Scrapbook
Scrapbook Brown Shoe Leather It's just about the godawfullest, basement-level, give-it-to-the-intern job in journalism nowadays—at least from the sound of Tina Brown's latest Washington Post/New...
...Union corruption, Bullock testified, also underwrote the catering for a wedding at Hemphill's home, season tickets to the Washington Wizards (Baxter's suggestion), fur coats for Bullock and Hemphill's daughter, a $50,000 silver set purchased in New Orleans for Bullock, and $29,000 for dental implants for Hemphill and her husband...
...Eager for an idea of what Penn's Iran reporting will look like, the other day we dug up some of the actor's earlier work for the Chronicle—in which Penn described a trip to Iraq he took in December 2003, right around the time Saddam Hussein was pulled from his spiderhole—and, wouldn't you know it, the articles actually contained facts...
...Penn's metaphors need some work, though...
...Tina Brown herself slogs through this muck, week in and week out, voluntarily— that's how much she cares about the news, about getting the story...
...President Barbara A. Bullock, who is now serving a nine-year sentence, had in her possession 35 handbags (Chanel, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, more Chanel, Fendi, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Chanel, Chanel, etc...
...The horror...
...Scrapbook Brown Shoe Leather It's just about the godawfullest, basement-level, give-it-to-the-intern job in journalism nowadays—at least from the sound of Tina Brown's latest Washington Post/New York Sun column...
...The fatigue of the trip hits me in the back of the head like a rocket-propelled grenade," he wrote...
...For us, her readers...
...Scapegoating him is another exercise in Republican voice-throwing," after all...
...Mostly, though, they love Kofi Annan up in New York simply because certain people down here in Washington don't love him, Tina Brown reveals...
...The 77 he received in French was the second highest grade of his freshman year—not the second highest of his undergraduate years...
...attorney asked, "Miss Bullock, would it be fair to say you like to shop...
...He must, she points out, consume expensively catered food and vintage wine while sitting next to "not just an endless round of U.N...
...Those silly Americans, you know— always taking things so literally...
...Such as: "The insurgents are made up of Saddam loyalists, displaced Sunni elite, resentful victims of U.S...
...It was only after she had dined with Mr...
...We dwelled, with perverse admiration, on an FBI affidavit listing the items purchased with union credit cards...
...ambassadors, visiting foreign ministers and 57 varieties of dignitaries," but also "their wives...
...Best we can tell, so far Penn hasn't filed any copy, though Editor & Publisher further reports he did bag a big interview last week with Iran's leading presidential "candidate," anti-American Islamic cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani...
...And part of it is arriviste insecurity: "Annan's presence in the striving salons of Manhattan's newly rich [lends] the halo of a higher purpose" to their otherwise ho-hum, another-evening-with-Harold-Evans lives...
...International Penn In media news, industry mag Editor & Publisher reports that the San Francisco Chronicle has credentialed the actor, director, and finest loudmouth of his generation Sean Penn to cover this week's Iranian elections...
...Besides, Hemingway never had an escape route: "I call my assistant, Sato, back in San Francisco," Penn wrote, desperate to leave Iraq, "and say 'I don't care if it's a military flight, an NGO or a spaceship, just get me out of here.'" Wigged Out In January 2003, The Scrapbook noted the criminal investigations of three officials of the Washington Teachers' Union for misuse of union funds...
...Penn doesn't think they're "productive...
...It turns out the U.N...
...Not that he doesn't "understand the nature of where it comes from and what its intention is...
...And yet she does it anyway...
...secretary general has survived in office despite various unchecked genocides and corruption scandals largely because he is "beloved in the higher reaches of New York City" society, whose members "encircle him protectively with feel-the-glow dinners all over town...
...Annan "for the second time in two weeks"—at a Manhattan gala honoring "the Turkish prime minister"—that the dogged Ms...
...Part of it is they just plain like the guy: "his gentle aristocratic charm," his "transparent decency, serenity, and reasonableness," his "luminously graceful Swedish wife...
...Not quite Hemingway, in other words—but then, who is...
...raids, the Fedayeen, foreign terrorist cells, and of course many of Hussein's soldiers...
...And did we mention 11 wigs...
...All too true...
...It's just that "I think the message goes to the American people and it is interpreted very literally...
...What must the unfortunate correspondent on the Upper East Side dinner-party beat actually do...
...While she was on the stand, the assistant U.S...
...Also last week, no doubt as part of his reporting, Penn visited a demonstration of young Iranian filmmakers and schooled them on the finer points of activism...
...So "nobody here [on Park Avenue] can bear to think Kofi Annan could do anything truly shabby...
...Brown finally uncovered the truth...
...For instance: those "Death to America" chants...
...a 288-piece set of Tiffany silverware, a Tiffany white pearl necklace, a silver Tiffany ring, a silver Tiffany watch, a black cashmere cape with fox trim, a long ranch mink coat, one three-piece mink scarf set, 40 pairs of shoes (mostly Bruno Magli and Salvatore Fer-ragamo), and (our favorite) "11 wigs...
...Bullock was in court again this week serving as a witness against her former underlings and co-embezzlers Gwendolyn Hemphill and James O. Baxter II...
...I love to shop...
...When Paul Bremer disbanded Hussein's army, Penn wrote that the-now-unem-ployed Baathist soldiers were told, "You'll never work in this town again...
...Give Us an F in Math Yes, we screwed up a detail last week on John Kerry's grades at Yale...
...We are blessed...
...Also, to Penn, a day in war-torn Iraq resembled nothing so much as, um, a day on the slopes: "There's a ski-lodge feel to a house full of war correspondents...
...No, that's not fair," she answered...
...We are blessed, for instance, in Brown's same aforementioned column, with an answer to the nagging, mystery question: "How come Kofi Annan hasn't been run out of the United Nations on a rail, already...
Vol. 10 • June 2005 • No. 39
