Bush Seeks To Heal Rift With Hollywood; Schedules Lunch With Jane Fonda
President Bush, troubled by the decline in his approval ratings, has decided to make a frontal assault on Hollywood, a bastion of his disapproval ratings, by scheduling lunch with one of its most persistently adversarial spokespeople, Jane Fonda. Mr. Bush said, �I look forward to meeting with Ms. Fonda. She�s said so many outrageous things about me over the years, it will be a real pleasure to break bread, as it were. If I get through the lunch intact, I plan to move on to the next person on my guest list, Barbra Streisand.� The invitees were cautious, at least, in their public response to his overture. Ms. Streisand quipped, in her usually understated way, �I don�t mind singing for my supper, but do I have to sing for lunch, too?� Robert Redford, another of those invited, stated, �Well, if you ask me, the whole thing is a pretty slippery Sundance. He�s a former oilman, and I just came out against oil.� Ms. Fonda was, unsurprisingly, quite vocal. �I have a lot of things I�d like to say to the President, but not over lunch. I�d be too upset to swallow without choking. Then he�d have the opportunity to perform a Himelick maneuver, and, besides the fact that I�d have to endure his touch, he�d get to brag that, while he was undecided for a moment, he went ahead and saved my life. I�m not sure I�m ready for that.� Despite the early warning signs, the President remained upbeat. �You know those Hollywood folks,� he said. �They�re not all Republicans.�
