Get Cozy With Connie? In Your Dreams, Pal
You probably remember how former CBS newswoman Connie Chung got Newt Gingrich’s mom to call Hillary Rodham Clinton a nasty name on camera, promising it would be “just between you and me.”
Now comes O.J. Simpson defense attorney Robert Shapiro to testify to Chung’s wily ways.
In his newly published trial memoirs, “The Search for Justice,” Shapiro tells about a phone conversation with Chung in which she delivered “the best line I’d heard since the case began.”
Said Chung: “I just spoke with my husband (talk-show host Maury Povich). He gave me permission to sleep with you in exchange for an exclusive with either you or O.J.”
Wrote Shapiro: “Laughing at the joke, I declined what I called her ‘very kind offer.”’
Loose talk
Richard Gere, on whether the O.J. Simpson trial helped shape his role as a lawyer in “Primal Fear” (in USA Today): “It was all so amateurish, that whole production … They were all cartoons. No one would believe them in a film.”
And she’s doing just great, clinically speaking
Betty Ford turns 78 today.
Oh, those cases where there were convictions?
The cybermag Mr. Showbiz reports that O.J. prosecutor-cum-author Christopher Darden has signed a deal with Fox to produce a series on other “trials of the century,” such as the Charles Lindbergh baby kidnapping, Charles Manson murders and Patty Hearst bank robbery.
Unarmed, perhaps, but definitely dangerous
Documentary filmmaker Roger Moore (“Roger and Me,” “TV Nation”) has his first book coming out in September, titled “Downsize This: Random Thoughts From an Unarmed American.”
The reply: Please, Hammer, don’t stiff ‘em!
Hammer, whose worth was once reported at more than $33 million, filed for bankruptcy protection listing $10 million in debts and about $1 million in assets. Said the rapper: “It’s time to stop the bleeding, to close out old business and stop being the lottery for people who see Hammer as this big celebrity with a bottomless pit of dreams for people.”
He’d better think about cleaning up his act
Rap star Tupac Shakur has been ordered back to jail for 120 days for violating his probation in a 1993 case where he beat up a video producer. Shakur has had subsequent assault convictions in New York and Michigan, and failed to work with a freeway cleanup crew for 15 days as required by the judge.
Are they bad role models? It’s a thin line
Supermodels Kate Moss and Stephanie Seymour are taking some heat for their appearances in the current Playboy magazine - not for showing skin, but for puffing cigarettes. “These models reinforce the belief that you have to smoke to stay thin,” said an American Cancer Society spokeswoman, adding: “The image of Kate Moss is a problem, anyway, even without a cigarette in her hand.”
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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by staff writer Rick Bonino