People in the News for March 24, 1998

Tuesday, March 24, 1998 | 10:34 a.m.

"60 Minutes" has a bad case of the Willeys. First, the pit-bullish news show curiously removed its teeth for the March 15 interview with Kathleen Willey, the latest Clinton sexual-harassment accuser. Now that critics have objected to Ed Bradley's light gumming of Willey -- particularly given subsequent revelations that she'd sent friendly letters to the president after the alleged incident and had tried to peddle her tale to publishers -- the show can't get her back. "60 Minutes" asked her to return to discuss the letters and attempted book deal, but slick Willey refused. Off camera, she did tell Bradley she sent the letters in hopes of leveraging her acquaintanceship with Clinton into a job. Bradley also assured "Minutes" viewers on Sunday that Willey's lawyer had told the show there was no deal in the works to sell her story. "However, it turns out that there had been conversations about a deal, a deal that fell through before she was interviewed by '60 Minutes,"' Bradley said. "As is our practice, we paid her nothing and she asked for nothing."

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Is there any better, more fitting way to pay tribute to a dead princess than by putting her name on tubs of faux-butter product? All over England Monday, Britons hoisted containers of memorial Flora margarine, noted Princess Diana's signature and the word "Thanks" on the label, read that it was endorsed by her memorial fund as a fund-raising move, and, with proper reverence, put them back on the shelves. Something about spreading Princess Diana margarine on their scones just struck the British as bloody well wrong; sales have been sluggish. Margarine? They can't believe it's not butter! "I think it is awful and tacky," said one homemaker. "I am a big royal fan, and I don't think this is the right way to remember Princess Diana." Perhaps a good ad campaign will help, some variation of the old Imperial margarine commercials in which a crown appeared on the head of anyone opening a tub. Yikes, we've just given ourselves the willies!

Compiled by Scott Dickensheets