Mar. 28th, 2002

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We're in the post office sending off packages from e. bunny. One of e's little friends found out he was diabetic this year, and another two are having their first easter without daddy in the house. e felt that they could use some cheering up.

We're packing fedex boxes and this woman behind the counter announces (loudly) that _she_ doesn't approve of all the toys, and they're all hallmark holidays now, and she doesn't see what the easter bunny has to do with jesus anyway (actually, e got her diabetic young friend a teddy bear wearing a NYPD shirt, which had arguably less to do with jesus than the bunny). I offered her the cycle of rebirth and renewal as a connection between jesus and the bunny, but she sucked her front teeth with a noise like a tiny little rock rolling over a tomb door and said that she didn't THINK so.

Now, clearly a wise woman would have packed her godless party favors in the secular section of the post office, but leaving aside the gross inappropriateness of the whole conversation, what on earth is wrong with the easter bunny? It's a symbol. It's not as if we're wrapping it in wicker and sacrificing it to a tree.

Besides, things being what they are these days, I suspect that if you sent a toddler a fluffy stuffed mostly-naked jewish man being nailed to a cross until he died slowly of shock and exposure and blood loss and dehydration the postal authorities might take it the wrong way.

Anyway, I'll make sure I ask the monsignor when we go pick up the kid's chocolate rabbit from him on Saturday.
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By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 28, 2002; Page A02

In his first extensive remarks on the Enron controversy, Army Secretary Thomas E. White said yesterday that he had had no improper contacts with former colleagues from the company that employed him for 11 years, and that he had turned over "a bunch" of Enron-related documents to investigators.


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Secretary White's spokesperson explained yesterday that the only reason he used a government Gulfstream to fly him to Aspen was that he had to be out of Washington so that the federal government would be represented in the nation's ski resorts during a foreign attack (wasn't it lucky it happened on the weekend he was selling his house out there and needed to get to the closing?).

Amusingly, Secretary White said he had to spend some time during his meeting with Donald Rumsfeld explaining how the rotation system works. Apparently Mr. Rumsfeld isn't in the loop on national security.

White himself explained today that his 73 contacts with his former Enron associates (forty four more than he told Henry Waxman about) had nothing to do with the purely coincidental fact that after holding on to his stocks for months after he was supposed to sell them in order to avoid a conflict of interest, he decided to sell them en bloc in October, at the same time as his buddies did, right before the stock tanked.

---------------

In January, Waxman had asked White for information on "any" contacts he had had with Enron employees; White had responded with a list of 29 phone calls or meetings, but did not indicate that there could be additional contacts or specify that the calls were made from the Pentagon.

White said yesterday that he told Waxman of the additional calls after going through his home phone records. "I have tried to be as forthright as I could," he said. "That's why I sent the update. No good deed goes unpunished." [*]

Pressed as to why he did not mention the additional calls initially, he conceded that he "should have" done so. "In hindsight, somebody told me never to make an absolute statement in this town. Always qualify it -- to the best of, this, that and the other thing. I should have qualified the response more." [**]

He insisted that in all the conversations, "there was never any exchange of what I would call insider information, nonpublic information, anything that gave me any advantage whatsoever in the divestiture of my stock, period."

He said he believed in the company right up until it declared bankruptcy. "You could tell that I must have by what I never cashed out and what I took over the cliff with me," he said. "It is not the selling pattern of someone who has any sort of particular information." [***]

White made more than $31 million last year from Enron. He sold about half his stock in June and September, and the other half in October.


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*Formally known as the I meant to give it back defense.

**I actually like this answer a lot. It takes a big man to admit he's only sorry he isn't a better liar, like his friends and coworkers are.

***Well, not quite. The people who had no insider information were blocked from divesting their stock in October. Pretty different pattern.



Secretary White, finding time to squeeze the press into his busy day.

Secretary White pointed out to the reporters assembled that his purpose in Washington is to fight the war, and it takes up all of his time. Undoubtedly this is why he felt compelled to multitask by speaking to the press about his little contretemps from the bedside of a wounded soldier he was pinning a purple heart to.

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The final dead celebrity of the Dudley Moore - Milton Berle triumvirate is Billy Wilder. I was afraid it was going to be Lyle Lovett (currently recovering in the hospital from injuries suffered when saving his uncle from being trampled by a bull) but Billy was already dead, just unreported.

I'm sorry it was him. I like his stuff a lot, and besides, there aren't all that many really good old hollywood celebrities left. Ten years from now, I'm going to be reduced to Liza Minelli, breathily over-enunciating like Eliza Doolitle launching serial sneak attacks on a candle flame.

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