Sen. Durbin's Big Week
It's only Wednesday, but Sen. Dick Durbin's week has already been made, by an actor-turned Special Olympics activist who dropped by his office.
Vanessa Williams (yes, that former Miss America, the one who was dethroned on account of her posing in a porn magazine) also met briefly with the junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, during her romp on the Hill Tuesday, but she really bonded with Durbin, as you can see in this photo provided by Durbin's office.
Vanessa Williams visited the office of Sen. Dick Durbin Tuesday.
And where, you ask, do the lives of Ms. Williams and Sen. Durbin intersect?
"At the crossroads of Kennedy and Hollywood," Durbin spokesman Joe Shoemaker says.
It turns out that both Durbin and Williams are good friends of Bobby Shriver, son of Kennedy in-law Sargent Shriver, who is chairman of the board of the Special Olympics. Bobby Shriver is president of RSS Inc., a Beverly Hills music and film company, and he enlisted Williams to join the Special Olympics Board after she sang on a "A Very Special Christmas" album in 1992. (The album raised more than $100 million for the Special Olympics, according to the organization.)
So that's Wiliams' connection to the Bobby Shriver, who, Shoemaker says, "was first introduced to Durbin years ago by his uncle, Ted Kennedy." Shoemaker describes Shriver as "a longtime advocate for the poor and the powerless, and often talks to Durbin about those types of policy initiatives."
Speaking of the Kennedys.... Sen. Kennedy has had a time of it the past week celebrating his 75th birthday, which included, among many mini-bashes, a gigantic party on Capitol Hill that drew more than 500 former Kennedy staffers from all five decades that Kennedy has served in the U.S. Senate.
Each class (60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 00s) sang a tribute to the Senator, which turned into a hard-core karaoke competition between the generations. The '60s staffers sang "Let's Toast the Bay State and Ted's victory" to the tune of "Hey Look Me Over," the '70s aides sang "70s with Teddy" to the tune of Franki Valli's "My Eyes Adored You," the '80s folks just sang "Simply Irresistible" Robert Palmer style, the '90s gang belted out "Still The One," and the new generation sang a ditty about the "corridors of Russell" -- the Russell Senate Office Building -- to the tune of "From the Halls of Montezuma."
By Mary Ann Akers |
February 28, 2007; 4:48 PM ET
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Posted by: robko | February 28, 2007 5:01 PM
Hard to imagine Teddy the "alleged" murderer still can have such support in the state of Mass!
Posted by: fred flintstone | February 28, 2007 5:09 PM
Re Ms. Akers comments pertaining to Vanessa Williams and her good work for the Special Olympics; I agree with robco; what's with the inaccurate "cheap shot" by this alleged journalist. This kind of writing is better suited for a gossip site like Perez Hilton, not a legitimate news source!
Posted by: kkelly | February 28, 2007 5:26 PM
It's a blog, people. And a fairly casual one, at that.
Relax.
Posted by: Ward 6 | February 28, 2007 7:33 PM
About calling T.K. a "murderer", negligent homicide doesn't rise to that level. People kill other people EVERY DAY with their cars, and very few are ever charged with anything at all. T.K. was a drunk, he acted irresponsibly, Mary Jo Kopechne died. It was terrible, and everyone still feels the pain of it. But how about counting the thousands of people killed by the negligence of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and gang? Is that "mass murder", or do we go straight to "war-crimes"?
Posted by: John Mba | February 28, 2007 8:49 PM
A simple search on the Internet will tell you that the Chairman of the Special Olympics is Tim Shriver, not Sargent Shriver, who retired a few years ago.
Posted by: Kevin | February 28, 2007 11:41 PM
Fred Flintstone, get a life. There are many Americans in public life who knowingly and deliberately send off young Americans to certain death every day in foreign lands. Let's hear your call for them to be brought to justice before they kill again.
Posted by: Curtis | March 1, 2007 12:53 AM
Let's lay off these folks past foibles, whether they resulted in an unauthorized publication of photos or the inadvertent death of someone - and let's concentrate on what was going on: Special Olympics. Further, if you want to hold people accountable for deaths, how about focusing on twig and the neocons who have sent more than 3000 Americans and probably 500,000 Iraqis to their deaths simply because they (twig and the neocons) couldn't stand another few years of containing Saddam and were afraid that once the oil embargos were lifted that he would price oil in Euros rather than dollars, thus making the Euro the currency of choice for the world. The shake up would have been immense - first the world shifts from the British Pound Sterling, to the U.S., then gold-back dollar, and finally, since there's no gold backing the dollar for more than 35 years, shifting to the Euro. The impact on the US economy and those who hold their wealth in dollar-based commodities (most neocons living off of interest and dividends instead of wages) would have been horrible.
Posted by: DrJohnOH | March 2, 2007 10:52 AM
Save us that dribbel about war-time casulities.Wilson sent 100,000, Roosevelt/Truman 1,000,000, Truman 50,000, Kennedy/Johnson 50,000 Americans to their death in the wars that those democrats started.
Posted by: William O'Neill | March 7, 2007 3:06 PM
It will come as a surprise to the good people of Pearl Harbor that FDR started WWII. And I thought the "Democrat Wars" locution went out when Bob Dole turned 80.
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The comments to this entry are closed.
Vanessa Williams never "posed" for a porn magazine. A photographer violated her trust and sold the pictures to Penthouse magazine. She was dethroned, and then promptly made a successful career for herself. Isn't it ironic that she's the most successful and well-known Miss America ever? I think what's she's done with her life is fantanstic - why do you take a cheap shot at her like that?