Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 30, 1993 TAG: 9301300239
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 5 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
PEOPLE
"This is Linda Bloodworth-Thomason," said the voice on the phone to a Washington Post reporter. "I just spent a half-hour telling Mike Royko what I think, and now I'm going to tell you."The television producer called Thursday to vociferously deny that she had used journalist Georgie Anne Geyer as a model for Georgie Anne Lahti, her fictional reporter on the CBS television show "Hearts Afire." The similarities were pointed out in a Chicago Tribune column by Royko and in a Washington Post story Thursday.
"I can tell you unequivocally that I am not in the business of stealing other people's lives," Bloodworth-Thomason said. "I'd like to think I'm a little more imaginative and scrupulous than that.
Geyer, a nationally known foreign correspondent, columnist and TV commentator, has hired a lawyer to explore legal action over the Georgie Anne Lahti character. Like Geyer, the correspondent played by Markie Post wears bangs, has worked for a Chicago newspaper, is a Middle East expert, has interviewed dozens of foreign leaders and has done a book on Fidel Castro.
"If that's just a coincidence, I'm living in never-never land," Geyer said Wednesday.
Royko said Thursday night that Bloodworth-Thomason "was a little upset" when she called. "If my wife got on the phone like that, I'd assume her next call would be to a divorce lawyer. She was totally outraged, furious. I've never even had a Chicago alderman that I've accused of misfeasance and malfeasance get that mad.
"She said she's ready to go to the mat on this, which I assumed means legal action. That would be hilarious, if I'm sued by close chums of the Clintons."
Paul McCartney knew his new environmental protest song might be controversial, but he figured if the air is foul, why not his language?
McCartney, 50, uses a profanity seven times in "Big Boys Bickering," written after President Bush refused to sign an ecological treaty at the Earth Summit in Brazil last year.
"I thought about" using less-controversial language, he said. "But that didn't fit how I feel about the fact that there is a hole in the ozone layer and no government appears to be doing much about it."
The language left MTV fuming, and the cable station won't air the tune during a McCartney special on Wednesday.
> Maya Angelou's inaugural poetry reading seems to have turned a page in her popularity.
In the week since reading her inaugural poem in Washington, sales of her books, particularly "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and "Maya Angelou: Poems" have increased betweem 300 percent and 600 percent, said Stuart Applebaum, a spokesman for her publisher Bantam Books.
Bantam has ordered 400,000 additional Angelou paperbacks printed.
The 64-year-old author has been a nightclub singer, civil rights organizer and an actress.