Year: 2002

Bush Named Most Admired American in Poll
WASHINGTON – Hillary Rodham Clinton, Laura Bush and J. Lo have something in common: Americans like them.
A Gallup poll found the nation divided in the contest for “most admired” woman. Among men, President Bush remained the clear favorite for the second year in a row.
Clinton, the former first lady who now represents New York in the Senate, and her successor in the White House, Laura Bush, topped Gallup’s list of women along with talk show host Oprah Winfrey. Clinton was favored by 7 percent of those surveyed; Bush and Winfrey had 6 percent each.
Among men, the president had a commanding 28 percent for men ó well ahead of the runner-up, former president Jimmy Carter who was in single digits.
Jennifer Lopez’s new movie and album, along with heavy media coverage of her pending wedding nuptials to actor Ben Affleck, boosted her to the sixth spot with 2 percent. That put her on par with incoming Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R-N.C., and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. Former first lady Barbara Bush and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher each got 3 percent.
Among younger respondents, Lopez outpolled them all with 10 percent.
Party lines had some bearing on results. Clinton pulled 15 percent among Democrats; the first lady led among Republicans, with 13 percent. They remain no match for Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who won 60 percent of Americans’ vote in 1963 following her husband’s assassination.
President Bush had earned 39 percent in the wake of last year’s terrorist attacks, a record high among men since the survey began in 1948. His dip in Gallup’s 2002 poll mirrors his sliding approval ratings over the last several months.
Events also pushed up Carter’s standing, with the recent Nobel Peace Prize winner rising from just 1 percent in 2001. He was the favorite among Democrats polled.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, Pope John Paul II, former President Bill Clinton and the Rev. Billy Graham each earned 2 to 4 percent.
The telephone survey of 1,009 adults was conducted Dec. 16-17 and has a sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. Respondents were asked to name the two people they admire most.
Only one man, Academy Award winning actor Denzel Washington, from the entertainment world made it into the men’s top-10. He rounded out that list along with former South African President Nelson Mandela, former Vice President Al Gore and former President Reagan.
Poet Maya Angelou and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright also made the top-10 women’s list.

Eminem Says He May ‘Be Getting Too Big’
DETROIT – As notoriety has grown for rapper Eminem, he has forced himself into a focused daily regimen, he says, laying low to avoid getting lost in the limelight.
“It’s almost to the point where I truly believe I may be getting too big for my own good,” he told the Detroit Free Press. “And I never really asked for that.”
This year, his album, “The Eminem Show” sold 7.4 million copies, and the “8 Mile” film soundtrack sold 3.5 million. “8 Mile,” which stars Eminem, has been one of the most successful pop music films in history.
“Looking back at this year? I really haven’t thought about it,” said the rapper, whose real name is Marshall Mathers III. “I never really stop to look back on things and reflect on them. I keep ’em on the head, but I’m concentrating on next year more than anything.”
He spends long hours producing at a studio in Ferndale and evenings at home in Clinton Township with his 7-year-old daughter, Hailie. His ex-wife, Kim, recently moved back in, and the couple are reconciling what has been a famously tumultuous relationship.
Mathers, 30, said he’s abandoned drugs and hits the weights daily. He said that if he had kept up his pace ó the drugs, the parties, the relentless family crises ó he’d be dead.
But he knows his success comes with another danger: the mainstreaming of a bad boy, whether he wants it or not.
“When everyone loves you, who’s left to hate you?” he said. “The kids want something they can hold onto that their parents hate. I know I did growing up. I didn’t want to listen to anything my parents listened to.”

Women Nicer to Kiss on Screen, Says Julianne Moore
LONDON (Reuters) – Hollywood star Julianne Moore says women are nicer than men to kiss in the movies because they always smell nicer.
Moore said she had no problem preparing for her screen kiss with Toni Collette in “The Hours,” which has already been touted as a leading Oscar contender.
“She smelled so nice,” Moore told Britain’s Sunday Mirror.
“You kiss an actor and you don’t know what they are going to smell like. But you kiss a girl and she is going to smell good. And she’s very soft. They’re soft and they smell nice. Guys don’t.”
But Moore, married with two young children, has not taken the day job home.
Asked if she had ever kissed a woman in real life, she said: “I’ve only been involved with men sexually.”

Film Director George Roy Hill Dies at Age 81
NEW YORK (Reuters) – George Roy Hill, director of the hit movies “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” and “The Sting” that paired actors Robert Redford and Paul Newman, died on Friday at his home in New York, according to friends.
The Oscar-winning director was 81 and died of complications from Parkinson’s disease, said Edwin Brown, his longtime business manager.
The 1969 Western “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” featured one of Hollywood’s most famous pairings as charismatic robbers. Redford and Newman were reunited in the 1973 stylized tale of two con artists, “The Sting,” which earned Hill an Academy Award for Best Director and also won the Oscar for Best Picture.
“His pairing of the two of them in ‘Butch Cassidy’ and ‘The Sting” was really an inspirational stroke because it worked so well,” said Brown. “He knew what he wanted to achieve when he was making a film, and he knew how to convey that to the professionals around him.”
A native of Minnesota, Hill studied at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, and at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
After serving in World War II and the Korean War, Hill began acting. In the 1950s, he moved into writing and directing live television including programs such as “A Night to Remember,” about the sinking of the Titanic, and “Judgment at Nuremberg.”
He also directed Broadway shows including the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Look Homeward, Angel.”
He directed his first feature film, “Period of Adjustment,” in 1962 and went on to direct 14 films in all, including “Hawaii” in 1966, “Thoroughly Modern Millie” in 1967, “Slaughterhouse-Five” in 1972 and “The World According To Garp” in 1982.
He directed Newman again in the incredible 1977 hockey movie “Slap Shot” and directed Redford again in 1975’s “The Great Waldo Pepper” about a barnstorming pilot. His last film was “Funny Farm,” with Chevy Chase, in 1988.
A pilot himself, Hill lived on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. He is survived by two sons, two daughters and 12 grandchildren.

Lakers Star Shaq Marries in Hush-Hush Ceremony
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Los Angeles Lakers superstar Shaquille O’Neal married his longtime girlfriend Shaunie Nelson at a hush-hush ceremony at the Beverly Hills Hotel on Thursday, keeping the wedding secret from even his teammates until the last moment.
The 7-foot tall, 330-pound Lakers center — one of America’s highest paid basketball stars — wed the mother of his two children in the hotel’s ballroom. The pair are now expecting a third child.
Security guards and bomb-sniffing dogs kept reporters and photographers at bay from the hotel as the couple had reportedly sold the picture rights to a magazine.
O’Neal’s Lakers teammates were not told until the last minute of the nuptials the day after Christmas and the basketball center apparently shrugged off gift suggestions.
“That makes it even more difficult. It’s one of those questions; ‘How do you get something for someone that has everything?”‘ Laker forward Rick Fox told reporters.
In case you have been living under a rock for the last decade, O’Neal, 30, has led the Lakers to the three straight World Championships and is one of the most dominant players in history of the game.