3fer: CORZINE's pen. Shrub's PICASSO. Blago's lie detector.

[UTUSN]

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http://www.nypost.com/seven/03042009/gossip/pagesix/corzines_lousy_pen_manship_157943.htm

CORZINE'S LOUSY PEN-MANSHIP

NEW Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine left some folks wondering if he's got the right stuff for another term after a gut-busting gaffe at last weekend's annual Garden State Equality Dinner. As a roomful of black-tie guests - including prominent gay activists, politicians and celebrities - looked on, Corzine took the stage and spoke of his plan to sign New Jersey's "marriage equality law" this year. With a grand flourish, he whipped a pen from his pocket, waved it back and forth and proclaimed it to be "a very important" pen, the one with which he intended to sign the legislation. Then he left the stage, went back to his table - "and abandoned the pen on the podium," a spy recounted to Page Six. Snickers from dinner guests grew louder when the pen rolled to the floor. After several minutes, a young attendee finally picked it up, tapped Corzine on the shoulder and deadpanned, "Excuse me, sir. You dropped your pen."



http://www.nypost.com/seven/03042009/gossip/pagesix/dubya_inspired_157945.htm

DUBYA-INSPIRED

KEN Auletta told a joke at the Guild Hall Lifetime Achievement Awards at Cipriani about how George W. Bush didn't know who Pablo Picasso was. When the laughter died down, a woman yelled, "Does that joke make you happy?" The New Yorker writer later came over to introduce himself to the unidentified heckler, who said, "I hate Bush-bashers. He was my president." But Candice Bergen kept the gag running when she took the stage, saying: "Man, I had some Bush jokes that were really going to kill." She went on to quote Pauline Kael, who'd trashed the star early in her career, saying the only acting flair she had was in her nostrils. Bergen dedicated her award to the critic, who died in 2001.



http://www.nypost.com/seven/03042009/gossip/cindy/phoenix_lets_blagos_book_rise_from_ashes_157933.htm?page=0

PHOENIX LETS BLAGO'S BOOK RISE FROM ASHES

.... The nonlaundered version: In these pages, he, naturally, gets even. And, naturally, some of this evenness naturally means he rolls over player Rahm Emanuel, the former Chicago congressman and current chief of staff of our new president. Put it this way, Rahm is not portrayed well in the book. ... ....

Billowing winds suggest A) major houses might've felt unsure about signing this property. And B) publishers and editors seem not only to have canceled arranged meetings but seem even to have been dissuaded from setting up said meetings. It seems. ....

Here's what else I know. Major VIPs come off badly. Names are named. The president is not treated adoringly. It's like no sausage-eater ever wants to know what goes on in a sausage factory. Blagojevich tells us. He goes behind the scenes. In his version of government underunderbelly, he details how a person's soul gets bought one drop at a time. Free drink, then free dinner, then free trip and up the line. The insinuation being we are all corrupted by the system. It could be a textbook. Put simply, nice Mr. Blagojevich says lots we don't learn in civics class. ....

And how might we know it is the truth and not just settling scores? The publisher plans to have him take a lie detector test "so we can be sure he believes what he says."

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THE PROBLEM WITH A DISCLAIMER is its coming off as defensive, especially when it's preemptive. Trouble is, it's damned if do/don't: NOT including it first results in the predictable problems.

DISCLAIMER re: linking to the NY Post (for to head-off highly predictable, OT/hijacking posts):: Yes, it is a RAG. Yes, it is owned by NewsCorp/Faux's MURDOCH. No, he doesn't Dictaphone content to his gossip columnists. No, "gossip" does NOT equate to "UNtruth" (OR with "triviality" for that matter). These old time gossipers are more journalistically reliable than Tweety and such ilk. Frequently, political tidbits are here first, later to show up in more "respectable" venues. Keep friends close, enemies closer. Cherrypicking intel results in self-fulfilling FALSENESS. I got hooked on these gossipers when they were on the E!1 network and, when they were cancelled, tracked them down and they happened to be at the RAG (NY Post). ALL I read at the RAG are the gossip and the horoscope.