America Doesn’t Want a Real-Estate-Mogul-in-ChiefAs Trump ditches the campaign trail for a business trip, a poll shows seven in ten Americans think he shouldn’t be running his company while running for president.
Scottish Isle Waits for The Donald Ex MachinaThere are some Americans for whom true success is found overseas. David Hasselhoff, for instance, is revered in Germany. Kelly Rutherford, who plays Lily on Gossip Girl, is a megacelebrity in Turkey. Not to brag or anything, but Intel is huge in Durbuy, Belgium. And, as the Wall Street Journal tells us today, Donald Trump is practically worshipped in Lewis, the tiny island off the coast of Scotland where his mother was born. The people of Lewis are not only not revolted by The Donald’s values and smarmy attitude and limited vocabulary, they would actually like him to live among them and would love nothing more than for The Donald to knock aside their prehistoric ruins and build a glittering megaplex on their heathered moors. “He can play golf here, do a bit of fishing, shooting, a bit of relaxation,” one local councilor, who wrote Trump asking him to turn a crumbling castles into a luxury hotel, told the Journal, which suggests that Lewis waits for The Donald as the Sahara waits for the rains. “It will come suddenly,” one resident said, as if expecting a golden Donald to one day descend from the sky. But others are more pragmatic: “The weather isn’t bouffant friendly,” one councilman said.
Bonnie Donny, The Isle o’ Lewis Is Pining for Ye [WSJ]
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Sean Connery Is Not Dead
When Scotsmen invaded the city earlier this week for the Friends of Scotland’s annual Dressed to Kilt charity fashion show, the event’s unofficial king, Sir Sean Connery, was notably absent. Why? As he told us the next night at a dinner Hennessy Cognac threw in his honor, he was recovering from a kidney exam at New York Presbyterian. “I actually heard from quite a few people that everyone thought I was dead because I wasn’t there last night,” he said. “No, I had to have a test because last time I was here, I had a tumor on the kidney. Everything’s perfect.” Well, almost perfect.
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Celebrities Exposed at Dressed to KiltLast night was the annual Dressed to Kilt fashion show, a benefit at Capitale for which innumerable celebrities and demi-celebrities — like Stone Phillips (at left), and you can decide for yourself which category he falls into — walk the catwalk in kilts to benefit the Friends of Scotland charity, show off their legs, and raise the question in curious onlookers’ minds of just what body parts they might display that they don’t mean to display. (How does a true Scotsman pick up women? “Sit on a bar stool, give ‘em a little peep,” explained Lord of the Rings hobbit Billy Boyd.)
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PR Swag of the Week: Great Scot!
A New York colleague received in yesterday’s mail what at first seemed to be a standard-issue bit of flackery: a press kit for Tartan Week, which is apparently both “an annual celebration of the contribution millions of Scottish-Americans have made to our great nation” and, it seems, an attempt to boost tourism to Scotland. The package was about what you’d expect: a color-copied itinerary of Tartan Week events, ads for the week’s blue-chip sponsors — like Glenfiddich, Continental Airlines, and what appears to be the government of Scotland — and a brochure about visiting “the best small country in the world.” And then there was the woolen thong. Yes, a woolen thong. Complete with a cute little bow. Is it local garb? Who knows? But: Itchy. And, if it is, sort of undercuts the come-visit pitch, no?
