Coming is Elizabeth Smart’s true personal story.
Age 14, abducted June 2002 from her Salt Lake City home, she details the nighttime capture. Dragged from her bedroom at knifepoint. Pulled up a mountain in pajamas, barefoot. Chained to a tree. Locked inside a fort. No heat, no water, in a desert area. Nine months.
The sheer torture and horrifying experiences include being denied food. Alcohol poured down her throat. She says, “I had to keep myself from retching.” Rapings were daily.
Her kidnapper was sentenced to life in prison. Her own psychological rehabilitation included time with Dr. Oz. Her choice was the same publisher that handled Romney’s story. Both being Mormons, it’s key to why she picked St. Martin’s. The words are so moving that one’s eyes fill with tears reading it.
It looks like Meredith Vieira, and NBC will be doing a special on Elizabeth. So will half the other networks. A New Yorker profile follows.
Publishing executives call her “ethereal, stunning.” At one lunch, although not recognizing her, people “kept bumping into our table, falling over her because she appears so angelic.”
Cats & Kings
Wednesday, after the pre-mayoral vote, John Catsimatidis’ home phone rang.
Bill Clinton. To John whose plane he’s borrowed, home he’s visited, campaign wallets he’s picked: “Don’t feel badly. I lost my first election, too.” . . . Anybody know Prince ‘Future King’ Charles’ bedroom has a special cabinet which holds stores of freely sent new products and that HRH grabs every new toothbrush and gargle on the market? Royals dig freebies, too.
Politics and parties in DC
Despite Syria, unemployment, healthcare, etc., Washington parties on. Not our Conundrum-in-Chief. He doesn’t socialize. He only likes three people and they’re all from Chicago. But last week Nancy Pelosi celebrated her 50th wedding anniversary. Big nighttime gala. To prove how rosy things are, she was all in red. With matching jewelry.
Princely room
So, while roaming the US, Qatar’s princelings see a photo of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia’s 800-room Greenbrier. Built Civil War time, called America’s Guest House, having accommodated 26 presidents, the huge property has its own casino, horses, croquet lawn, golf course etc.
Not knowing what she’s staring at, this Highness thinks it’s 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and says to the Highness husband: “I didn’t know the White House has a golf course.”
Anyway, they went there and took eight bedrooms.
A green DA?
Ken Thompson beat Charles “Joe” Hynes to be Brooklyn’s DA. A mention of Thompson’s vast prosecutorial experience:
Not served long, no administrative experience, never headed a bureau. His convictions, mostly low- to medium-level. His fame, minor participation on prosecuting the cop who had a roll in the Louima case. He’s equipped to run one of America’s largest, busiest, most complex DA offices?
New York’s drowning in its political pool.
Goings on . . .
Sept. 25, to support Manhattan Community College, Roberta Flack, Chevy Chase, Paul Shaffer play together at downtown’s Fiterman Art center . . .
More do-goodings: Momofuku bartending the 30th at Ma Peche. Proceeds to City Harvest . . . Pele celebrating the Jewish holiday at Primola . . . Through noshing McDonald’s New Mighty Wings, Jenny McCarthy told Erik Estrada she had a crush on him back in the Stone Age.
Alec Baldwin when congratulated on his newborn infant: “Thank you. I gave birth to my grandchild.”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.