Some bloggers just get deleted
Friday morning was certainly not business as usual at the National Press Club. One eyewitness tells us that Michael Rogers of www.blogactive.com, dressed in a dark blue polo-style shirt, was spotted cornered by guards at the front desk of the 14th Street entrance of the press building after being dragged out of a program shouting, “Get your hands off me … . You’re not touching me.”
Rogers was described by some attending the program Who Is A Journalist? at the press club as “a guy who is a blogger from a site that outs gay Republicans.”
During the Q&A portion of the program, he asked Jeff Gannon aka James Guckhert if he was having a gay affair with a certain White House aide. Rogers suspected that might be the secret reason Gannon/Guckert was given a White House press pass that was recently revoked.
Eternal City surprises
And notes from a very different media event in Rome: Jimmy Carter, the first U.S. president to host a pope – John Paul II – at the White House, apparently didn’t want to be the fifth wheel at the pope’s funeral, and therefore declined the invitation to be a part of the presidential delegation. We hear that the former president wasn’t offered first-class treatment by the White House. And besides, the father-son Bush team apparently presented more tension than Carter wanted to deal with on this occasion.
Former President Gerald Ford, 91, stayed home in the California desert for a different reason: His doctors advised him to do so. Some news organizations, including a Fox News crew that had booked hotel reservations in advance but did not leave a deposit were surprised to find themselves without accommodations when the Italians offered double or more for the same rooms.
Not Flat for Friedman
Lots of pressies including William Safire, Andrea Mitchell with hubby Alan Greenspan, Kathleen and Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Nora Bustamy, and Wall Street Journal reporters David Wessel, Carla Robbins and Lori McKinny, also the Indian ambassador and Luma Kawar, and well-connected tennis coach Kathy Kemper were among those celebrating at Gail Collins’ book party for New York Times Foreign Affairs columnist Tom Friedman on the publication of his new book, “The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century” at The St. Regis Hotel, Friday evening.
Two must be Friedman’s lucky number. His book is No. 2 on Amazon.com and his golf handicap is 2. Tom refers to his Pulitzers as his “Green Masters Jackets.”
Family against terrorism
Former Ambassador and VOA director Dick Carlson, now vice chairman of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a counter-terrorism think tank that has become a major player in the fight against Islamic extremism – Jack Kemp is chairman of FDD and former CIA Director Jim Woolsey is one of FDD’s driving forces – has inked a new Sunday evening radio show called “Danger Zone” that he’ll co-host with Barbara Newman, the first host of NPR’s “All Things Considered,” and author of “Lightning out of Lebanon: Hezbollah Terrorists on American Soil.”
The show, scheduled to air on WMAL beginning April 24, will be taped a few days earlier at the local downtown D.C. power spot, the Palm restaurant. It’ll feature guests prominent in the war on terror with stress on “the human side of the battle,” says Carlson, who hopes to land CIA Director Porter Goss and FBI Director Bob Mueller as guests. To keep it in the family, Dick’s son, Buckley Carlson, will produce the show. Dick’s other son, the bow-tied TV talker, Tucker Carlson, who is now on PBS with his “Tucker Carlson: Unfiltered,” is a sure shot to tune in.
Book party
Dick and Patricia Carlson entertained those on the front lines of the war against terror at their Spring Valley home the other evening to fete FDD senior fellow Barbara Newman on her new book, “Lightning Out of Lebanon.”
Carlson, the VOA director during the last six years of the Cold War, wrote the introduction to the book. The Carlson home was packed with an interesting assortment of former Green Berets, Navy Seals, British SAS commandos, and FBI and CIA officials, including Goss and his wife, Mariel, usually too busy to do much socializing.
Goss spent many years himself as an undercover CIA officer in Latin America and Europe; Jim Kallstrom, the FBI assistant director who headed the investigation into the downing of TWA Flight 800 off Long Island, was huddled with FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker and Romania’s Prince Paul.
Gen. P X Kelly, who was Commandant of the Marine Corps when Hezbollah struck the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut 20 years ago, said, “There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think of those 243 young Marines who died there.”
Assistant FBI Director Cassie Chandler, the statuesque woman who ran the FBI academy in Quantico and is now at FBI headquarters, was chatting with Homeland Security Advisor Frances Townsend and her husband, John. Steve Emerson, who made the PBS documentary “Jihad in America” 10 years ago, was deep in conversation with legendary CIA ops officer Gene Gately as Dick Carlson announced that he and Newman had received the green-light for a two-hour TV documentary on terrorism for PBS. They’re aiming for a Sept. 11, 2006, release date.