T A B L E_.T A L K

What are your guilty reading pleasures? Confess in the Media area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Are men better writers than women?
By Laura Miller
A Harper's essay takes up the touchy question of whether size in literature matters
(06/03/98)

Why do Jewish cartoonists get away with it?
By Eric Alterman
When Woody Allen exposes his neuroses, he's a self-hating Jew; when Art Spiegelman does it, he's a genius
(06/01/98)

Feasting on Frank
By Sara Nelson
The body wasn't cold when booksellers and other media purveyors got busy selling Sinatra tributes
(05/29/98)

The rise and fall of Paul "Spanker" Johnson
By Christopher Hitchens
The right-wing historian's longtime mistress deals him the unkindest whack of all
(05/28/98)

Return of the journalist supervillains!
By James Poniewozik
The moral posturing that surrounds media scandal obscures regular, run-of-the-mill journalistic sleaze
(05/27/98)

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BROWSE THE
MEDIA CIRCUS
ARCHIVE

Arianna UPSTAGED BY "Baywatch" BABE
--Maher FLAUNTS HIS "DAUGHTER"

BY CAROL LLOYD

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Recipe for Media Ghoulash

1. Combine the following in a faux-European atmosphere:

• 1 crossover celebrity-politician wrapped in a satin bathrobe
• 1 talk-show host garnished with a ripe girl-woman
• 1 infamous object of ridicule
• 1 blond bombshell, well-broiled
• 2 quarts paparazzi sweat
• 1 Orthodox priest

2. Lay on a bed of well-dressed freeloaders.

3. Sprinkle with crisp servants, crisp vegetables and crisp white wine.

4. Surround with press people who know better than to call this news.

5. Do not steep or marinate. It is best imbibed quickly before it rots.

A tasty, viscous dish was served up last Tuesday at Arianna Huffington's book party. Outside, under the curved façade of Gianfranco Ferre's boutique, on a mock-Italian street in Beverly Hills, about 200 people gathered to gnaw on seafood pot stickers and gape at each other's name tags.

Bruce, a New York food consultant, explains why he is here. "Friends of friends of friends invited me," he shrugs, professing no interest in the guest of honor. "Why is anybody here?"

I'm here because I interviewed Arianna recently and she e-mailed me and invited me to this party.

"I'm in the entertainment industry," answers another woman with blithe, Los Angelean logic. (This statement, I've realized, can be a viable answer to almost any snoopy question in L.A. Why did you get a nose job, change your name, stop returning your friends' calls, begin to meditate?) She raises her eyebrows mysteriously when I ask what that means. "I'm a producer," she says.

"What do you produce?"

"Entertainment."

"Lots of cable access," says my star-gazing spy, scanning the crowd for important people. He points them out one by one. He's right: The place is crawling with the self-anointed beneficiaries of FCC charity.

Paula Jones' mediaphiliac ex-lawyer, Susan Carpenter-McMillan, arrives and heads swivel. Tan and as prepackaged as a Twinky, she busies herself giving out her phone number and singing the praises of her newest cause: chemical castration for sex abusers. "That was the toughest case of my life," she says, referring to the Paula Jones trial. Her interlocutor, an aging monument to the evolution of nip-and-tuck technology, groans empathetically. "But now it's my nose to the grindstone," McMillan says, jutting her small, chiseled snout forward. I wonder how many kinds of grindstone it has already seen.

The woman of the hour arrives, majestic in a black-and-white striped suit, and sweeps through the crowd, greeting, hugging and connecting with people at an unbelievable pace. When she reaches me, she kisses the air around my face and cries, "Let me introduce you to some people!" The priest from St. Sofia's Greek Orthodox Church is the closest warm body. I turn to say hello to him and she is already 10 feet away, moving viruslike through the crowd.

The priest immediately excuses himself. There is no conversation here, only the semblance of being together in a real place with real people.

Bill Maher, who is hosting the event along with George magazine, arrives next. He wears a young woman on his arm with the same proud indulgence that she wears her tiny black shift: like something just picked out last night but to be tossed away tomorrow. Later, a friend tells me that he sardonically introduced his date to another reporter as "my daughter, my fiancée." "But don't steal her line," my friend says. "That's her line!"

Cameras fire like machine guns as concentric circles gather around Bill and Arianna. The whole scene resembles the way different species of birds interact when thrown food at the park. The celebrities feast at the center like giant geese; the guests scurry in schools as hungry and fearful as pigeons. Cocky photographers strut through the crowd crowing their opinions while carrion journalists hover silently at the outskirts, waiting to descend at the first sight of carnage. (There are representatives from the New Yorker, the L.A. Times and sundry other publications at this estimable event.)

The food consultant's question hangs uncomfortably in the air. Why is anybody here? Despite what's been written on the invitations, it can't be Arianna's book, "Greetings From the Lincoln Bedroom," which sits in vast lonely piles at a well-manned desk. There is not even the simulation of perusal. We are a gathering, waiting for a spectacle.

Then it happens. A Plasticine, blond mirage clatters up the cobblestones complete with entourage. The cameras whirl and crackle, and a balding photographer croaks: "You are the most gorgeous thing I have ever seen. I've just got to take your picture." She stops and poses -- lifting her ample, tanned cleavage to the flashbulb's glare. Her dark-haired date steps aside. "You are a lucky, lucky man," the photographer screams at him. "I've never seen anyone so gorgeous, so sexy, so fabulous. She's the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen in my entire life. She's incredible. I can't believe my eyes. She's amazing. You're amazing. Hold that smile. You amaze me. You're the most unbelievably incredible ..."

I turn to my spy for identification.

"I have no idea who she is," he says, watching the feeding frenzy. "And I'm not sure they do either."

The pigeon flocks shift as the blond stork approaches Arianna and Bill. The three pose with their arms around each other; the blond, who had been given the book to hold, is directed to keep it clear of sightlines to her breasts.

"This crowd sucks," Maher cracks into a microphone, after the crowd fails to respond to some anti-Clinton jokes. Introducing Arianna as someone "who'll do anything for money," his cheerful derision keeps her giggling. He then makes a pitch for their charity project, a school for inner-city children. Arianna, wearing the stars-and-stripes satin bathrobe from her cover photo, takes the microphone. She applauds George magazine for attempting to seduce the politically disenfranchised through humor, blames Maher for her dissolution into "a hack comedian with a funny accent" and thanks failed California gubernatorial candidate Al Checchi for breaking her ex-husband Michael Huffington's record -- showing that it now takes $40 million to lose a statewide race.

At this moment I begin to think that this strange cross-section of well-heeled humanity may actually have some raison d'être. Could there be a demented method to this madness? The desire to bring people into the political fold through comedy seems a worthy enough cause.

Then Arianna does the unthinkable: She bursts into song.

No matter that she sings to a pre-recorded tape of herself singing. No matter that she cannot sing live or on tape. "Dear Miss Lewinsky," a modest satirical ditty sung to the tune of "Gee, Officer Krupke" from "West Side Story," is the best, most enlightening moment of the evening. "Dear kindly Mr. Clinton, why don't you take my calls? You just ignore my hintin', you snub me in the halls," warbles Arianna. "You never say the sweet things you used to say to me, like, 'Oral sex is not adultery.'" The filmy gauze of respectability has completely dropped to the floor, exposing the queen as the incorrigible media slut that she is. Sating public desires by subjecting herself to total humiliation, she embraces the role of the fool with remarkable élan. Her days as a self-righteous, right-wing apparatchik seem like just a whisper in her past.

But she doesn't want to go too far. Arianna declines to sing the second song she had planned, "The Girl from Ipanema" ("Short and dark and young and chubby, another intern eyes the First Hubby, and when she passes, the First Lady's glasses get steamed"), and emerges from the crowd looking rather vulnerable. People aren't flocking to her side. My spy tells her she has guts. She's laughing, but there's a kind of terror playing in her eyes. It must be as surreal for her as for anyone.

Meanwhile the fanfare around the blond chick has increased, upstaging the concept of a "book party" all together. Now the priest is posing with his arms around her. "That's going to come back and haunt you," says my companion, who has now had enough wine to lubricate his chutzpah. The priest chortles with furtive glee.

My spy turns to the blond: "Who are you? And why is everyone taking your picture?"

"I'm the new 'Baywatch' babe. Brooke Burns." She shakes our hands heartily and launches into a detailed explanation of the all-new "Baywatch." No more Pamela Anderson or Yasmine Bleeth. "The show is trying to go for a more natural, athletic image." She flexes her skinny arms and her impossible boobs seem to stand at attention.

"It's not the most intellectual show in the world," my companion begins to theorize. "But it seems like they're trying to focus the cast to provide more continuity."

The woman stops, dumbfounded. "Wow, that's right! How did you know? What's your name again?"

"How do you know Arianna?" I ask.

"I don't really. My publicist arranged it."

"She arranged the party?"

"Well -- I think we have the same publicist." She glances around for her manager, her confident surfer-girl smile showing the slightest sliver of anxiety. "I'm not sure. Um, I could find out for you."