Staying Too Long at the Fair: Time's "Influential" Dinner

I went to the Time, Inc. “100 Most Influential People” dinner the other eve at the Jazz at Lincoln Center theater. And I have to ask you: Why does everything but sex go on so long? This was an interminable night, chiefly because whoever mounted it let the cocktail hour run past an hour! And there were lapses and stage waits when somebody should have been directing. Such proceedings need a master hand. Timing is still everything!

I think at these big parties everyone is just itching to get to their tables and get things started. Let them drink at the table and get on with it. But the Time guys diddled around so long that we didn’t get out until around 11:30 and I did not get into my beddie-bye until midnight. And that’s after starting out all dressed up beginning about 6:30 PM. This makes for an inhumanly long evening.

But I had one or two fabulous encounters. Lance Armstrong and I had a wonderful talk — about our mutual lost friend Governor Ann Richards of Texas. And he had the chance to tell me that, although it’s only May, it is already 110 degrees in Austin, Texas.

I had another nice talk with the producer of George Stephanopoulos’s Sunday AM talk show — Kathy O’Hearn. I first met Kathy when she was engineering a talk fest over in New Jersey for Tina Brown. She has done wonders for ABC on Sundays since moving down to Washington and she says she loves living there. I pressed Kathy about George’s stated opinion that Hillary would accept the vice presidential spot if offered. She says he honestly believes this.

My seatmate at dinner, other than my divine date, the artist and portrait painter Peter Rogers, was Joe Klein, the Time columnist. Joe is the formerly anonymous author of the roman à clef, Primary Colors , which became one of my favorite movies, wherein he put the Clintons and their ambitions onto the silver screen with a little help from Mike Nichols, John Travolta, Emma Thompson, Billy Bob Thornton and Kathy Bates.

LIZ, PETER ROGERS AND OUR IDOL, THE LATE ANN RICHARDS, GOVERNOR OF TEXAS

I don’t know that “Primary Colors” was considered a big film hit, but it’s one of those movies — when you catch a glimpse of it on TV — you generally can’t resist and you stay and watch it all over again. (I can say the same thing about “Tootsie.”)

Mr. Klein is effusive, smart and full of charm. We had a good time waving to Bill O’Reilly and watching Harvey Weinstein talking to ABC’s David Westin. I saw my boss Rupert Murdoch and that made two times in one week. (Rupert and I get around!) There were VIPs from Martha Stewart to Anjelica Huston to Arianna Huffington.

But a lot of the 100 named as “influential” did not show, such as Oprah, who has been “named” for the last five years, and George Clooney, who Amy Poehler apologized for, saying from the podium: “George could not make it tonight due to the fact that he had one hundred better things to do!” Brad and Angelina were prominently seen on the big screens but they were not there either.

I enjoyed sitting with the NBC genius Lorne Michaels, his beautiful wife Alice, and his “Saturday Night Live” star Tina Fey. Asked by a reporter if it was an honor to be there, Tina said, “It is a great honor not to be telling jokes tonight!” She and I had a good discussion about her little girl Alice.

Of the honorees who stood at their tables and said a “few” words — GOP candidate John McCain was the best, the briefest and the most generous. He commented humorously on “the terror of knowing that only one of us will be invited to this dinner next year.” He went on to compliment and toast “my compatriots, Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.” A very handsome Robert Downey Jr. said that he was “the only convicted felon in human history” who had affected the stock market in the last two weeks. (Robert’s “Iron Man” movie has already earned over $200 million.)

At the end — much too late — Mariah Carey appeared in all her sparkling glory wearing a brief silver dress that was squeezing her legs together so she could hardly walk. She had no bra assistance and didn’t seem to need any, and she sang with a rhinestone-studded mike. Her earrings didn’t simply dangle; part of them seemed to be inserted directly into her ears like diamond hearing aids. This is a girl who is outstripping Elvis in the record books and she stood straight as an arrow and delivered just one fabulous song. That was enough! It was very effective.

We finally all escaped and went home to bed, even those among us who weren’t quite so “influential.

It was an honor to be invited by Time, but time must have a stop.

Note: Click here on this text to read my nationally syndicated daily column.