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Jewish World Review June 26, 2003 / 26 Sivan, 5763
Lloyd Grove
Rapping the beat
http://www.jewishworldreview.com | WASHINGTON He's chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. She's a founder of the new Caucus on Music Piracy and Copyrights. Both have been mentioned as potential rivals to replace Hilary Rosen, the departing million-dollar-plus-a-year chairman of the Recording Industry Association of America. But Reps. Billy Tauzin, R-La., and Mary Bono, R-Calif., joined forces Tuesday night to perform in a rap video, titled "Yo, We're Politicians!" that was shown during Rosen's goodbye party on Capitol Hill. We managed to obtain a bootleg copy. "We know the House rules don't allow us to apply for the job," Tauzin says by way of introduction. "But there's nothing wrong with auditioning for it." Then the duo raps to the tune of Eminem's "Lose Yourself": Both: Who wants the job of Hilary Rosen? The music fades and the screen goes black. Then a message flashes: "WARNING. The pirating of this video is strictly prohibited by federal law." Now they tell us! TERI GARR'S STARRING ROLE IN THE MS FIGHT Cause celeb Teri Garr has been crusading for better biomedicine ever since she revealed last October that she suffers from multiple sclerosis. "I lived 20 years with having different symptoms and not knowing what they were," Garr told us as she got ready to keynote the Biotechnology Industry Organization conclave here. "When you get diagnosed, you panic for about six months and then you settle down. It's not the end of the world. There are lots of treatments for MS. These people are finding new drugs all the time." Garr takes Rebif, an anti-MS drug developed using gene technology. "I always say, 'What is worse in Hollywood? Having MS or being over 50?' Being over 50! It's much worse." More seriously, she said she lost work when she confided to a friend that she was going in for tests "and this person told a bunch of other people, and it was all over Hollywood. . . . It's not fair. MS affects everyone differently, but it doesn't affect your brain." What about her love life? "I'm divorced with a daughter," she said. "I'm available! Put that out there! They have to be very, very perfect, though, because I'm a perfect person!" THIS JUST IN . . . -- A good omen for the Department of Homeland Security? Monday on the 7:30 a.m. Delta Shuttle to New York, flight attendants invited passengers to throw their boarding passes into a hat for an in-flight drawing to see who would get a pair of free tickets to a Mets-Philadelphia Phillies game. The lucky winner? Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, sitting in the front row. -- Writer Fredric Alan Maxwell has just received a handwritten fan letter from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., for an April 27 New York Times Magazine column about his unsettling experience of being investigated by the Secret Service. The agency was alarmed by an unfriendly remark about George W. Bush Maxwell was overheard allegedly making in a bar. While being interrogated, Maxwell wrote, he volunteered that he had visited the White House and that "Hillary looks far better in person." The senator responded: "I vouched for you with the Secret Service -- anyone who thinks I look better in person is a true patriot, albeit myopic. In any event, don't let this experience deter you from speaking up and out. We need to keep our sense of humor during this Orwellian time." -- Don't go accusing Rep. Katherine Harris, R-Fla., of taking an illegal D.C. homestead exemption, giving her a $288 property tax break for a primary residence. When Harris, whose primary residence is really in Sarasota, bought her $795,000 Capitol Hill rowhouse in January, the mortgage company routinely claimed the exemption. Now that we have helpfully pointed out the error, it will be fixed.
06/23/03: Another Watergate scandal?; AL GORE TV!
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