CNN's Cosmo Boy
It's hard being a fun, fearless male at CNN. Just ask Bill Hemmer.
Cosmopolitan mag has crowned the morning anchor "with the boy-next-door good looks" one of its 2005 fun, fearless males -- a title that could not go overlooked by Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.). The affable lawmaker came on CNN's set Thursday morning to talk about the Republican agenda and the president.
NSO director Leonard Slatkin, left, "Nightline" anchor Ted Koppel and newswoman Barbara Walters chat at an ABC brunch at Decatur House.
(Robert A. Reeder -- The Washington Post)
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"By the way," he told co-anchor Soledad O'Brien, "I want to compliment your partner, Bill. I see in Cosmopolitan magazine, [he's] one of the most exciting men in America. You have twins and he gets all the glory." (If you're wondering how Hagel knew, apparently he snuck a peek at his wife's copy.)
The buzz was clearly going around -- commentator David Gergen teased Hemmer off-air: "I didn't know you read Cosmopolitan magazine."
"I thought it was very interesting that a senator on Inauguration Day could take a shot at me," Hemmer told us yesterday. "I took no offense in any way." Surely not. His last words to Hagel? "You'll get yours."
ABC's N.Y. Meets D.C.
ABC News's big guns from New York, including Barbara Walters and "Good Morning America's" Charles Gibson, rubbed shoulders with their D.C. brethren at a post-inauguration brunch yesterday hosted by news chief David Westin.
"We do this every four years," Westin told The Post's John Maynard from the Decatur House, just off still-barricaded Lafayette Square across from the White House. "From New York, we don't get down as often as we should."
At one point, "Nightline's" Ted Koppel chatted up National Symphony Orchestra director Leonard Slatkin. With Koppel's contract expiring at year's end and Slatkin retiring in 2008, had they been discussing their uncertain futures? "We were talking about old-time radio," Koppel revealed.
"This Week's" George Stephanopoulos was a late arrival but not because of late-night inaugural partying. "I went to bed at 10:30 p.m.," he said. "That's late for me."
"This Week" commentator George Will, browsing the gift shop on his way out, reiterated an on-air comment he made Thursday, that it might be time to reconsider the presidential motorcade down Pennsylvania Avenue: "It looked like a military occupation proceeding through a hostile city, like the leader of a banana republic worried about a restive tank regiment."
Bob Dole, on the Mend
If you were wondering where former senator Bob Dole was during the inaug festivities, well, he's recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center from a serious fall that occurred Jan. 11 while moving a suitcase in his apartment.
"He injured his good left shoulder and left arm, and has stitches below his right eye," spokesman Mike Marshall confirmed to us yesterday. "He's fine now, sort of on the mend. His arm is in considerable pain and all swollen."
But that hasn't stopped the 81-year-old from joking with doctors. And Dole "watched every minute of the inauguration in his room," Marshall said.
End Notes
Random inauguration spottings: Condoleezza Rice getting her hair perfected at the Watergate salon in preparation for inaugural night ball-hopping . . . Don King and New York Gov. George Pataki posing together for a photo at a party hosted by Mary Matalin . . . The very serious Bush-Cheney '04 campaign manager-turned-Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman at the Bush twins' favorite hangout, Georgetown prepster bar Smith Point. Speaking of which, we hear Barbs and Jenna were throwing a private inauguration celebration for 150 of their nearest and dearest last night at the you-gotta-be-on-the-list-to-get-in haunt.
-- Compiled by Anne Schroeder
from staff and wire reports
