At Circo, following HBO’s “Game Change,” an operative involved in Sarah Palin’s heady VP-maybe days, said:
“There are inaccuracies. Julianne Moore as Sarah saying she won’t stand on the stage with anyone who was pro-choice? Please. I was on Sarah’s plane. Small plane. No first-class section or anything. I’d written the women’s rights speech the night before but couldn’t be with her or give it directly to her because, although she was in the next hotel room in Reno, it had first to be faxed to McCain’s people in DC before she even saw it.
“I was paid $50,000 a month to teach her women’s rights and craft the speech. She has a photographic memory. They worried she’d memorize it instantly and say it, whether they’d approved the words or not. She often went dark for four days before a major address. She’d pray over it.
“This 30-minute Henderson, Nev., talk she scanned. It was on YouTube. And that stage held pro-choice women. Sarah carried the whole operation. No venue could hold the crowds — 10,000 trying to get into a stadium for 3,000 people.
“McCain’s keepers, bald, smoking, hating her, couldn’t deal with a woman candidate. A Christian who needs to pray had no one to pray with. Separated from family, she was kept in her room. A runner who does five miles a day locked in a room!”
Besides married aides having affairs and how certain TV interviews were gotten, this operative added: “Sarah hated spokespeople putting out she was proud of Bristol’s pregnancy. She said she’d never say she’s proud an unmarried teenager was having a baby. She wanted that spokesperson gone. That spokesperson was never gone.”
Ask how folderol gets out when it’s not so, the answer comes back: “Whether there’s something to say or not, staffers talk just to save their asses.”
ON TV, sister-in-law/former manager Patricia Houston just said Bobby Brown was not Whitney’s introduction to drugs. Kindly note, I told you that Mon., Feb. 20. Kiddies, Mother knows . . . Basketball’s Charles Barkley, doing a Weight Watchers commercial, ordered from (the adult Web site) michaelsalem.com: size 48 black bra, pair of 48C silicone breasts and size 16 black patent open-back shoes with a 3-inch heel.
TELEVISION’s unveiling more stylist shows. Enough with cockamamie designers. Nothing’s new. In 1769, Daniel Boone was already a trailblazer. The first to make a fashion statement by wearing roadkill on his head . . . I now make a culinary statement. The Garment Center’s super wonderful Italian restaurant is Il Punto, 38th and Ninth. Owner’s Tony Pecora . . . Word from Chicago: bin Laden and Khadafy have both registered for voting.
THOSE Olsen twins. Mary-Kate and Ashley. Always ducking photographers and avoiding reporters. Younger sister Elizabeth “Lizzie” Olsen, now in the film “Silent House,” is different.
“I’m a happy person with a happy childhood. Maybe my sisters seem different because they’re in the public eye since infancy. That early TV show changed their lives. Not me. So I enjoy meeting and talking to new people.
“I grew up in private school in LA. My friends went to the same schools. I’m also close with my NYU acting conservatory group. It’s basically the same friends since age 5. They’re special, even though I’m now invited to VIP events, which I realize is not reality.
“I live by myself. Tiny apartment. I was living on a smaller budget with a girlfriend who now has a boyfriend. I’ll stay in New York, but I want larger space.
“I’m close to my family. They raised us that working hard is OK. We’re all in show business, but my parents didn’t intend that. I adore my intelligent, talented oldest brother. He’s a screenwriter. In a positive way, he always shoved movies at me. I think I’m in them because of what my brother did for me.”
Lizzie’s psychological film shot in an “eerie” New Rochelle house on the water, which held Friday séances.
One scene had her falling on her face. “It was difficult. Usually there’s padding. But there wasn’t, and reshooting I had to fall 26 times.”
DEFENSE Sec’y Leon Panetta: “In my Congress days I shared a DC house for 10 years. If you’ve seen the movie ‘Animal House,’ our exclusive fraternity included Chuck Schumer. I lived in the bottom livingroom area, and every night before going to sleep, he made me say the Shema Hebrew prayer. I made him say the Hail Mary. He learned from my passion as an Italian. I learned of his passion for Israel.”
Sen. Schumer: “After saying the Stations of the Cross with Leon Panetta, I tried to teach him Yiddish, but it always came out like Latin.”
FAIRWAY, B’way and 74th. This lady bought halved bagels for a breakfast party. One Bronx guest wouldn’t eat them. She said: “Something must be wrong with it. It’s sliced!”
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.