Tina Brown, the reputedly super-sophisticated editor-in-chief of the New Yorker, attended the state dinner at the White House for Tony Blair last week. But her "Fax from Washington" in last week's issue, which sounds more like a late-night love letter, raises the important question: Was it her first time?
We quote: "As the President of the United States walks with Hillary and the Blairs into the State Dining Room, his height, his sleekness, his newly cropped, iron-filing hair, and the intensity of his blue eyes project a kind of avid inclusiveness that encircles every jaded celebrity he passes. He is vividly in the present tense and dares you to join him there."
Well, maybe it was her first time. And apparently no one told Brown that friends don't quote friends, especially other media, making small talk at state dinners. ABC's Peter Jennings rushed out to take a call, and Brown rolled her tape recorder: "I had to be called out for another sleaze bulletin, " Peter complained to Tina. "Apparently the [ New York] Times is going with a story tomorrow that Betty Currie has turned." Someone asks Jennings if it's a Ken Starr leak. "'Maybe. But this is not Matt Drudge,' Jennings says gravely. "This is the Times. And Joe Lelyveld'" the newspaper of record's executive editor -- "'is not an easy lay.'"