Issue Date: January 13, 2002
I'm charmed by CNBC "Market Watch" anchor Martha MacCallum. Can you shed any light on her personal life?
Paul Valentin, Sierra Vista, Ariz.
MacCallum, in her early 30s, is a married mom of three kids under 6. She tells us a supportive spouse, household help, a flexible employer and nearby parents are keys to her success. A New Jersey native (she still lives there), MacCallum cautiously answers questions about herself. She's more loquacious when talk turns to the economy; she's confident about a recovery. She'd love to interview Bill Gates, but regular folks are the reason she likes money reporting. Finances are central to our feelings of security, she says. "When you look at what matters to people, it's their family, their friends and the future."
"NYPD Blue"'s Dennis Franz has yet another new partner this season. What ever happened to David Caruso, his first?
Michael Williams, Hazleton, Pa.
When he quit "Blue" after one season to pursue films, Caruso, who was fabulous with Franz, effectively killed his own career, and he hasn't been able to pull off a comeback. He now admits he messed up: "I was pretty green. It was eight years ago. I tried to move on, but people weren't ready." He says he's learned from co-stars, including Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, that "you have to have thick skin. I try to accept responsibility for the destruction I caused and continue with what I do best, which is create viable footage." Caruso, who turns 46 Thursday, is philosophical: In your 40s, "you get a vague understanding of what's really going on and how much you don't know."
I'm a political science professor at Southeast Missouri State. I read with interest your Nov. 16-18 page, where you said Bill Clinton could be a VP candidate. What does your source, Professor Jamin Raskin, say about the 12th Amendment's final sentence: "But no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of President shall be eligible to that of Vice President"? Because he was elected president twice, and according to the 22nd Amendment is ineligible for re-election, isn't Clinton also ineligible to be vice president?
Rick Althaus, Cape Girardeau, Mo.
American University's Raskin respects your argument but says he thinks a court would have to test this "constitutional brain teaser." We both got plenty of e-mail saying he's wrong, but he won't rule out the possibility that the ex-prez could run for vice president, with wife Hillary or anyone else. "There are enough gaps in the text [of the Constitution] to suggest it's OK." Raskin says the 12th Amendment was enacted in 1804 to set up terms of the electoral college. It made the qualifications for president (at least 35 years old, a U.S. citizen and a resident for at least 14 consecutive years) apply to the vice president, too. But the 22nd Amendment (1951) limits a president to two elected terms. As for readers who pointed out that the president and VP can't be from the same state, Raskin notes that was easily circumvented in 2000, when Dick Cheney moved his residence to Wyoming so he and George W. Bush wouldn't both be from Texas.
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Jay Thomas is a huge football fan. "It's the only sport I watch," he says. "I coach football for my kids, I was a football announcer when I started, and I played small-college football in North Carolina." So it's no surprise he said yes when asked to play ex-NFL commissioner Pete Roselle in Monday's TNT movie "Monday Night Mayhem".The film chronicles the career of legendary sportscaster Howard Cosell and the 1970 launch of "Monday Night Football", a franchise now in the hands of Al Michaels, Dan Fouts, Eric Dickerson, Melissa Stark and Dennis Miller. I asked this Emmy-winning sitcom actor ("Murphy Brown"), who knows Miller, what he thinks about the comic in the ABC anchor booth.
"You get the feeling he's holding back," says Thomas, 53. "If you know Dennis, you know he just murders everything, and then on Monday night for three hours he's a choirboy? He ought to be allowed to make fun of the promos and commercials and tattoos and how stupid some of the players are. I yell at the television all the time. Dennis was supposed to be the guy yelling for you." Thomas' movie explores the behind-the-scenes drama that went on when Cosell was on the air. "When you see the hatred that the announcers and athletes had for him ... it's crazy. Why was that [show] so successful when they were stabbing each other in the back all the time? Now "Monday Night Football" is just a game. Back then, you turned it on for the show."
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From 1995 to '99, Kevin Sorbo ruled syndicated TV in Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. He's equally hot in his current syndicated space adventure, "Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda". Still, it's startling to hear this mild-mannered Midwesterner say of the Sept. 11 terrorists: "If I had the ability, I'd go over there and rip their guts out." Minnesota native Sorbo, 43, always seemed like such a sweetheart when we talked before, and now he coos about his 5-month-old son, Brae-don, confessing, "I get up every morning and just stare at him." Meanwhile, all is well in his personal cosmos. He and his actress wife, Sam Jenkins, are living "the picket-fence life" in Henderson, Nev., even though Sorbo spends eight months a year in Canada, where he films "Andromeda". He's leaner and 20 pounds lighter (210 pounds on a 6-foot-3 frame) than when he was Hercules, and he's fine with continuing as an action hero a few more years. But he hasn't given up on one longtime goal: starring in a romantic comedy.
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January 13: Julia Louis-Dreyfus, 41
January 14: LL Cool J, 34; Steven Soderbergh, 39; Faye Dunaway, 61
January 15: Mario Van Peebles, 45
January 16: Kate Moss, 28; Debbie Allen, 52
January 17: Jim Carrey, 40; Muhammad Ali, 60; James Earl Jones, 71
January 18: Kevin Costner, 47
January 19: Dolly Parton, 56; Jean Stapleton, 79
Contributing: Nancy Mills, Patty Rhule
 Ask Lorrie Lynch a question about a celeb!
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