Inside the Beltway

Go figure

“Very odd,” says our source. “They sat at a table in the back.”

Referring to the intriguing trio of Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Arlen Specter, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, and his wife, Valerie Plame, of CIA-leak fame, sharing a luncheon table yesterday at Charlie Palmer Steak restaurant.

’Curious and odd’

Rep. Charles W. “Chip” Pickering Jr., Mississippi Republican, joins former Georgia Rep. Bob Barr and one-time presidential hopeful Alan Keyes as unwitting co-stars of the outrageous new film comedy “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.”

But don’t count on Mr. Pickering watching the satirical mockumentary, which stars British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen.

“He hasn’t seen it, and I don’t expect him to see it. It’s not his style of movie,” Brian Perry, the congressman’s spokesman, tells Inside the Beltway. “He usually goes to movies where he can take the kids with him, and obviously this is not one for his kids.”

Mr. Pickering paid scant attention to Borat’s skeletal camera crew while speaking about evolution during a Pentecostal revival meeting in Mississippi, and he wasn’t as upset as others to wind up in the film.

“He was speaking to a group, and he is fine with what he was saying to the group,” Mr. Perry explains. “I think he thought it was a curious and odd incident.”

Meanwhile, several other unsuspecting victims of Borat are lining up to sue the filmmaker, including a $30 million lawsuit filed by villagers in the Romanian community of Glod, which depicts Borat’s Kazakhstan home.

In addition, the Kazakhstani government is weighing legal action, angry that Borat presents the country and its people in a “derogatory” way. A pair of University of South Carolina fraternity brothers have also filed suit.

The film studio, 20th Century Fox, has countered that the plaintiffs “may claim that they were tricked into ’making fools out of themselves’ and becoming ’unsuspecting players,’ ” but they “never contend … that bigoted and misogynistic statements were put into their mouths.”

Skipping away

You wouldn’t know it by eyeing her desk, but after three newsworthy decades as producer, reporter and anchor at WJLA-TV’s ABC-7, Kathleen Matthews’ last day on the beat is today.

“I’m somewhat in denial,” she says. “My office doesn’t look like I’m going anywhere.”

Actually, she’s not going just anywhere, she’s going everywhere as Marriott International’s executive vice president for global communications and public affairs, succeeding the retiring Charlotte B. Sterling.

“It’s been a very long engagement,” says Mrs. Matthews, the wife of MSNBC’s Chris Matthews. “I’m really thankful to have a graceful exit from Channel 7. It’s been a great 30 years.”

Her most memorable stories?

Certainly, the deadly crash of Air Florida Flight 90 into the Potomac River during the raging snowstorm of Jan. 13, 1982, she says. In fact, Mrs. Matthews recently revisited Martin L. “Lenny” Skutnik III, whose heroism that day — he dove into the icy waters to rescue a victim — was saluted by President Reagan during his State of the Union address.

“He still says, ’What’s the big deal, anybody would have done it,’ ” Mrs. Matthews notes.

And there is the heroism today of the U.S. military serving in Iraq, and one female soldier in particular she interviewed recently who had her arm blown off by an improvised explosive device.

“Yet she has all the optimism in the world about the life she has ahead of her,” Mrs. Matthews says.

As for an upbeat story?

“Then I have to tell you about Mel Brooks,” she says, referring to the famous director who brought his popular Broadway musical “The Producers” to Washington.

“Suddenly, he grabs my arm, and we start skipping [through] the Kennedy Center,” she recalls. “I couldn’t believe it. Here we are skipping along, I felt like one of the chorus. That’s the other extreme.”

Filing for divorce

That’s Washington Harbour couple Mr. and Mrs. John Utley hosting a book party this evening for Richard A. Viguerie, author of “Conservatives Betrayed: How George W. Bush and Other Big Government Republicans Hijacked the Conservative Cause.”

The title of the new book speaks for itself, but suffice it to say Mr. Viguerie, crowned one of the “Conservatives of the Century,” is not a happy camper.

Or as reviewer John C.A. Bambenek opined on Amazon.com: “The marriage between the Republicans and conservatives has been a loveless and unsatisfying marriage. The Republicans keep ’stumbling home after midnight, smelling of booze and cheap perfume.’ And it is time for the marriage to come to an end.”

• John McCaslin, whose column is nationally syndicated, can be reached at 202/636-3284 or jmccaslin @washingtontimes.com.