Last week, of course, Schroeder was doing a lot of talking about House Speaker Newt Gingrich, in town to sign copies of his book and do some talking of his own with Rosen (the only interview he granted). On the radio, Gingrich hinted that Schroeder and other "reactionary liberals" are behind the allegations of adultery included in Vanity Fair's September profile of the Speaker--not that Gingrich would discuss his alleged peccadilloes in the Seventies or elaborate on his conspi-racy theory. Too bad, because it would have been interesting to see how he accounted for the fact that Gail Sheehy, author of the Gingrich piece, is an equal-opportunity savager who produced a devastating Vanity Fair profile of consummate liberal Gary Hart back when Colorado's former senator was thinking about taking another run for the presidency. Remember the mysterious Indian princess?
Gingrich also charged that Schroeder might be abusing House rules by involving her office in protesting his appearance--a claim echoed in a Rocky Mountain News editorial Friday. In response, the congresswoman quickly fired off a letter (which may appear sometime before hell freezes over) to the paper that included the following: "Earlier this year Mr. Gingrich helped organize a rally on the grounds of the Capitol to celebrate the passage of the Contract with America. Official resources were used in abundance--staff, Capitol Police, etc. Under your and Mr. Gingrich's screwball logic, the use of those resources was appropriate, but if a member of Congress had used official resources to protest that event (which I did, by the way) that would be inappropriate.
"The Rocky admits to being disturbed. Of that I have no doubt."
The person who surely suffered through the most disturbing week, though, is Kip Cheroutes, who runs Schroeder's beleaguered Denver office--and who is a major Deadhead. But Jerry Garcia, too, was an equal-opportunity icon: Among his other fans is attorney David Kopel, once Cheroutes's intern and now a full-time associate at the Golden-based Independence Institute. Kopel and Cheroutes may not see eye-to-eye on politics, but they can still call a truce long enough to catch the Dead together.
To market, to market: The Rocky Mountain News made a big splash over the fact that it had hired its new vice president of marketing, Rich Honack, from the Chicago Tribune a few weeks ago. The announcement that Honack has decided to stay in Chicago for "family" reasons--after visiting Denver for two days--got considerably less play in last Friday's paper. But then, the News has been down this road before. Two years ago it announced that George Martin would be coming in to head circulation--only to have Martin bow out after his two-day visit.
