First Lady’s Late Night in Hot Seat Turns Into Housewarming
She survived Dave Letterman, unscathed and with dignity intact. Next up: Al Sharpton.
Hillary Rodham Clinton, continuing the gantlet of New York celebrity politics, swapped one-liners with Letterman on Wednesday and seemed very much at ease before a loudly supportive audience. After weeks of playing cat and mouse with the host of CBS’s “Late Show,” she finally agreed to appear--and it was clear that Letterman was on his best behavior with the first lady, who is running for a U.S. Senate seat from New York.
“You’re interviewing the first lady of the United States tonight,” former CBS anchorman Walter Cronkite reminded him in a surprise appearance during Letterman’s monologue. “So don’t be a jackass.”
As the band played “New York State of Mind,” Mrs. Clinton strolled on stage and answered familiar questions--why she is running in New York and what she thinks of her probable opponent, New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani. Submitting to a “pop quiz” about the Empire State, she answered all five questions about New York correctly, then got off some zingers of her own in a “Top Ten” list of why she decided to appear.
Number 8: “If Dan Quayle did it, how hard could it be?” Number 5: “I needed an excuse to get out of dinner with Donald Trump.” And perhaps inevitably, Number 1: “If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere.” Aides to Letterman said Mrs. Clinton’s list was produced jointly by her staff and the show’s writers.
In previous weeks, Letterman had become visibly upset with Mrs. Clinton’s campaign aides, who had refused to commit to an appearance on his show. But all was forgiven Wednesday: She gave him a smooch on the cheek at the end of her segment, and he gave her a lawn mower as a gag housewarming gift for her new home in suburban Westchester County.
Aides to Mrs. Clinton can only hope that she gets a similar reception next week in Harlem, when she pays a visit to the Rev. Al Sharpton’s headquarters on Martin Luther King Day. Like Letterman, the feisty community leader has grumbled that she has ignored him.