Inside the Beltway

Extra butter?

Inside the Beltway had occasion to speak with Motion Picture Association of America Chairman and CEO Dan Glickman, who you will recall was agriculture secretary from 1995 until 2001, and prior to that served for 18 years as a Kansas congressman.

During his time in Congress, the Wichita native not only was a member of the House Agriculture Committee, he was chairman of the subcommittee overseeing a majority of the federal farm-policy issues.

Discussing his unlikely jump from agriculture to becoming the voice of the American motion-picture industry, whose members include Paramount Pictures and Twentieth Century Fox, Mr. Glickman reasoned: “I used to grow popcorn, and now I sell it.”

There is hope

Don’t ever accuse Wolf Blitzer, anchor of CNN’s “The Situation Room,” of being ensnared in the paparazzi-fed hype and infatuation over Paris Hilton.

During his daily production meeting on Friday — the same day that the young California socialite was “taken handcuffed and crying from her home,” “escorted into court disheveled, without makeup, hair askew and face red with tears,” “crying out for her mother when she was ordered back to jail,” a “little girl lost in a merciless legal system” — Mr. Blitzer vowed that during that afternoon’s entire news program, he would not bring himself to utter two words: Paris Hilton.

“And he didn’t,” a CNN producer tells Inside the Beltway.

You heard him

“We’ll win the division this year.”

Or so pledged Dan Snyder, owner of the Washington Redskins, during his remarks Saturday night at the Larry King Cardiac Foundation annual dinner and auction at the Ritz-Carlton Washington.

Switching gears

Story Continues →