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Beam and Howard

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from: Margo Howard

Mostly Diana All The Time

Posted Monday, Aug. 31, 1998, at 6:54 PM ET

Hey Beam:

Moniker Lewinsky is veeery funny. Mind if I borrow that? Whoops, sore subject. On to the next...

I hope you'll take me with you if you go on any talk shows to trash all this dead Princess carrying on. (I was happy to see you're a Charles man. He's the good-looking version of my first husband.) If those show offers do come, we can take Christopher Hitchens with us. He is wickedly funny, mean, and brittle as hell. And I love him. He's singing our tune this very minute in Salon.

Now there is a word, you should know, to refer to Diana-lovers. It's Dianaianists. I would have just said Dianistas, but no one asked. Anyway, the Lucia Flecha de Lima whose name you were ho ho ho'ing about, is the wife of a South American Ambassador. (Brazil?) Maybe we should introduce them to the Swetts...

Did you know that a musical, tentatively called "Queen of Hearts," is Broadway bound? Some of the lyrics are floating around. Example: Diana, on her wedding day, looks at Camilla and sings, "What if he still loves her? What if it's all a sham?"

(I would have struck the word "all" for meter, but again, nobody asked.) Camilla responds, in song, "I'll show him I can wait, steadfast and true. I'll be mistress of his heart, though my blood isn't blue."

OK, let's talk about people who are alive--though maybe just barely. The Washington Post quotes an analyst as referring to the Clinton/Yeltsin meeting as "two corpses getting together." Jeez, what is going on? Can't those spin-yokels in the White House make anything come out right? Clinton needs to be there like a donkey needs lipstick.

And one more bummer: a social psychology professor named Kraut (don't go there, Beam) has announced that many hours on the 'Net make people depressed, stressed, and lonely. Uh-oh. Talk to you tomorrow after I've gone to a square dance, audited a class, taken a pottery class, and just generally mingled with some folks so I don't get depressed.

xx Margo

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Margo Howard

Mostly Diana All The Time

Posted Monday, Aug. 31, 1998, at 6:54 PM ET
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Margo Howard is Slate's advice columnist. Alex Beam is a columnist for the Boston Globe.
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