For a week that passed in the shadow of the darkest day in city history, it probably was not surprising that red, white, and blue were on display, along with a surprising kaleidoscope of other colors. President Bush again wrapped himself in the flag, this time at ground zero. By midweek, though, the White House was seeing crimson when three éminences grises in the Senate stonewalled the administration’s plans to make the Geneva Conventions less of a hassle. On Primary Day, New York reasserted itself as the bluest of blue states, with Democratic Party stalwarts Clinton, Spitzer, and Cuomo rolling over their opponents on their way to almost certain victories in November. Both Cuomo and his Republican opponent, Jeanine Pirro, immediately swore to run clean campaigns, then proceeded to pound the other black and blue. Snowy-headed professional candidate Mark Green admitted after his twenty-point loss that it was probably time for his political career to fade to black. Green tea, however, was shown to reduce heart-disease deaths in a new study. Fashion Week was notable for its subdued palette of creams and grays (other than maybe an occasional fixation on pink). The lawyer for the son of blue-blood Brooke Astor blamed the help for some unpleasant yellow stains on the 104-year-old’s couch. Princess Diana’s former butler blabbed about the iconic blonde’s infatuation with—and rose-tinted presidential aspirations for—silver-fox financier Ted Forstmann. The controversially color-coded season of Survivor kicked off with a victory for the Asian tribe. A former cellmate of Mafia black sheep John Gotti Jr. revealed that back when the two were clad in orange jumpsuits, the littlest don had written a book of purple prose for kids. Red Sox slugger David Ortiz, no stranger to Fenway Park’s Green Monster, resorted to slinging mud at Derek Jeter as his own MVP prospects dimmed with each passing day. And being Brown was reason to feel blue, as former golden girl Whitney Houston filed for divorce from Bobby after fourteen colorful years of marriage.

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Related:

• Archive: “People”
• Articles by Mark Adams
• Table of Contents: September 25, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!