I’m reading Bill O’Reilly’s embargoed copy of “Killing Jesus.”
His “Killing Lincoln” and “Killing Kennedy,” still best sellers, earn even more shekels than he grabs from Fox News. Bill’s too shy to say more than twice in one conversation that he’s cable’s highest-rated news show and most talked-about political mouth.
He told me about this book last year when Holt advanced him eight figures. Realizing naysayers — who all knew Mary and Joseph’s son personally — will nitpick: “I was excited. Separating fact from myth based on various sources with their own agendas, it was extremely difficult delivering an accurate account of how Jesus died, lived and how his message affected the world.”
Listen, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John aren’t bad, but Bill O’Reilly’s great.
“Killing Jesus: A History” is out Sept. 24. It’s thrilling.
A huge after chapter’s called “Afterword.” Another’s “Postscript.” Then one titled “Sources.”
Pages 285 through 293 is Postscript. Everyone’s acknowledged except Pilate and Caiaphas.
What killing could follow Jesus? Marilyn Monroe?
Cuba trip OK
You can go to Cuba. Legally. One-week tours to Havana and beyond. Flights round-trip from Miami are starting.
. . . Kiddies, Mother told you a month ago those TW and CBS guys with their large whatevers would make nice before TV’s big-time fall-time new-time shows. I told you!!!
. . . At one dinner I asked my friend David Frost, whom we just lost, to say something interesting. His smartass answer? “The rolls are great.”
Odds & ends
Don Johnson and the missus Kelley furniture-buying at Spruce in Rhinebeck. But they live in Santa Cruz, Calif.
. . . A designer 50 years, Carleton Varney’s 30th book “Decorating in the Grand Manor” decorates our bookshelves next month.
. . . So, has England a kidney bank? Answer: No, but it has a Liverpool.
. . . Fact: The last Revolutionary War vet lived to 105. Geriatricians estimate in 300 years man will live to 572. Great, maybe by then my contractor will show up.
Swimmer’s dream true
Diana Nyad, after five tries, the first swimmer to breast stroke 103 miles nonstop from Cuba to Florida.
“Never too late to start your dream,” she told me.
Yeah, OK, but she’s 64.
“Food and water’s extended through a tube from a companion boat monitoring me. But we never touch one another. It’s a bathing cap and custom suit.”
To prep, she greased her body, trained, practiced breathing exercises, inhaled specific foods, iced her shoulders hours at a time. And ate zero at our dinner together.
Great, historic, record-breaking, a champion, OK. But, like, why? She never thought of knitting?
Cain’s able
Fox News contributor Herman Cain, a conservative voice in this administration’s “destruction” between Main Street’s “working class” and DC’s political class on his weekly dot-com and 9-to-noon daily syndicated Cox Media show, says: “After 100 years of tax-code hell, it’s gotten worse.
Obamacare’s IRS is now the health-care police.
“To replace our tax code with a freer market and citizen-centric approach, Vote for Free Tax, Flat Tax or my 9-9-9 plan. Pick-a-Tax Plan could demand Congress remove the existing code, our barrier to economic growth. Please join your fellow patriot in this effort to take our country back. I will never, ever give up the fight for freedom.”
Magical mum
A better magician than the Master Himself wouldn’t know the sets and tricks for B’way’s coming musical “Houdini.” Those involved took a bigger oath of silence than Weiner’s psychiatrist.
. . . Billionaire Catsimatidis, who started broke, truth is nobody could better govern this city than that businessman.
So this socialite got a colonoscopy. To be alone, to celebrate the event, she booked a suite at the Waldorf Towers to sleep it off.
Only in New York, kids, only in New York.