Claire Shipman's first husband
But it wasn’t just Shipman. Cokie Roberts, an ABC journalist and panelist on This Week, also participated:
But Shipman’s behavior pales with that of Roberts. Singled out by Jarrett at the beginning of the forum, Roberts says nothing until she appears in “Breakout Session 1.” At which time, incredibly, the ABC News/NPR journalist says this, bold emphasis mine:
“In recent days I actually sort of showed up on Valerie Jarrett’s doorstep and said ‘We need to talk about this Council on Women and Girls and get it going and move it along. I feel very strongly that these issues are all about productivity and competition for the United States of America….’”
Even before her husband became Obama’s chief spokesman, Shipman gushed over Obama. On October 31, 2008, the journalist wondered how the Democrat’s wife dealt with her husband being “lusted after by all of these women out there.” After all, according to Shipman, Obama is a “political rock star.”
On January 18, 2007, Shipman gushed over the “fluid poetry” of the candidate.
Claire Shipman's first husband
FOR CNN’S CLAIRE SHIPMAN AND Steve Hurst, married life has always taken its cues from the news. Take their wedding: Posted in Moscow in the summer of 1991, bureau chief Hurst and producer-correspondent Shipman scrambled to cover the George Bush-Mikhail Gorbachev summit and entertain a CNN delegation of 85 while scheduling—and rescheduling—their nuptials. By the time they walked down the aisle of a Russian Orthodox church a week later, the two were exhausted, as well as ecstatic. After a brief trip to the Black Sea, they returned to Moscow on Aug. 18 only to get a call at 5 a.m. the next day reporting that a coup was brewing. Says Hurst: “We threw on our clothes and ran to the office.”
Plunging into the story, the newly-weds had their first professional spat. While Boris Yeltsin barricaded himself inside the Russian Parliament, rallying opposition to Communist hard-line coup plotters, Shipman found a bulletproof vest, talked her way inside the building and began feeding reports to CNN. Defying an order from Hurst (who had heard rumors that the military was moving in), she stayed until 4 a.m. “She wasn’t happy about leaving,” he admits. “Let’s just say we were in complete disagreement about the danger.”
These days frantic 14-hour shifts are still a part of their lives, but danger, for the most part, is not. Based in Washington, where Hurst, 48, covers the State Department for CNN and Shipman, 32, is a White House correspondent, the two admit that they long for the emotional intensity of Moscow. “I miss it horribly,” says Hurst, who went to the Soviet Union as an Associated Press correspondent in 1979 and spent two years as NBC’s bureau chief before signing on with CNN in 1988. “When we left, Gorbachev called us in to say goodbye and gave us each a bear hug. It’s that kind of place.”
http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20100841,00.html
For her part, Claire was concerned that their romance—which developed five months after Hurst’s marriage collapsed and Kathy returned to the U.S. with Sally, now 22, Anne, 19, and Ellen, 16—would spark controversy. Although she had proved her mettle as a reporter, she worried about dating Steve. “I thought, ‘This is a big decision,’ “ she says. “I thought I would be accused of destroying his marriage and marrying him to get ahead.”
Now a doctoral student at Illinois State University, Kathy is on good terms with the two; all three daughters visit Steve and Claire in their elegant Cleveland Park home, which is filled with Russian artifacts. Says Shipman: “They’ve all really accepted me.” And while they’d like to have children of their own, CNN’s high-profile team is holding off for the moment. Explains Shipman with a laugh: “Not to sound too planned, but we’re waiting until we get through the next election.”
While the news stories were sexy, daily living in a country recuperating from nearly 75 years of communism was not. Shipman lived in a relatively comfortable CNN corporate apartment with Hurst, though, which she adorned with Russian antiques and domestic items that she hauled back one suitcase at a time from every trip abroad. Even while working nearly nonstop, she found time to figure out where to get furniture reupholstered or have curtains made in a city with no Yellow Pages and with much worse obstacles. “She knew how to rush around Moscow and get things done Russian-style,” says Lewis, who visited Shipman on a few occasions while he was in Moscow.
Russia also was the beginning of Shipman’s reputation for gracious and lively entertaining, her apartment becoming a virtual hospitality suite for ex-pats. “It seems like I was always being fed and watered at their place,” DeGroote says. Shipman did this not only in Moscow, but at the couple’s rented countryside dacha. “It was a real social hub, like a literati,” DeGroote says of the summer house and its guests. “People were coming and going, wine was flowing and there were intense conversations about this and that. High-powered politicians, top-level journalists, filmmakers, young American entrepreneurs — it seemed everyone who was interesting would come through their place at one point.”
Although while growing up in Columbus, Ohio, she ran with the popular crowd, by the time Shipman settled at Columbia, she focused on her studies and was not very involved with nonacademic campus life. “I think I spent more time with my professors than with other students,” she says. “My husband is always teasing me that I was such a goody two-shoes.”
When Shipman relocated to Washington after finishing at SIPA in mid-1994, she encountered Carney again on the White House beat, which he was covering for Time. When the two had first met, on Red Square, they did not hit it off, but this time they commiserated about their Russia experiences and became friends. “He was really nice and sweet and helped me break into the beat, so I saw his good side,” Shipman says.
Carney went out of his way to help Shipman get acclimated. “Washington journalism is very different than doing a story abroad,” Carney says. “It’s all about who you know. It’s access journalism and much more complicated.” In 1996, Shipman separated from Hurst, and Carney embarked on a long road to persuading her to go out with him. She gave in, and friends say it was one of the best moves she has made. They were married just after the Ken Starr report to Congress in 1999, and on October 15, 2001, they had their first child, red-haired Hugo James Carney.
The two have never been directly competitive, because even when they were covering the White House, Shipman’s day revolved around getting breaking news on television while Carney worked for a weekly news magazine. Now that they’re married, she reads his pieces in Time religiously, and he sets his alarm clock to watch her on Good Morning America. They often speak Russian — at home to keep up their practice and in public for privacy. The couple doesn’t avoid bringing work home. “You understand what the other person is going through, but sometimes you end up living your job so much. Because we’re doing such similar things, it can be hard to escape,” Shipman says. When one of Shipman’s sources called her during the night to tell her that Al Gore’s runningmate would be Senator Joseph Lieberman, giving Shipman one of her bigger scoops of the campaign, Carney was right next to her but says he never would have thought of using it.
In addition to writing for Time, Carney appears regularly as a guest on CNN Inside Politics, The McLaughlin Group, The Charlie Rose Show and Hardball. “I’ll have feelings of being really proud and a little envious if he has a great story,” Shipman says. “But it’s always pride first.”
http://www.college.columbia.edu/cct_archive/mar02/mar02_cover_shipman.html
Early in last year’s presidential campaign, Shipman was able to get an exclusive interview with the Gore family — including the candidate’s mother, who rarely does interviews — at the family farm. NBC sent three crews and spent the day there dashing around with Shipman.
But it didn’t end when the cameras were turned off. “Then the vice president said, ‘We’re cooking burgers here. Why don’t you stay?’” Erlenborn recounts. “We stayed until 11 p.m. I guarantee they wouldn’t have done that for Sam Donaldson!”
She’s known for her jammed closets, and for pulling endless new outfits out of a garment bag on road trips.
To be a real communist, he should trade that kitchen for a hot plate that works only for the few hours that electricity is available.
Add these to numerous photos of Obama that have been created. . And a BC also.
If this had been an exposé in Palin they would have subtracted books.
I happen to have two Nazi propaganda posters framed in my family room. I got them from my time when I lived and worked in Germany.
That’s not a problem, is it?