Here's what I'm wondering:what happens when my plane's hijackedby an Iraqi operative eager to die for hisbeliefs, and I try to talk it out withhimfor that is what I've learned(from women) is the only way to resolveconflict in mutual respectand he asksme, "What doyou believe in?"

"Oh, well, the arts and sciences, ofcourse. And the Bill ofRights. And theJ udeo-Christian ethic, that is to say,Turn the other cheek, or, in otherwords, An eye for an eye. What I meanto say is, . .You know, I read recentlythat all the great religions that began inthe Middle East derive from a singleauthor, a woman, interestingly enough,not really religious herself, bit of ahumorist, actually......

I figure he shoots me.

ACROSS

. Funny bear putback inside tiny crick

cushion, (7)

5. Going over with

something deadly, urnot going over at

all. (7)

9. The middle twowords of Hamlet's

most famous six

words are also the

proper response ro"We could slip intothe boss's office and

put rubber vomit on

hisdesk.' (2)i o. What we have

until we realize that

money can buy it. (9)i i . 'I'axi piled

helter-skelter into

drunk. (9)12. Where Prince

Albert kept referringto old Peruvian

empire. (5)13. Siegfried's

partner comprehendssixties chant to be

commodious. (5)15. Plotter (Russian)backs into snappy

reptile. (9)i 8. Importunate,employed byNewbouse. (9)19. Yo! Elk digested

by rube. (5)21 . Sofa express. (5)

23. In this

neighborhood, oneJake is better thant'vo. (9)

25. Satan's impsmust sweat and

toil/To burn at stakeand

(4,2,3)26. One

northeastern right isdead. (5)

27. Popular term for

attorney is

hysterically funny (inpart). (7)28. Stand-up guy

embraces Ed with

fancy term for

jokey. (7)

DOWN

i . Burger's biglie, (7)2. Somehow box

on debts is

repugnant, (9)3. Blooms bit

breaks plate. (5)4. Being civil

engineer after

sixteen, perhaps. (9)5. No rising in beddeprived of hard

(5)6. Scornfully, masterof ceremonies

embraces nothing

regal. (9)7. Kind of column

like those inspybut without any

right. (5)8. Brit novelist hasright to be less

experienced. (7)i 4. Wild hysterics is

response to "Are you

being straight withme, )udas?" (3,6)16. Scathing,though somehowcivil around trio. (9)

7. First attempt to

shoot sign offeringthings nor worth

taking. (4,3)18. Unwantedbedfellow in Little

Bear, America. (7)20. Latin copperwild and crazy

guy. (7)22. World

organization puts itto leader of

Yugoslavianaccord. (5)

23. Singing groupcrazy, rich with zero

heart. (5)24. A kiss? Tenthousand! True

statement! (5)

A nswers appear on page 74.


Kurt Waldheim buffArnold Schwarzenegger braceshimself as his attractively snaggletoothed wife,Maria Shriver loadstheir decidedly Gen-manic tot, Kather-me, into the familyinfantpak.

EraSPY-s GUIDE TO BEING PHOTOGRAPHED IN

PUBUC(ANONGOINGSERIES) This month,- two techniques for the unnaturally- short public figure who wishes to be

perccived as talL. (i) Ask a genuinelytall public figure to squat or slump next to you when paparazzi are near, as Carrie Fisherhas done here with Matthew Modine. (2) lfyour companion is noticeably taller than you, in-struct him or her to stay several feet behind you at all times and to walk knock-kneed if possi-ble (as socialitewar criminal Henry Kissinger has done here with his giantess wife, Nancy).

"HELLO DARUNG FROM HELL SylviaMiles, 83 years young and wear-ing a fashionable ensemble inroadkill patchwork, nips at theair in front of former fatginlDianne Brill's faceat a parry for Ben-etton at the Cen-trat Park Zoo.

FINGER-UCKIN' GOOD As bachelor-pianist Michael Feini.stein sniggers behind her back, improbable socialiteand bosomy dirty-book writer Shirley Lord, momen-tarily flustered, attempts to in- . sert thewrong end of a fork into the / ' mouth ofa tall, sturdy young chef.

IILAST YEARI MODELS Leave

.

I to two nighttime-soap-, !I.((' opera stars to define the

styles ofthe 1970s and early 1980s with time-warp perfec-tion. (i) Patrick Duffy of Dallas does the Disco Decadeproud with his tuxedo shirt worn unbuttoned co reveal sexychest hair, European-look purse tucked discreetly underone arm, chunky gilt chain bracelet and snazzy aviator-style sunglasses. (2) In a cleaned-up-punk look, circa 1984,Baywatch's David Hasselhoff caught by photographersi n a completely spontaneous, u nguarded moment - sportsrolled-up T-shirt sleeves, a handy shiny leather hip pak, andsunglasses on a decorative and practical "leaslf around hisneck. Groovy!

FORCE OF HABIT Kitty Dukakis rolls up her sleeves, takesa deep breath and listens to a few words of moral sup-port from LBJ biographer Robert Caro before put-ting herselfon display atThe Plaza as the authorofa humiliating, exces-

sively revealing memoir.

as conceived byIsaac Mizrahi.

CHECKING OUT THE COMPE-

TITION Old-fashionedcouturier Carolina Her-rera inspects the dé-colletage of che future

retro-mod dress designer

At the National Re-

view's 3 5th-birthdayparty, tiresome New

York Times columnist Abe "I'm Writingas Bad as I Can" Rosenthal and boule-vardier Tom Wolfe took turns shakingeditor William F. Buckley's hand whilemaking funny faces at him.

TOP THIS Now fevery would-L

boytoy fromDianne BriO toMaria Mapleshas copied herprofoundly un-flattering hairstyle, ivanaTrump has peisonalized her locwith a unique, bward-facing curlicuccowlick.

DUDE! After amusing guestsat his Better World Societyawards dinner by (i) um-boing under an imaginarypole while waving a wineglass in the ai New Agemogul Ted Turner was(2) hauled away by hiscosmetically capital-inten-sivegirlfriend,Jane Fonda,as concerned cameramenlooked on.

,THE FRIENDS OF DONALD J.

. TRUMP Still skittish aboutappearing in public with

.-

Police Academy Vil Oscarhopeful Marla Maples,Forbes 400 dropout Don-

aid Trump prefers going on group datesthatis, he routinely invites haifa dozen or so of hisdearest friends to accompany him and Maria.At Ted Turner's dinner, the pair was joined by(i) a large friend with a bushy mustache, (2) a

very large friend in a shiny suit and earphoneand (3) an even larger friend who scowled andwore a black mustache.

FOREVER YOUNGISH Leaving Chasen's inBeverly Hills, Nancy Reagan seemeddelighted to autograph a vintage pub-licity photograph of herself that bearsscant resemblance to her currentpinched, half-mad visage.

ti vaI1U1C Notes Toward a NonfictiOfl Noves

TRANSCRIPTION OF GHWBDICTAPHONE RECORDING 117-1090

OCTOBER 1990Ah, DearDictaphone.

This on?Okay?

Not my idea--thesethoughts. Almost rather talk to Gingrich or Dole--or E

Rollins--than someDictaphone--or even do a nation talk from the Oval. (And I

Ìi those, except for thechair. Just

awful. Why do theykeep telling me to

smile? Or to not . . . ? What are theytalking about? Hate that

fussing.

Reminds me of Dad. And the other night, for theIraq one, Ailes with the--he

actually wanted to tape my hands tothe--to the desk. And what if I

itched, I

said, and I'm thepresident? And millions out there. No tape, I said,

negative, to Ailes, waving my hands around sohe got it.

Sig Rogich, the samething--won't stop nagging me about the

rib-soledshoes--they go jj with the

suits, period, nextquestion. Those two and the

others and all thesesuggestions always coming at me on

that image thing, and I have never even

read apoll.)

And so now there'sthese diaries to do--when I could be out

compromising on

something. Moving things forward.Separating things out. But Bar says that

everyone's gonna want memoirs, and even Millie did herbest-seller. And Baker

says that Marilyn Quayle just did a novel, and didn't Isuppose even the vice

president was going to do a book one day?(Jimmy always calls him "the vice

president," and he alwayspronounces it slowly. One of his

divisionary

things, I think, but I let it go.) And soeven though I wrote memoirs

already,

that's when I didit--did the 180.

Springer spaniel authors--deal with it. But

Quayles? So I'mdoing this, and maybe it will

expand out into a booksomeday.

That's the idea.And by the way,

Quayle's--those polls that I never--in this case Sununu

told me--hisrating's still worse than mine.

Quayle.And also, I'm tired of all

this--let me statesomething on that so-called

Denver Snub, as they'recalling it, of the first son, that I--that they say

that I did.The fundraiser a few weeks

ago in Coloradofor Hank

Brown, theSenate-candidate guy, out at the

Convention Center? Okay: Now. how did I know

that Neil was there? Not on theguest list. Listen, got things on my mind--

Gingrich,governmental

secjuesterization, troops all over theSaudi, Baker

leaking all over thepapers. So how was I to know?

Sharon's on the list, but

not--and so we're there, I come in, and there's Sharon, say hello to thedaughter-in-law,

everything's warm and close, family, and then . . . a

tugging. Pulling and tugging at my sleeve--Neil. As I wentby. Tugging and

pulling at thesleeve--Neil. I mean, where are his--I didn't

walk by himpurpose. Didn't see him. Didn't

expect him (the list). Andsuddenly there he

is, right there. AndI'm--when I

see him, I'mtotally parental all the way,

the figure of a father.But he's still

looking hurt (and I knowwhat he's

thinking--Little League, me notthere, even though I

explained and it's 25

damnyears ago) . Anyway, he tugs, and then later both of them

waiting outside

for me--Neiland Sharon,

moping out there at the exit. Likea couple of

chauffeurs.Embarrassing. Neil reads the

papers, knows he hasmy confidence,

fullsupport. A hundred

percent--on the Silverado. But he's out therelurking

like this. Kids.Gotta go. Gotta call

Gorbachev on the Nobelthing. I don't get it--we win,

and they're a disasterarea, so he gets the prize and I'm the one that has to

pick up the red phone and say "Nicegoin'." And if I don't

hang up that framed

sawed-up Pic-47 from PresidentChamorro, I think Bar's

gonna go ballistic.GHWB:gk

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Spy Magazine January and February 1991

Documents

Transcript of Spy Magazine January and February 1991