To print this page, select "Print" from the File menu of your browser salon.com > People Oct. 15, 1999 URL: http://www.salon.com/people/col/reit/1999/10/15/np1015 Four score and seven votes ... tops The "higher consciousness candidate" on calling dead presidents, the IQ of corpses and insect diplomacy. Plus: Gary Coleman, plaything of the press? - - - - - - - - - - - - By Amy Reiter Has your candidate been endorsed by the AFL-CIO? So what. By Bill Cosby and Shaquille O'Neal? Big deal. By Michael Jordan and Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan? Whatever. Democratic presidential hopeful Dr. Heather Harder claims she's been endorsed by none other than honest Abe Lincoln. "She was in D.C. visiting Ford's Theatre when she started getting information in her head from him," says Harder 2000 spokeswoman Lori Lennen. Later, she was able to tune him in pretty much whenever she wanted to: "It's sort of like being able to pick up a phone," Lennen explained. And before she knew it, the dead president (who Lennen says is the White House's most-seen ghost) had given the big thumbs-up to her Libertarianesque campaign platform. Harder, who calls herself the "higher-consciousness candidate" and boasts of scoring 30,000 votes in Texas in the 1996 presidential election, has also gotten extra-sensory campaign advice from FDR, JFK and Jefferson, but maintains she doesn't consider their counsel to be written in stone. "Just because you're dead doesn't make you smarter," she has said. Lennen admits the campaign has encountered its share of "cynics, who are turned off by this," but gleefully shares a story of one "very substantial" California businessman who liked Harder's political platform but thought the spirit talk was just so much hokum. Three days after he withdrew his support, says Lennen, "Abe Lincoln came to him and said, 'Four score and seven years ago, call Heather Harder.'" He's a supporter now. So does that mean ol' Abe is behind Harder's stance on, say, UFOs and ETs ? Could be. This passage from the official Harder 2000 Web site does have a certain Lincolnian flair: "Americans can best prepare themselves for [UFO] contact by learning to respect diversity. If we can't get along with our fellow humans because their skin is a different color, they worship differently, speak a different language, or believe a different ideology, how can we hope to exist in a world filled with beings that look like giant praying mantises?" How, indeed. Just try and top that for inclusion, Mr. Bradley and Mr. Gore. - - - - - - - - - - - - Someone's been reading too much Tennessee Williams "You know the joke that the cat's on the roof? This is a dead cat, and they're breaking it to us slowly." -- "NYPD Blue" producer Steven Bochco, filling Daily Variety in on his suspicion that ABC is fixing to yank his hit show off the air. - - - - - - - - - - - - Another reason to feel sorry for Gary Coleman The drinks flowed, the African-tribal-painted topless models posed on podiums and celebs like Christy Turlington, Kyra Sedgwick and fashion man John Galliano circulated, but a group of drunken troublemakers at the Sephora boutique opening-night party this week had eyes only for Gary Coleman. New York party guy Baird Jones tells me one energetic reveler kept trying to grab and pinch Coleman, "taking his hat off constantly or pulling the visor over his face while Coleman oddly kept shouting at him, 'Are you the press? You can't be the press! If you're the press you would not be doing this to me.'" Coleman's tormentor was quickly restrained and ejected, but not before trying to hawk a loogee on the diminutive ex-sitcom star. "I was supposed to be picked up by my limo and then at the party the driver would have come in and doubled as a bodyguard," the little big spender, who recently filed for bankruptcy, told Jones. "But I got lost and missed my limo pickup. I think the guy is out there somewhere still driving around looking for me. I'm just trying to make the best of it. I get hassled like all the time, and I just try to ignore it. What else can I do?" - - - - - - - - - - - - Oh no, now Kate's caught it "I like having a good pair of tits on me and a good ass. If I didn't, I don't think I'd feel attractive." -- Kate Winslet, displaying a full-fledged case of the dread mammarius approbitis in Premiere. - - - - - - - - - - - - Juicy bits Call it the return of the hustler. Larry Flynt says he's dug up some foul-smelling dirt on George W. Bush, much to the White House's pleasure, but isn't sharing just yet, reports MSNBC's Jeannette Walls. "It looks very good, but I can't give any more information," Flynt reportedly told a group of students at England's Oxford University. "You want a hint? Well, it's not cocaine." Here's hoping the upcoming mud is a little stickier than the stuff he flung during the impeachment hearings. Even her astrologer couldn't help with this one. Nancy Reagan is reportedly doing just fine, thanks, after falling and breaking a rib at home last week. The former first lady's spokeswoman, Joanne Drake, told the Associated Press that Reagan is "in pain, but she's doing OK" and that she fell while "looking through a box of old photos." That daredevil. When Heathrow Airport security guards think about Diana Ross, they'll just have to touch themselves, because the diva's seeing to it they won't get the chance to touch her again. Ross recently flew a private jet into a tiny airport in South Wales in order to avoid more nasty breast-brushing scuffles at Heathrow. Diana, really, get a grip. salon.com | Oct. 15, 1999