Here’s one bit of news to get President Clinton’s heart throbbing while he is recuperating from surgery. Stunning Hollywood actress and U.N. Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie while making the rounds in D.C. told ABC 7 News’ Rebecca Cooper that she thinks Clinton would be “a great choice” to succeed U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Although Jolie declined to comment about her much-discussed personal life while speaking to a sold-out audience at the National Press Club, the yarn from the rumor mill is that Brad Pitt may have entered her picture, leading to his breakup with Jennifer Aniston. It didn’t go without notice that, when Jolie was asked to name the people in Hollywood she most admires for their charity work, high on her list was none other than that sexy actor.
Side tripBuzz hears that at Chowder and Marching earlier this week – the society founded in 1949 by 15 Republican congressmen, including Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, to oppose monthly bonuses for war veterans – embattled House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was talking to his pals about Social Security and not his own problems. But in a conversation with one colleague, he did brush off the pending scandal as “a Democratic charade.”
Historical nonfiction
Former Reaganites and others gathered earlier this week at the home of Jeff and Juleanna Glover Weiss for a book party in honor of GOP PRmeister Craig Shirley’s “Reagan’s Revolution.” A Republican stew of red faces from the past mixed in heartily, including: Frank Fahrenkopf, former RNC chairman; Pat Pizzella, Reagan’s undersecretary of labor; Jim Lake, the Gipper’s one-time advance man; Eric Dezenhall, former White House aide; and former U.S. Senator and HHS Secretary Dick Schweiker, who was Reagan’s running mate in 1976.
Prepare for takeoff
The Washington Flyer relaunch party at Palette was First Class all the way. Costumed flight attendants handed guests “boarding passes” when they entered an “airport lounge” filled with pre-flight pampering – shoe shines and massages, not to mention the caviar, mini-bison burgers and crab cakes. The re-designed airport publication promises to combine the best features of in-flight and city magazines, and, if their soiree is any indication, it should soar. Certainly, this was the spiffiest airport lounge we’ve seen recently.Antique road trip
Yes, that was Richard Mellon Scaife’s DC-9 landing at Dulles Airport Saturday morning. Dick and his wife, Ritchie Battle Scaife, jetted into town from Pittsburgh to browse and buy at the Annual Antiques in Alexandria Show at Episcopal High School. The Scaifes have legendary taste and mythic money to back it up – and are thus popular with high-end dealers of silver, paintings and fine furniture. When your lineage traces a line to back to treasury secretary and legendary financier Andrew Mellon, you don’t shop Target.
This year, they had a personal connection to entice them this way as well. Virginia Sen. John Warner’s wife of two years, Jeanne Vander Myde, was the honorary chairman of the event. Dick Scaife and John Warner’s friendship dates back to the ’60s, when Warner was married to Dick’s cousin, Catherine Mellon.