POP/ROCK - Nov. 24, 1994

Voodoo Economics?: Mick Jagger proved a Rolling Stone can gather some votes. He was elected honorary president of the London School of Economics student union Tuesday. Jagger attended the school in the early ‘60s before leaving to pursue a different breed of economics. Well behind Jagger in the student balloting as runner-up was suspected terrorist Carlos the Jackal. “This is an honorary office of the students’ union, not a college position,” said a spokesman for the prestigious school. “But it would be fair to say that we are quite pleased that Mick Jagger was picked over Carlos.” Previous holders of the honorary post include South African President Nelson Mandela and Terry Waite, the Anglican priest who was held hostage in Lebanon. Jagger and the Rolling Stones are currently in Washington as part of their international “Voodoo Lounge” tour.

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The Eagles Still on Top: The Eagles’ “Hell Freezes Over” album sold an estimated 203,000 units last week and will continue to command the No. 1 position on Billboard’s pop album sales chart when the trade magazine hits the newsstands Saturday. New holiday collections by Kenny G and Mariah Carey burst into the Top 10 this week placing No. 6 and No. 7, respectively. Fans purchased 98,000 copies of Kenny G’s “Miracles” album and 90,000 of Carey’s “Merry Christmas” record.

TELEVISION

The Price of Talk: Phil Donahue’s insurers have tentatively agreed to pay about $20,000 toward an estimated $100,000 damages caused by a stampede of fans after the Texas taping of a show about “millionaire bachelor studs,” a building executive said Tuesday. The incident occurred at the end of a show on April 15, 1993, and resulted in damage to the Fort Worth convention center’s 25-year-old orchestra lift, on which the show’s set was located. After the show ended, a crowd of women stormed the stage to meet four bachelors, who included Dallas Cowboys’ running back Emmitt Smith, said Melvin Morgan, executive director of the Fort Worth/Tarrant County Convention Center. “They all got on one corner of the platform, which put excessive pressure on one hydraulic piston,” Morgan said. “It blew a gasket. . . . The orchestra lift just settled down 15 feet below. We ended up working through the night stabilizing the 50,000-pound platform.” The county expects to pay for the balance of the repairs.

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Islamic Protest: Muslim and Arab organizations are upset about “Jihad in America,” a public TV show that they say portrays Muslims as violent fanatics. The Council on American-Islamic Relations decried the documentary as part of a trend toward “anti-Islamic McCarthyism in the Western media” and said it fuels anti-Muslim sentiment in the United States. WETA, the PBS affiliate in Washington, defended the show as well-researched and well-documented. The show was broadcast on KCET Monday night.

STAGE

Jessica Tandy Remembered: Theater and screen notables paid tribute to actress Jessica Tandy at a memorial service Tuesday at Broadway’s Shubert Theater. Director Mike Nichols said that a Marlon Brando-Jessica Tandy scene in “A Streetcar Named Desire” in 1947 “is the reason I’m in the theater. I wanted to be in the place where these things happen.” Nichols, who directed Tandy and her husband, Hume Cronyn, in “The Gin Game” on Broadway in 1977, recalled the couple “drilling, rehearsing, repeating, improving, drilling and working far more and longer and harder than I thought necessary or possible. . . . And that, of course, is the secret. To be righter than anyone else to begin with and then beat the blazes out of it.” Taped tributes from Sir John Gielgud and Sir Alec Guinness were among many eulogies for the actress, who died Sept. 11 at the age of 85.

ART

Mixed Impressions: The Turner prize, Britain’s top art honor, was awarded Tuesday to sculptor Antony Gormley, who risks suffocation to take impressions of his own body while using breathing tubes. The $31,410 award was given for a collection of five iron-clad dummies bent double against a wall. About 300 young artists heckled outside London’s Tate Gallery before the award ceremony, contending the prize is elitist. Gormley frequently exhibits at Burnett Miller Gallery in Santa Monica and is currently in a show at Newport Harbor Art Museum.

QUICK TAKES

A Modesto Superior Court judge threw out a paternity suit brought against pop star Michael Jackson by Michelle Flowers, who accused Jackson of fathering her 10-year-old son and sought $20 million a year and a mansion. Genetic tests cleared Jackson and indicated the woman’s ex-husband is probably the boy’s father. . . . “Baywatch” co-star Pamela Anderson, 27, sued the Globe tabloid for $12 million for writing that she was a heroin addict and in danger of losing her role. In the lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court, Anderson denied she has a drug problem. A Globe spokesman said Wednesday the tabloid stands by its story. . . . Zsa Zsa Gabor, noted for her clash with a Beverly Hills policeman, takes the part of that city’s mayor-elect today in a guest role on “Tattooed Teenage Alien Fighters From Beverly Hills,” a new action-adventure series on cable’s USA Network. . . . When Rush Limbaugh heard that Mary Tyler Moore had offered $1,000 to free Spike, an 12 1/2-pound, 65-year-old lobster that resides in a tank at a Pacific Palisades restaurant, Limbaugh doubled the offer, but with a clearly different intent. “Tell him he’s invited for dinner but not to plan on dessert,” Limbaugh said on his TV show.