People in the News for March 25, 1998

Wednesday, March 25, 1998 | 10:25 a.m.

All's quiet on the People front. Pop culture is still experiencing the listless, floating, lighter-than-gossip feeling -- call it the post-Oscar blahs -- that invariably occurs after America's celebritocracy fetes itself so thoroughly. Fabulous stars just can't work up the energy for a bracing round of strident behavior. No fiery denunciations of ABC by Ellen; no mother-protecting-her-cub posturing from Madonna. Well, thank God for politics, specifically President Clinton's trip to Africa. Touring the village of Wanyange Tuesday, the Pasty White Hunter met a shopkeeper with startling news: She'd just named her newborn after him. "My boy, Bill," the president exclaimed. Taking the two-day-old infant into his arms, Clinton was undoubtedly pondering the future for a young African lad bearing the name of an American president, how he would be taunted for his strangeness on the Ugandan schoolyards -- kids can be so cruel -- but, inspired by the principles of democracy and achievement embodied by his own name, would lift himself to be a leader among his people. Yes, Bill Clinton may have been thinking all of that, but what he said was, "Look at all this hair. I was completely bald until I was two." When baby Bill yawned -- near the end of a hot, tiring day -- Clinton pronounced him "the smartest person here."

Miscellany

Hunter is again the hunted. Spelling Entertainment Group, recently ordered to pay $4.9 million to Las Vegas actress Hunter Tylo after losing a discrimination suit, is asking an L.A. judge to throw out the award. You'll recall that Tylo, hired to play a slinky seductress, was canned when she became pregnant with a child she subsequently did not name after Bill Clinton. Spelling Entertainment says the award is excessive. "In Hollywood, appearance is everything," argued the lawyer on Tuesday, noting that on "Melrose Place," the actors "all have tight, thin stomachs." Tylo's attorney countered that Spelling acted rashly: "They summarily fired her before she was even showing." Is this crackerjack People in the News fodder or dull, legal filler on a slow news day? You, the reader, be the judge.

Compiled by Scott Dickensheets