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By Terry M. Neal and Ceci Connolly
(c) 1997, The Washington Post
WASHINGTON With William F. Weld off fishing in the Adirondacks, his nomination as ambassador to Mexico took a new twist this week as two of the Senate's most senior chairmen locked in a grudge match that could jeopardize Senate business and the Republican Party's image.
Sen. Richard G. Lugar, R-Ind., the No. 2 Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has repeatedly criticized Jesse Helms, R-N.C., the committee's chairman and his colleague of more than two decades, for refusing to hold a hearing on Weld's nomination. Lugar escalated the battle by then suggesting he would consider using his own position as chairman of the Agriculture Committee to retaliate against Helms.
The Agriculture Committee is scheduled next month to begin hearings on parts of a key proposed settlement between the tobacco industry and states attorneys general. Helms represents the largest tobacco growing state in the country.
"It is unfair if one chairman operates under one set of rules and that it's anticipated that all of the other chairmen will operate under another set of rules," Lugar said in a telephone interview Friday. "This is something I suspect we're going to have to wrestle with as senators."
What began as one man's quixotic bid for the ambassadorship has turned into an internecine tale of long-simmering feuds, ideological tensions and Senate power politics. In a legislative arena where one vote is almighty, the prospect of two veterans going mano a mano has some on Capitol Hill shuddering.
One GOP Senate staff worker, recalling the recent botched coup against House Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., moaned: "This runs the risk of becoming an embarrassing specter on this side."
If Lugar follows through on his threats, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., faces a difficult quandary: how to keep the dueling chairmen in line and prevent gridlock in the two key committees.
President Clinton nominated Weld last month and Weld resigned as governor of Massachusetts to take the position. The nomination fight has exposed growing divisions between moderate and conservative wings of the party.
"It affects us in the sense that if people perceive us to be (unfair) or Republicans to be intolerant by denying Gov. Weld a hearing than it is a political problem," said Sen. Olympia J. Snowe, R-Maine, who is pushing for a Foreign Relations Committee hearing on the nomination.
Weld, a popular Republican who tried to beat the Senate with an outsider strategy, has now been overshadowed by two white-haired legislative giants with much more on their minds than whether the red-haired patrician has a job next month.
Lugar, who acknowledges he has been upset with Helms on other issues for some time, told reporters Thursday that he was angry at Helms and that he was considering using his Agriculture Committee chairmanship to stand up to him. Lugar is undecided about whether he supports Weld, but that, he said is beside the point.
Earlier, Lugar threatened to go around Helms and force a nomination hearing: "A Senate chairman cannot be dictatorial, ultimately, when a majority of the committee, a majority of the Senate, a majority of the American people want action," Lugar said Sunday on ABC's "This Week."
In an interview Friday from Ohio, where he is traveling to receive an award from an agricultural professional society, Lugar emphasized that he was making no specific threats. Helms has become increasingly bold because no one ever stands up to him, Lugar complained.
"Now someone is doing so," Lugar said. "I'm doing so now. I'm doing so explicitly. I am objecting in the most direct public manner that I can."
Helms's office said he had no further comment. But an aide, who asked not be identified, said it was highly inappropriate for Lugar to take out his personal frustrations with Helms on the "tens of thousands of North Carolina farmers." The aide portrayed the flap as a one-sided vendetta by Lugar.
"When someone lashes out at you, the best way to handle it is not to respond," the aide said Friday.
The Senate is in recess this month and few Republicans were inclined to interrupt their vacations to step into an increasingly messy party feud.
Snowe said Lugar's comments were "uncharacteristic" but also an understandable "manifestation of his own frustration about the process not working in denying an individual nominee a right to a hearing."
She and eight other moderate Senate Republicans signed a letter last month urging Helms to call a hearing for Weld. Helms has adamantly opposed the Weld nomination because of the ex-governor's support for the medical use of marijuana, gay rights and other issues.
Snowe, home this month on vacation, said many of her constituents were complaining that Weld had been denied a hearing. And while she put most of the blame on the Clinton administration for not fighting harder for its nominee, she said the fallout was hurting the Republican Party.
The Lugar-Helms tension goes back at least a decade when, in 1986, Helms pulled rank on Lugar and positioned himself for the chairmanship of the Foreign Relations Committee. That left Lugar, a man who has long prided himself as a global expert, with the farm panel when the Senate returned to GOP control in 1994.
Since that time, Lugar has felt Helms has routinely snubbed him, refusing to appoint Lugar to key conference committees and sparring over major issues such as the Chemical Weapons Convention Treaty and the operations of the United Nations.
Sen. Thad Cochran, R-Miss., a member of the Agriculture Committee, said Lugar's comments were likely a result of years of tension between him and Helms, but that Lugar would never "make a decision out of spite that would adversely affect anyone in America."
Cochran said he sympathized with Lugar's point about Helm's behavior, to a point.
"In certain circumstances where the issue is one of importance and significance to the country, I think he has a good point," Cochran said. "This is not one of those issues."
One GOP leadership aide questioned Lugar's strategy: "If you want to play tit for tat, then the appropriate thing would be a nomination out of the Agriculture Committee. I don't think it's an equal tit for tat to threaten tobacco farmers in another state."
Copyright (c) 1997 The Los Angeles Times - Washington Post News Service
By Michael O'Sullivan
(c) 1997, The Washington Post
How's this for a wacky movie premise? New York apartment-hunter answers ad from "GWM seeking same to share fully furnished apartment." Only problem is our hero thinks that "GWM" means "Guy With Money" and not "Gay White Male." On top of that, the clueless one just happens to be a homophobic Italian stallion from the Bronx with big biceps and a cute butt.
On paper, it sounds like "Crocodile Dundee" with an outer-borough accent. Just imagine the comic possibilities for misunderstanding as the naive outsider encounters the sophisticated downtown world of Manhattan's gay enclaves!
Sadly, none of these possibilities are realized in "Kiss Me Guido," an unfunny comedy by Tony Vitale that is enacted not by fleshed-out characters but by hackneyed, two-dimensional stereotypes. There're so many sexual and ethnic caricatures, it's hard to know which is most offensive.
"Kiss Me Guido's" chief problem lies in its attempts to poke fun at the worst of cultural bigotry while pandering to it at the same time. Unfortunately, you can't have it both ways.
Copyright (c) 1997 The Los Angeles Times - Washington Post News Service
From USA TODAY, DATE: 08/07/97
By Steve Jones
Dorothy Dandridge's portrayal of the entrancing seductress in 1954's Carmen Jones won her an Oscar nomination for best actress, but she may have given an even better performance persuading director Otto Preminger to give her the film's title role in the first place.
Dandridge's beauty could silence all conversation when she walked into a room. But behind the public facade of a confident sex goddess lurked a shy woman given to bouts of depression borne of an abusive upbringing, unsatisfying marriages and affairs and guilt over her severely retarded daughter.
Her deep insecurities were compounded by the fact that while Hollywood was captivated by her looks and talent, racism and the social mores of the time kept her from fulfilling her promise as an actress. Eleven years after her triumph as Carmen, Dandridge committed suicide -- with only $2.14 to her name.
Donald Bogle tells the story of this luminous but tragic figure through a lively narrative that benefits from meticulous documentation and dozens of interviews with friends, family, lovers and colleagues.
It is through this thorough research that he can tell stories like how Preminger, who was having trouble finding the right actress for Carmen, wouldn't even consider her after a doughty Dandridge first came to him for an interview. But a determined Dandridge completely transformed herself.
The second time Dandridge came to Preminger's office, she oozed so much sex appeal that the stunned director virtually gave her the role on the spot.
From the time she was a child, Dandridge had star quality. That was something that was not lost on Ruby Dandridge and her lesbian lover Neva Williams, who made the kids call her Ma-Ma and enforced strict discipline on Dorothy and Vivian through repeated beatings and psychological abuse. They trained the sisters in singing, dancing and acrobatics, and they became a popular attraction as the Wonder Children. As they grew older, the girls were joined by Etta Jones and became known as the Dandridge Sisters. But the girls worked constantly, were never allowed to enjoy their childhoods or teen-age years.
Dandridge, who was never happy about Jones being called a Dandridge sister and who was particularly stifled by the suffocatIng presence of Williams, left the group as soon as she was old enough to become a star on her own. She married the womanizing Harold Nicholas half of the legendary dance team the Nicholas Brothers -- in 1942.
But his continued philandering shattered her hopes for an idyllic marriage. When their daughter, Harolyn (Lynn), was about to be born in 1943, she couldn't get to the hospital because he'd gone off to hang out and taken the car keys. The condition of her daughter, institutionalized to this day, would weigh on Dandridge for the rest of her life.
In telling the tale of her courtship and marriage to Nicholas, Bogle also gives a rare look into black Hollywood, which, like its white counterpart, had its own rivalries, scandals and caste system.
Dandridge would ultimately divorce Nicholas and find success as a nightclub singer (though comparisons to Lena Horne added to her insecurities) and in films. But a marriage to physically abusive nightclub owner Jack Denison also would end in divorce in the early '60s, and the IRS and failed investments would send her into bankruptcy. It also would send her into a decline from which she'd never truly recover.
As Bogle writes: "For a woman in search of meaning in life, a talented woman who believed there might be a place for her in the scheme of things if she ever worked hard enough, the world must have seemed unbearably alien and cruel."
Copyright (c) 1997 Gannett/USA TODAY Electronic News
From USA TODAY, DATE: 08/07/97
By Deirdre Donahue
Tom Wolfe's stature as the meanest, smartest, funniest social observer around is amply illustrated by this unusual audiotape, hitting stores this week. First serialized in Rolling Stone last September, his novella, Ambush at Fort Bragg, is not available in book form, only on audiotape.
In Ambush, Wolfe savages the world of TV news in the way he pilloried Manhattan high society in The Bonfire of the Vanities. Originally written as part of Wolfe's forthcoming novel, which his publishers hope will be finished next year, Ambush opens up in a network studio as a fat, bald TV producer watches a live surveillance tape of three soldiers talking in a strip joint near Fort Bragg.
The question at hand: Did the homophobic trio beat to death a gay soldier? Joining Irv Durtscher in the control booth is the gorgeous blond anchorwoman of Irv's show. The audiotape traces Irv's pursuit of the soldiers to North Carolina, where the TV newsmagazine ambushes them on camera, helped by a stripper.
The story is not the dead soldier. Instead, Wolfe uses his death as a trigger to show how TV tailors the news to its worldview. And no one cuts closer to the bone than Wolfe in revealing the pathetic delusions of grandeur entertained by human beings. Irv fancies himself an artist of the new art form -- TV. And forget the pursuit of truth: What the self-centered Irv wants mos t is big ratings, recognition and the chance to get under the cashmere blazer of his famous anchorwoman. (Wolfe simply dismisses that crusading TV journalist as the o n-air pretty-but-aging face she really is.)
The three soldiers from the Florida Panhandle are presented as stupid, lunkish bigots. (Their South ern accents are so impenetrable that Irv fears he'll have to use s ubtitles.) But during the ambush, one of them turns on the anchorwoman and ends up rattling Irv's cage about the media's hypocrisy.
A warning: This is not a tape for family listening. Strippers, porn videos, curse words, graphic sex, ugly epithets. This listener was terrified that people in other cars would hear the tape playing. But it appears that Wolfe has spent a lot of time with soldiers and a lot of time thinking about what makes an effective fighting unit. And being "a man" and "being a good person" are not the same thing to these guys, according to Wolfe.
As for Edward Norton -- well, his performance raises the question of whether he possesses multiple personalities. His characters are done to perfection -- rivaling Meryl Streep with his mastery of regional American accents.
If you like pitiless social satire with a massive side-order of political incorrectness, then get in the line of fire offered by Ambush at Fort Bragg. But you've been warned.
Copyright (c) 1997 Gannett/USA TODAY Electronic News
By Jim Morrill, The Charlotte Observer, N.C.
Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News
Aug. 7--An N.C. writers group has dropped plans for a Charlotte conference, in protest to Mecklenburg County's decision to cut arts funding.
The 1,800-member North Carolina Writers' Network had planned to hold its annual conference in Charlotte in 2000.
That changed after county commissioners voted to cut the $2.5 million they had given the Arts & Science Council. The cut came after many community residents objected to Charlotte Repertory Theatre's controversial 1996 performance of "Angels in America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes."
"We're against censorship in all ways, especially when it has to do with the literary arts," said Linda Hobson, executive director of the group, which has about 400 members in the Charlotte area. "We're simply supporting the arts ... and freedom of speech."
It is the only group to cancel plans to meet in Charlotte because of the arts controversy, according to the city's Convention & Visitors Bureau. The writers expected to bring about 500 people to a Charlotte hotel.
Republican commissioner Tom Bush, who supported the funding cut in April, has said he may try to restore the money at a meeting next week. Hobson said it won't matter if funding is restored next week, next year or anytime.
"It doesn't make any difference because the issue came up and the censorship came ... like a bolt out of the night," Hobson said. "And it could happen anytime. We wanted to make this statement now to show that there's a principle involved."
(c) 1997, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer. Distributed by Knight-Ridder/Tribune Business News.
By Ceci Connolly
(c) 1997, The Washington Post
WASHINGTON William F. Weld's public spat with Sen. Jesse Helms, R-N.C., is spilling over into at least one conservative think tank in town as two of its most outspoken members take opposing sides in the ambassadorial battle.
Jack Kemp, Bob Dole's vice presidential running mate last year, is promoting Weld for ambassador to Mexico. But his colleague at Empower America, William J. Bennett, thinks the libertarian Weld is simply using the contretemps for self-promotion. "This is a guy who lost an election, was bored with his job and is looking for something else to do," Bennett said of Weld and his failed Senate bid last year.
Helms, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is refusing to hold a hearing on Weld's nomination. As recently as Monday evening, he told CBS News a hearing was "an exercise in futility."
Weld resigned as governor of Massachusetts last week to wage what he declared is a "battle for the soul of the Republican Party."
That sounds like presidential politics to Bennett, who predicts Weld's left-leaning pitch won't sell with primary voters. "His positions are so far to the left on stuff like gay rights, I don't think he'll be a persuasive witness for winning the hearts and minds of Republicans."
Bennett, America's self-designated virtues czar, agrees with Helms that Weld's support of medicinal marijuana would make him a less-than-ideal ambassador to a country that exports huge quantities of illegal drugs to the United States. "You want to send a clear signal about drugs," Bennett said. "Whatever Weld is, he's not a clear signal."
Kemp, who is closer to Weld on social issues, thinks the red-haired Brahmin would make a fine ambassador despite his "very serious blunder" in attacking Helms. "I've called for a cease-fire," Kemp said, offering to pull the factions together for a get-acquainted session.
Copyright (c) 1997 The Los Angeles Times - Washington Post News Service
By Robin Givhan
(c) 1997, The Washington Post
For spring '98, virtually every runway included men strolling along in flip-flops, slides, clogs, even thongs -- the footwear variety, not the derriere-baring version. Models wore sandals with drawstring trousers, with Bermuda shorts, even with business suits and evening wear.
Many European men, gay men and young men have cultivated a comfortable relationship with sandals. They understand that open-weave shoes are nothing to fear. For them, there is nothing unseemly about showing a little toe.
But let us be blunt. To the average, straight, thirty-something and older American guy, revealing footwear is anathema. They have sandal phobia. Perhaps they believe that displaying one's feet in an aesthetically pleasing manner requires exfoliating scrubs, a pumice stone, possibly even a full-scale pedicure.
Well, calm down. No need for paraffin wax treatments and hot oil massages. Just buy a good toenail clipper and learn to use the business end of it. A little lotion would be nice, too.
Do not wear hosiery with sandals. Men who wear socks with sandals are not true believers in huaraches and flip-flops. They are noncommittal. Poseurs. The presence of socks counteracts the whole purpose of wearing cool, open shoes.
You're probably familiar with the sport sandal man. Wide, nylon straps fit snugly across his instep and are locked in place thanks to a little square of Velcro. The sandals are engineered to grip wet rocks while the wearer is, you know, mountaineering. The shoes' association with wild adventure, danger and athleticism has allowed them to shed any fey reputation. But it's hard to really consider all of that cantilevered technology adding up to a true, beach-combing, lazy afternoon sandal. Basically, sport sandals are hiking boots with ventilation.
The brave sandal wearers have been few: hippies, granola munchers, fashion fiends, gents.
But designers have not been deterred. In the past they have suggested slides and flip-flops with summer wear. For next spring, it's almost as if they're insisting on them.
There are plenty of sturdy sandals with wide leather straps. They show only a few slivers of metatarsus and are perfect for the fellow who isn't quite ready to shed his loafers for the summer. At Donna Karan, kick-around shoes have been transformed into slides. Models did what so many men do to break in a pair of new bedroom slippers: They folded down and walked on the backs of the shoes. Most of the foot is covered except for a teasing bit of heel.
At Nautica there are poolside sandals modeled on the traditional Dr. Scholl's slip-ons. They have an athletic appeal but the strap-free heel demands that the wearer slow down, take it easy.
There are woven slides from designer Nicole Farhi. Paired with trousers hemmed in beads, the shoes are an homage to a hippie aesthetic. And John Bartlett's voodoo cabana boys wear flip-flops with their police pants and linen suits.
Seventh Avenue is not suggesting that men start showing toe cleavage in the office. This is not a call to ban wingtips and burn oxfords. Designers simply are encouraging men to occasionally set their feet free. And see how good it feels.
Copyright (c) 1997 The Los Angeles Times - Washington Post News Service