Smoking Gun: David Goerlitz, a former top...

Smoking Gun: David Goerlitz, a former top model for Winston cigarettes, has turned on the tobacco industry. He said his 3 1/2-pack-a-day smoking habit led to a stroke. “I was paid $2,500 a day . . . to make (smoking) look rugged and make it look successful . . . make it look wonderful,” the 40-year-old Goerlitz said Wednesday. “All these ads are nothing more than mere lies.” Goerlitz spoke at an Albany, N.Y., public forum on New York State’s new smoking law, which prohibits smoking in many public places. Goerlitz said the stroke has taken away feeling in the left side of his face and has robbed him of his ability to taste food.

Food for Peace: Jihan Sadat, widow of slain Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, journeyed to Omaha this week to help raise money for the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Nebraska and to talk on “Women and World Peace.” According to a spokeswoman, Sadat’s appearance at a luncheon and a dinner grossed about $75,000 for the center.

Review on the Run: Novelist Salman Rushdie, in hiding from Muslim extremists who have vowed to kill him, has written a book review praising a novelist famed for being reclusive. Rushdie’s review for next Sunday’s New York Times praises “Vineland” by Thomas Pynchon, a writer who refuses interviews and photographs. In the review, which he has written in a California-slang style much like that used by Pynchon, Rushdie says: “So he wants a private life and no photographs and nobody to know his home address. I can dig it, I can relate to that (but like, he should try it when it’s compulsory instead of a free-choice option).”

Quayle Baiting: Just how smart is Dan Quayle? A new book, “Scandal Annual 1990--Who Got Caught Doing What in 1989,” a compendium of last year’s silly wrongdoings, includes a chapter titled “How Dumb is Danny?” The book says determining Quayle’s intellectual ability is a matter of national security and that the question could be settled by having the Vice President be a contestant on “Jeopardy.”