Brown Shoe Leather

It's just about the godawfullest, basement-level, give-it-to-the-intern job in journalism nowadays--at least from the sound of Tina Brown's latest Washington Post/New York Sun column. What must the unfortunate correspondent on the Upper East Side dinner-party beat actually do? He must, she points out, consume expensively catered food and vintage wine while sitting next to "not just an endless round of U.N. ambassadors, visiting foreign ministers and 57 varieties of dignitaries," but also "their wives." The horror.

And yet she does it anyway! Tina Brown herself slogs through this muck, week in and week out, voluntarily--that's how much she cares about the news, about getting the story. For us, her readers. We are blessed.

We are blessed, for instance, in Brown's same aforementioned column, with an answer to the nagging, mystery question: "How come Kofi Annan hasn't been run out of the United Nations on a rail, already?"

It was only after she had dined with Mr. Annan "for the second time in two weeks"--at a Manhattan gala honoring "the Turkish prime minister"--that the dogged Ms. Brown finally uncovered the truth. It turns out the U.N. secretary general has survived in office despite various unchecked genocides and corruption scandals largely because he is "beloved in the higher reaches of New York City" society, whose members "encircle him protectively with feel-the-glow dinners all over town."

Part of it is they just plain like the guy: "his gentle aristocratic charm," his "transparent decency, serenity, and reasonableness," his "luminously graceful Swedish wife." And part of it is arriviste insecurity: "Annan's presence in the striving salons of Manhattan's newly rich [lends] the halo of a higher purpose" to their otherwise ho-hum, another-evening-with-Harold-Evans lives.

Mostly, though, they love Kofi Annan up in New York simply because certain people down here in Washington don't love him, Tina Brown reveals. "Scapegoating him is another exercise in Republican voice-throwing," after all. So "nobody here [on Park Avenue] can bear to think Kofi Annan could do anything truly shabby."

International Penn

In media news, industry mag Editor & Publisher reports that the San Francisco Chronicle has credentialed the actor, director, and finest loudmouth of his generation Sean Penn to cover this week's Iranian elections. Best we can tell, so far Penn hasn't filed any copy, though Editor & Publisher further reports he did bag a big interview last week with Iran's leading presidential "candidate," anti-American Islamic cleric Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

Also last week, no doubt as part of his reporting, Penn visited a demonstration of young Iranian filmmakers and schooled them on the finer points of activism. For instance: those "Death to America" chants? Penn doesn't think they're "productive." Not that he doesn't "understand the nature of where it comes from and what its intention is." It's just that "I think the message goes to the American people and it is interpreted very literally." Those silly Americans, you know--always taking things so literally.

Eager for an idea of what Penn's Iran reporting will look like, the other day we dug up some of the actor's earlier work for the Chronicle--in which Penn described a trip to Iraq he took in December 2003, right around the time Saddam Hussein was pulled from his spiderhole--and, wouldn't you know it, the articles actually contained facts. Such as: "The insurgents are made up of Saddam loyalists, displaced Sunni elite, resentful victims of U.S. raids, the Fedayeen, foreign terrorist cells, and of course many of Hussein's soldiers." All too true.

Penn's metaphors need some work, though. "The fatigue of the trip hits me in the back of the head like a rocket-propelled grenade," he wrote. When Paul Bremer disbanded Hussein's army, Penn wrote that the-now-unemployed Baathist soldiers were told, "You'll never work in this town again." Also, to Penn, a day in war-torn Iraq resembled nothing so much as, um, a day on the slopes: "There's a ski-lodge feel to a house full of war correspondents."

Not quite Hemingway, in other words--but then, who is? Besides, Hemingway never had an escape route: "I call my assistant, Sato, back in San Francisco," Penn wrote, desperate to leave Iraq, "and say 'I don't care if it's a military flight, an NGO or a spaceship, just get me out of here.'"

Wigged Out

In January 2003, The Scrapbook noted the criminal investigations of three officials of the Washington Teachers' Union for misuse of union funds. We dwelled, with perverse admiration, on an FBI affidavit listing the items purchased with union credit cards. President Barbara A. Bullock, who is now serving a nine-year sentence, had in her possession 35 handbags (Chanel, Gucci, Dolce & Gabbana, more Chanel, Fendi, Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Chanel, Chanel, etc.), a 288-piece set of Tiffany silverware, a Tiffany white pearl necklace, a silver Tiffany ring, a silver Tiffany watch, a black cashmere cape with fox trim, a long ranch mink coat, one three-piece mink scarf set, 40 pairs of shoes (mostly Bruno Magli and Salvatore Ferragamo), and (our favorite) "11 wigs."

Bullock was in court again this week serving as a witness against her former underlings and co-embezzlers Gwendolyn Hemphill and James O. Baxter II. While she was on the stand, the assistant U.S. attorney asked, "Miss Bullock, would it be fair to say you like to shop?"

"No, that's not fair," she answered. "I love to shop."

Union corruption, Bullock testified, also underwrote the catering for a wedding at Hemphill's home, season tickets to the Washington Wizards (Baxter's suggestion), fur coats for Bullock and Hemphill's daughter, a $50,000 silver set purchased in New Orleans for Bullock, and $29,000 for dental implants for Hemphill and her husband.

And did we mention 11 wigs?

Give Us an F in Math

Yes, we screwed up a detail last week on John Kerry's grades at Yale. The 77 he received in French was the second highest grade of his freshman year--not the second highest of his undergraduate years.