Tom Brokaw

If you remember this year's White House Correspondent's Dinner, you weren't there. Felix Gillette, John Koblin, and Choire Sicha flood the zone in D.C..

Janet Silver is moving from Houghton Mifflin to Nan Talese's imprint at Doubleday. Leon Neyfakh checks in with with Ms. Talese who says, "I called Janet and she sent us a list of the authors she had worked with and the ones who’d said they wanted to come with her, if not immediately then eventually." That list may include Philip Roth and Jonathan Safran Foer. Plus: Islam observers on Wieseltier's Amis review; James Frey's PR Dream Team; Spitzer's bio; Nabokov's unfinished novel.  read more »

On Monday, April 28, in the subterranean auditorium of the New York Public Library, Vanity Fair hosted a cocktail hour and convocation of experts grandly titled “Redesigning the World: A Green Way to the Future.” And environmentally concerned New Yorkers Mary Richardson Kennedy (wife of Robert Kennedy Jr.<  read more »

Since returning to the air December 3, Don Imus has seen many of his regular guests come back to the show.

But one probably won't be returning. During an on-air conversation with the columnist James Brady Wednesday, the Post's Page Six reports, Mr. Imus had these words for the former NBC anchor: "He [Brokaw] is not the most courageous person I've ever met in my life," Imus told his listeners on Wednesday. "He's not the guy I'd want to be in a foxhole with."

That came after Mr. Brokaw said in an interview last week that Mr. Imus "should have been fired" for his comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team last April.

Okay. One more thing on Michael Bloomberg’s chat with Tom Brokaw. In this clip, the two discuss the health care plans presented by some of the presidential candidates. Bloomberg notes that the problem with health care is that the cost of uninsured patients is picked up by taxpayers. “I don’t see how these plans force a solution to the problem,” Bloomberg said.

Then, when asked about Romney’s critique of Hillary Clinton’s plan - saying it’s like socialized medicine in Europe - Bloomberg says that’s not such a bad thing.

Afterwards, Brokaw told me, “I think he did fine. Ducked and dodged and went on a little too long, but he knew what he was doing, obviously. “ He added, “I’ve known him a long time and I don’t think he’s closed the door on running for president, which doesn’t mean he’s going to do it. But I think he likes the public arena, which is a good thing.”

Also, in the Did You Know category, here's Brokaw's explanation of how he first got to know the mayor: “He dated a friend of ours, that’s how I first met him, fifteen years ago. Maybe longer.”  read more »

And this: “The day after 9/11 I thought he would be elected mayor.”

Here is a clip of Michael Bloomberg chatting with Tom Brokaw at Cooper Union last night explaining why being mayor in New York is better than being the top official in the country.

Bloomberg explained that if, say, he wanted to change the direction of traffic on Fifth Avenue, “it may be a dumb idea, but tomorrow morning, there’d be a cop on every corner. Every sign would be changed. I mean, it would go northbound.” After some laughter from the audience, he said, “Presidents can’t do that.”

Michael Bloomberg will speak with Tom Brokaw in an installment of the Cooper Union discussions which have already featured presidential candidate John Edwards and presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich.

According to the advisory announcing the Sept. 25 event, which will be hosted by Mario Cuomo, the talk "will focus on finding solutions to the national challenges of education, poverty and the environment."

Cuomo has said the discussions - each usually an hour long - are a venue for detailed answers to the questions and issues facing national leaders, who often don't have the opportunity to get into the nitty-gritty aspects of policy while campaigning.

In an earlier interview in the Observer, Cuomo suggested that Bloomberg could yet have a big influence in the 2008 race for the White House, particularly if he chooses to criticize Rudy Giuliani. Could this be an opportunity for Cuomo to bring about a moment that would put that proposition to the test?

NBC Nightly News last night offered three separate soundbites of Tom Brokaw, first in its opening coverage of the Ford funeral, then in an interview by Brian Williams, then in a special section of excerpts of eulogies. The royal placement, which gave even Henry Kissinger lower billing, continues the NBC pattern, of wheeling Brokaw in to hold forth (usually predictably) on major events, and would seem to reflect Brokaw's reluctance to let go and Brian Williams' filial feelings; his manner when Brokaw appears is somewhat servile. I wonder what the servility masks, but no matter, it's a misuse of precious airtime.

The Mayor gave out 10 "goals" that he wanted the city to achieve by 2030 at Tuesday morning's speech in Flushing on sustainability. Many of them were vague ("cleaner, more reliable power"), others manageable (creating 265,000 more units of housing, which would be below the rate at which they are being built today), and still others quite ambitious (reducing global warming emissions by more than 30 percent).

Bloomberg got some laughs when he showed slides of himself in plaid PJ's and blue fuzzy slippers, but it was Tom Brokaw, who was moderating a panel afterward, who got spontaneous applause for introducing the topic of congestion pricing: "Do you think the city may reap some financial rewards by charging fees for driving into the city and charging people more?"

The panelists generally liked the idea (except for labor leader Ed Ott, who warned it could penalize workers whose only hope of affordable housing lay in the Poconos). Bloomberg's solution to traffic woes, by contrast, was "adding to the capacity of our regional mass transit system."

For the video, try here. (The pajama slides start around 21:00.) The Web site for the sustainability initiative is here.  read more »

- Matthew Schuerman

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