The big news this Monday morning - which, in your Nation's Capital, is a Federal Holiday, thus almost EVERY office is closed, public and private - is that Talk Magazine abruptly closed up shop last week. No farewell issue, no nothin'.
And if you ever wanted the actual, official definition of the phrase "adding insult to injury" this is it: Matt Drudge had the story on his web site about three hours before an all-hands meeting between the staff and the editor Tina Brown - who according to some publishing sources wanted to be known as one of the single-name people: Madonna, Tina, Newt, - to announce the collapse.
Tina Brown, remember, was the Talk of the Town when she ran Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. Talk Magazine was launched with a party at the Statue of Liberty. Its first issue featured, according to the NY Times, an "interview in which Hillary Clinton said that the abuse her husband suffered as a child had led to chronic infidelity."
"This past August," the Washington Post reported, "the Bush White House banned further contact with Talk after a parody photo spread depicted President Bush's daughters, who had been charged with underage alcohol possession, as jailbirds. In November, a first-person essay by Chelsea Clinton about her experience on Sept. 11 garnered considerable attention."
The final issue's cover featured actor Sean Penn in an interview which treated us to his thoughtful meanderings on the value to society of Bill O'Reilly, John Ashcroft, and others. In Penn's latest movie, by the way, according to a tease in that self-same Talk Magazine: "Penn plays a mentally retarded Beatles fan."
Are you seeing a pattern, here?
CNN's website said with, one hopes, a touch of irony that Talk "never � found the voice it needed to survive." Well, Talk is not just cheap. It's gone.
A release from a Penn of a completely different stripe states: "A Penn State-led review of the available evidence from 66 published studies, supports the view that consuming flavonoid-rich tea and/or chocolate, in moderation, can be associated with reduced risk for cardiovascular disease."
It just doesn't get any better than this: I can eat chocolate all day - In Moderation. In Moderation. - and, if I buy it at the CVS drugstore, it's tax deductible as a medical expense? Yesssss.
The release quotes "Dr. Penny Kris-Etherton, distinguished professor of nutrition" at Penn State. Not just a regular run-of-the-mill professor, mind you, but a DISTINGUISHED professor, so she knows this stuff.
Follow me on this. Indonesia, because it has the largest Muslim population on Earth, is often mentioned as a place where Al Qaeda-type terrorist cells might be hiding and/or training.
When was the last time we heard a lot about Indonesia? Well, yes, when I was there and I wrote:
"You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a building with the name 'Lippo' on it, if you could find a dead cat here, which you can't (if you know what I mean and I think you do)."
But, I mean besides that.
Remember that Lippo Group? Controlled by the Riady clan? Remember that the Riady clan was connected at the hip to the Clinton clan? All the way back to the Little Rock days?
Here's what I'd like someone to look into: Did the Riady/Lippo organization - ever provide any funds to any group now identified as a terrorist organization? It's just possible that one of Indonesia's largest companies might have found it useful to use their vast resources to buy influence with, and safety from, Islamic zealots.
Have you been keeping up with this story that U.S. intelligence services might have placed electronic bugs in a Boeing 767 being outfitted as the official aircraft for China's President Jiang Zemin?
According to yesterday's LA Times, "The highly sophisticated devices were discovered in such places as the president's bathroom and the headboard of his bed."
Wait. According to the ABC News website, Jiang was born in 1926 which makes him about 76 years old. Bedroom? Bathroom? Just what �? Um, never mind.
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