America/Conor O'Clery: Bill Clinton is back on the road. The former president was in Chicago on Thursday to promote his 957-page book, My Life, which will arrive in American bookstores on June 22nd, price $35.
"A lot of presidential memoirs, they say, are dull and self-serving," Clinton reportedly told an enthusiastic audience of 2,500 booksellers. "I hope mine is interesting and self-serving." He said he never suffered writer's block when penning his memoirs in longhand except when it came to special prosecutor Kenneth Starr's treatment of his Arkansas friend Susan McDougal. McDougal was imprisoned for refusing to testify against Clinton when Mr Starr summoned her before a grand jury. "I got so angry I couldn't write for four hours," said Clinton, who pardoned her when leaving office.
The former president said nothing about Monica Lewinsky (who was spotted recently browsing in dark sunglasses through non-fiction in my local bookstore in Manhattan) but complained that in his impeachment he had been held to a different standard that then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich. He would not be settling scores he said, but will "take on a lot of water for not just the personal but the political errors I made and how they came to be." Clinton said he liked the first president Bush and offered only muted criticism of the second, though he draw applause when he said "politics is not religion and we should govern on the basis of evidence, not theology." Clinton said his editor Robert Gottlieb had to cut huge portions from the manuscript and wouldn't let him write "a whole page on High Noon, my favourite movie." The former president got an estimated $10-12 million advance from publisher Alfred Knopf, which may just about cover the legal bills from the Starr inquisition.
The book tour will bring Clinton back into public life after what friends say is a long period of writing and boredom. One report said that Clinton's reception from the bookseller was so warm he said, "Wow, you guys be careful treating me that way; you'll have me thinking I'm president again." Many there clearly wish he was. A statement by Sonny Mehta, head of Alfred A. Knopf publishers, that "if the law were different and he were able to run again he would win by a landslide," was apparently greeted with wild screams and applause.
John Kerry had his own 'intern issue' last February when the media picked up a story that he may have had an affair. It died when he and the woman Alexander Polier denied it. The 27-year-old freelance journalist did not let the matter rest however.
She decided to track down the rumour and this week told her story in New York Magazine. She said she knew Kerry socially and for a while went out with one of his fundraisers. She was in Nairobi with her fiancee Yaron Schwartzman in February when AP rang to say the on-line Drudge Report - which broke the Monica Lewinsky story - was reporting that major US journals were investigating Kerry's alleged affair with a woman "who recently fled the country." Drudge was citing a "close friend" who was telling fantastic stories about what went on, and quoting Wesley Clark that Kerry would implode over an intern issue. Drudge did not name her but the British tabloid the Sun did, and said her father in Pennsylvania had called Kerry a "sleazeball" and her mother had claimed that Kerry once chased after Polier. Her mother was not at home when the reporter called pretending to be a friend, said Polier, and her father, unaware of the rumours, had called Kerry a sleaze-ball for flip-flopping on political issues. As the story heated up, reporters tried every device to talk to her, and someone broke into her e-mails. Thinking it was a Republican, she changed her password to a rude reference to George Bush. As she dug, she discovered that the rumour was originally picked up by Drudge from an obscure political website called Watchblog.com run by a Clark campaign worker.
Someone said it originated from Clark's campaign aide, Chris Lehane but when she called him he denied spreading it and hung up.
She eventually tracked it to its source, a former close friend who had worked for a Republican lobbyist. She called and the friend denied it at first, then broke down sobbing and said "Im very, very sorry. If all this leads back to me, it wasn't intentional." Polier wrote that she then called the Sun reporter to say his source was wrong. He accused her of ambushing him and referred her to the paper's PR department which didn't comment. Finally she called Matt Drudge, who agreed he should have said in his story there was no evidence tying her to John Kerry.
Democrats are hoping Michael Moore's Palme d'Or-wining documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 will help convince Americans to vote against George Bush in November. Another documentary in the works could also boost Democratic candidate John Kerry. George Butler, the moviemaker who made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star with Pumping Iron in 1977, is working on a 90-minute documentary on Kerry based on Douglas Brinkley's biography Tour of Duty. Butler told the New York Observer that Kerry has had a fascinating life but "no one knows what's in it." The documentary-maker should have a better idea than most, having spent a lot of his time as an unofficial paparazzo for Kerry. The Butler-Kerry friendship goes back to 1994 when both were at college. "I thought John was going to be president, even back then," he said. The documentary should be ready just after the Republican convention in September.
The venture carries dangers for Kerry however. It will focus on his anti-war activities in the early 1970s when he accused American soldiers of atrocities in Vietnam, something which troubles many Vietnam veterans.
Tapes have surfaced in the Enron scandal which show how traders at the now bankrupt Houston energy giant helped bring on, and profit from, the California power crisis.
"He just f---s California," says one employee in the tape played on CBS, referring to a senior Enron executive. "He steals money from California to the tune of about a million." "Will you rephrase that?" asks a second employee.
"OK, he, um, he arbitrages the California market to the tune of a million bucks or two a day," replies the first.