The Fix

Barbara lands Hillary, Bloomberg blows it -- twice -- and will Nicole and Penelope duke it out? Plus: How stupid does Joe Millionaire think women are?

By Karen Croft

May 16, 2003 |

Well, big mama Barbara Walters got the biggest get. (Or, should we say the biggest get after Osama and Saddam.) There was much speculation over who would get to interview Hillary Clinton during her availability around the book deal ($8 million for "Living History" in case you've been distracted). Now we hear the one-on-one will air Sunday, June 8, presumably opposite "60 Minutes" where Bill Clinton usually spars with Bob Dole each week. The big question about the Hillary interview is whether we can believe it when both ABC and Clinton's people say that there are "no ground rules" for the encounter. Does this mean Barbara can ask Hillary what kind of tree she'd be? (N.Y. Post)

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg needs some brain tuning, especially when it comes to people's names. At an NYU commencement speech yesterday he introduced N.Y. Yankees manager Joe Torre as "Joe Torr-ez." Torre laughed it off, but it's hard to ignore since a few days earlier at another graduation ceremony Bloomberg introduced folk singer Pete Seeger as Pete Rose. Maybe it's the baseball stuff that confuses Mr. Bloombrenner. (N.Y. Daily News)

We hear that the encounter to watch for at Cannes this week is the one many bodyguards are trying to prevent -- between Tom Cruise's gal pal Penelope Cruz and ex-wife Nicole Kidman. We think there's a chance Tom has hired the entourages protecting these ladies. After all, no man wants his ex comparing notes with his current -- that kind of confab has a way of uncovering all the lovely lies. (IMDB)

The CBS affiliate in Corpus Christi, Texas, has opted not to air a two-part miniseries this weekend about Adolf Hitler. The station's manager gave his reason: "The Nazi concept, if you will, is still very real, and I think anything we do to give that particular thinking a venue, a format, is a mistake. More people that are already on the fence on this and have issues might find something in this character to identify with, and that bothers me tremendously." Hmm ... what was that saying about people who ignore history being doomed to repeat it? Maybe he missed school that day. (Knox News)

Fox TV programmers are a wiley bunch. They announced some of their fall line-up this week, including teases about a new version of "Joe Millionaire" and a show called "Skin" -- "a new drama about the porn industry." Now all they have to do is find women who either haven't heard of the first Joe or who are stupid enough to fall for the rich-guy fake-out again and they need to figure out how to deal with the porn industry on network TV. You know, somehow we think they'll pull it off. Unless, of course, they are blown out of the lowest-common-denominator water by UPN's "The Mullets," which is billed as "about a bunch of blue-collar brothers who love wrestling and wear their hair in mullets." Is it time to shoot the TV yet? Nope, gotta wait for the last season of "The Sopranos" ... (Washington Post)

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