Ex-Aide Calls Foot Fault on an ‘Egocentric’ Jackson

The Rev. Jesse Jackson is unlikely to get Elizabeth O. Colton’s vote for best boss. Colton, a former press secretary and campaign consultant to Jackson, contends in a new book that the unsuccessful candidate for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination was an abusive and sexist boss who was “incessantly critical and totally egocentric.” Colton’s “The Jackson Phenomenon: The Man, the Power, the Message,” is being published June 26 by Doubleday. Jackson declined to comment on the book. But he disputed the notion that Colton was a campaign insider. Asked if he wanted to read the book, Jackson replied: “It’s not a priority.” In the book, Colton describes entering a news conference after a debate in Atlanta and says Jackson pushed her to get her out of the way when he saw television cameras on other candidates. She said Jackson deliberately stepped on her feet as she talked to reporters aboard the campaign jet “to signal me to quit talking.”

--A visit to Texas 40 years ago is still paying off for Frank Sinatra, George Burns, Dinah Shore and other celebrities, and Texas Treasurer Ann Richards wants to make sure they get their overdue checks. The payments date to 1949, when oilman Glenn H. McCarthy opened the luxury Shamrock Hotel in Houston with a gala. McCarthy gave the celebrities who attended shares in an oil company, said Bill Cryer, spokesman for Richards. The hotel was razed in 1987 for an expanded Texas Medical Center. The shares have continued to pay dividends although the money did not always make it to the celebrities, Cryer said. Unclaimed property in Texas is turned over to the treasurer’s office, he explained. “One of our researchers was looking through the files and began finding all these stars’ names . . .” Cryer said. Other celebrities, or their estates, due money--an average of about $25 each--from that opening are Harpo Marx, Gene Kelly, Gracie Allen, Edgar Bergen, Tony Martin and Jane Russell, Richards said.

--The Aloha Airlines pilot who landed a crippled Boeing 737 in Hawaii on April 28, 1988, after the plane’s upper fuselage ripped away went back to school to receive his alma mater’s highest award. Aloha Airlines pilot Robert Schornstheimer, who was graduated from Ohio’s Defiance College in 1968, received the school’s Pilgrim Medal for showing “strength under pressure.” Past recipients of the medal given to alumni and citizens included former President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Pearl S. Buck and Jackie Robinson.