People in the News for June 2, 1998

Tuesday, June 2, 1998 | 10:29 a.m.

People in the News is more than just timely information on celebrity foibles, lawsuits and sexual peccadillos, more than hyperactively bunched adjectives, more, even, than snickering at our betters for a day's pay. It's about people. People helping people, with tasks as large as honing a comedian's Viagra jokes (see below) and as small as influencing the content of Time magazine (see next sentence). Mike Wallace was chilling in Steven Spielberg's office not long ago, waiting to interview him for Thursday's "People of the Century" special, a joint CBS News-Time magazine effort spotlighting the 100 most influential people. Just then, Wallace received the sort of tip that makes a bulldog newsman's fangs ache to bite something: Frank Sinatra hadn't made Time's cut of 20 influential artists and entertainers -- but Elvis Presley had! The words may not exist to communicate the depth of Wallace's outrage, but apparently the volume does: When Spielberg toddled into his office, he encountered, as one witness put it, "Mike at full tilt," screaming into his cell phone at Time Managing Editor Walter Isaacson. Helping him, you see, understand Sinatra's greater impact ... Ears ringing, Isaacson agreed -- Frank's in, Elvis is out and Mike is happy. Later, he marked Sinatra's death with a somber note to Isaacson: "I saved your butt," he said.

Miscellany

People in the News is about more than people helping people -- it's about people helping themselves. Helping themselves to a better life, helping themselves to a brighter tomorrow, helping themselves to a hundred bucks worth of heroin in a New York housing project. That's where police on Monday arrested Scott Weiland, drug-addled lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots. Charged with criminal trespassing and drug possession, Weiland had to cancel a solo concert scheduled that night. This isn't his first problem with dope-fiendishness: He was arrested in 1995 on drug charges, and his 1996 rehab stint aborted a Pilot's summer tour. Well, that's Weiland at full tilt, stinking up the joint. It may take more than Mike Wallace to save his butt.

Compiled by Scott Dickensheets