On eBay, Reeling in Business Upstate
Tim Damon makes one really nice fly rod. Just ask Damon Rods owner George H. W. Bush . The former president has ordered two for Dubya. But as of a couple of years ago, few people had heard of the fishing outfitter based in upstate New York. That's when Damon got The Call: Would he join a co-op dreamed up by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and the St. Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce to sell local crafts on eBay? He did. Sales jumped 150 percent, and now he's even selling overseas. Clinton's reward: a Damon rod and his vote for her re-election. "She's been really helpful to us," says Damon. "I was surprised."
And therein lies one key reason Clinton leads New York GOP opponents 2 to 1 in polls. Clinton has leveraged her name to bring together big and little firms like Damon's to make money on the Internet. In fact, some call her "Senator eBay." St. Lawrence chamber Executive Director Karen St. Hilaire says Clinton "opens doors that would have never been opened." And quickly. Just two weeks after Clinton, St. Hilaire, and their staffs dreamed up the Northern Adirondack Trading Cooperative, an eBay vice president was in Clinton's Washington offices designing a program for "upcountry" vendors like Damon Rods.
"Senator Clinton's goal," says aide Philippe Reines , "is to reel in business for New York and help the little fish compete with the big fish--in this case, literally."
More Spanish for The Speaker
House Speaker Dennis Hastert is brushing up on his Spanish and wants fellow Republicans to do the same. The reason, he says, is obvious: If the GOP talks the talk, maybe even more Hispanics will walk their walk. Hastert took two years of Spanish in college and practiced it while working for the YMCA in Venezuela and Colombia in the 1960s. He led by example last week, promising Hispanic publishers that the GOP would provide "oportunidad. " He did admit, however, that " mi espanol es mal. "
No News in Osama's Outtakes
Seems even Arab TV's al Jazeera Satellite Channel has heard more from Osama bin Laden than it wants to. Bush insiders reveal that they believe the network hasn't aired big chunks of tapes showing bin Laden blabbing away. It's doubtful that al Jazeera is withholding the tapes because the administration has asked it not to run bin Laden's inflammatory speeches. Such remarks have been aired. These tapes, the insiders believe, contain bin Laden's thoughts on nonterrorism issues--comments that just aren't too newsy.
Hunted Down, This Fox Bites Back
Let the media war begin. What started with a Newsweek column imagining the Watergate scandal today has turned into a delicious fight. Last week Jonathan Alter 's column took a dig at the Fox News Channel, suggesting that Fox boss Roger Ailes would have banned the word Watergate on air, choosing instead the pro-Nixon Assault on the Presidency . Funny stuff to lefties. But not to the folks at Fox, who saw nothing but sour grapes: Alter, it seems, had once sought a job from Ailes, but ended up working for rival MSNBC. After we told Alter of the Fox reaction, Alter went on Arianna Huffington 's blog, lashing out at "the bullies at Fox" and taking another shot at Ailes. "Mr. Dish It Out apparently can't take it," Alter wrote. He also claimed that Ailes, when writing op-ed articles about Republicans, routinely fails to note that he once worked for President Nixon. That was enough for Fox. It turns out that Ailes had wanted to keep the argument private, writing a confidential retort to Alter on June 7. It was only after Alter started blogging that the Fox people decided to air the conflict, releasing Ailes's letter to Whispers. "I was disappointed by your recent cheap shot about me in Newsweek ," Ailes wrote to Alter. "In nine years of the Fox News Channel, I've never banned any word, phrase, or story," he said. Yes, Ailes said, he did work for Nixon, but it was "for about five months as a TV producer. I had no editorial control. I was 28 years old." Then came the twist of the knife: Apparently referring to media scandals like Newsweek 's retracted story of U.S. troops abusing a Koran, Ailes wrote, "The Fox News Channel didn't report something that just got people killed, nor have we fired our executive editor, our top producers, our anchors, and we don't have a former attorney general investigating our journalism." Ouch. And of Alter, Ailes wrote, "You've done some good work in your career. I wish you'd get back to that."
A Helping Hand for Eating Green
The PETA police don't miss much when it comes to eating of furry critters, so it makes sense that they've seized on Bill Clinton 's shift to a greener diet. Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, tells us she has encouraged Clinton to stay the course and even sent him some "faux chicken patties." And she feels Clinton's pain about the challenge of eating vegetarian, so Newkirk has offered him the services of PETA's chef.
For Info Minister, a New Kind of Flack
It was a joke when Jano Cabera gave himself the title of "minister of information" when he was the spokesman for Sen. Joe Lieberman 's 2004 presidential bid. But it's no joke with his new job. That's because Cabrera, who's also spoken for Al Gore and the Democratic Party, is off to Baghdad to teach political leaders how to communicate. "I've had to deal with incoming all my career," says Cabrera, who'll wear a flak jacket and travel in armored convoys as part of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs. "But this will be a little bit different," he says. A friend suggests another motive: Cabrera's going into the war zone to pick up a few war fighting tricks to help his Dems back home.
The Virtues of a Hybrid Commute
Add Northern Virginia Republican Rep. Tom Davis to the growing converts to hybrid vehicles. But an aide says Davis didn't make the switch to the Ford Escape just to save at the pump. He jumped to cut his commute time, since Virginia lets one-passenger hybrid vehicles drive in the high-occupancy lanes during rush hours.
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With Marianne Lavelle
This story appears in the June 20, 2005 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.