How cute! Here are MORE PHOTOS
(If you're not familiar with Flat Stanley, he was in a kiddies' book...a little boy named stanley is flattened by a bulletin board and makes lemonade out of lemons. He mails himself to a friend...and then to lots of exotic places. It's become a kid's game to get pictures of Flat with famous people.)
BWB, good work on those letters! Sorry you've been under the weather. After I spend a few minutes catching up on things at FR, I must get to work spackling and painting, as I'm redoing a walk-in closet. It's a glamorous life.
So why am I sick of Tina Brown (friend of Arianna)?
". . . but beyond these sectional self-interests there is a deeper unease. Americans long to have their moral energies roused, really roused, and give their hearts to sacrifice. Franklin Roosevelt did it with his pledge to the Four Freedoms. JFK with his 'ask what you can do for your country' inaugural. But Bush just can't get there. In his State of the Union pep rally a smirk of privilege hangs in the air even as he goes for maximum gravitas." Quoted in Liz Smith's column.
As if we didn't already know:
LONDON - Michael Jackson admits he still sleeps in the same bed with young boys and said he fathered his third child using a surrogate mother he has never met "and my own sperm cells." The freaky King of Pop called the sleepovers harmless fun in a bizarre documentary set to air on ABC's "20/20" at 8 p.m. Thursday. "I have slept in a bed with many children," the eccentric superstar told British celebrity journalist Martin Bashir. "I am Peter Pan in my heart." full story
In other news:
Britney Spears brought a little trailer-park panache [Wow, that's a stretch] to Justin Timberlake's 22nd birthday party in L.A. on Friday. Brit's once (and future?) boyfriend threw a "White Trash"-themed party that included a Twinkie-trimmed frosted cake, tabloid tablecloths, pork rinds, Slim Jims and cans of Spam. source
One more interesting bit from the Reliable Source:
• We remember when our friend Christopher Hitchens was a card-carrying (or at least Scotch-hoisting) member of the left. But the British-born polemicist has apparently come a very long way since he stopped writing for the Nation magazine last year.
In the new issue of Doublethink, a Washington-based right-wing quarterly, Hitchens reveals that he plans to support President Bush's reelection campaign -- never mind his recent Vanity Fair puff piece about Democratic hopeful John Edwards. "I don't believe in [Edwards]," Hitchens tells Doublethink interviewer Tom Ivancie. "I mean, I told him I wouldn't vote for him. . . . Because I'd vote for Bush. The important thing is this: Is a candidate completely serious about prosecuting the war on theocratic terrorism to the fullest extent? Only Bush is." Hitchens also scoffs at the Everyman pitch of the millionaire trial lawyer turned North Carolina senator: "Oh, that's all [bleep]. . . . Spare us the false populism."
Meanwhile, Hitchens suggests that old nemesis Bill Clinton was a CIA plant at Oxford, where both were students in the late 1960s. "I think he was a double," Hitchens says. "Somebody was giving information to [the CIA] about the anti-war draft resisters, and I think it was probably him. We had a girlfriend in common -- I didn't know then -- who's since become a very famous radical lesbian."
Oh no, there's more news on the "I just discovered Jews in my family tree" front:
In recent weeks, Gen. Wesley Clark, the former NATO commander who is considering a run, revealed to the Forward newspaper that he descends "from generations of rabbis" in Minsk, and former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has touted his Jewish wife and children. But Lieberman campaign press secretary Jano Cabrera told us the Connecticut senator isn't worried: "Oy vey. All this talk about who is Jewish and who isn't is absolutely meshuga. That said, there's only one candidate in this race with a real lox box."