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Don’t despair, kids.
As unemployed college grads face the unappetizing prospect of moving onto Mom and Dad’s couch, there is good news. And it doesn’t require relocating to Fargo.
Opportunities exist in the glamorous, high-profile, big-bucks world of television network news, where even a woefully inexperienced, ill-at-ease-in-her-skin gal can land a huge job in front of the camera — without the nuisance of taking a screen test first.
There is one catch.
The lady’s name has to be Chelsea Clinton.
Chelsea this week breathed life into the new concept of celebrity-assisted workfare. She grabbed a plum job from the jaws of thousands of deserving J-school graduates who aren’t too vain to muss their hair covering hurricanes, or too proud to get freaky with the Kardashians. Chelsea will be doing softball features at the NBC News petting zoo.
But who am I to poke fun? This is a gal unafraid to boldly march into the trenches.
At age 31, Chelsea already has a body of worldly experience, it was told to me, with a straight face, by someone who knows her. Chelsea has already interviewed not one — but two! — people on camera.
Those two people would be her mom and her dad.
Looking stiff and uncomfortable, she chatted up mom Hillary on “global issues” at a Clinton Global Initiative shindig in September. She hit up her dad just last week, talking up the economy at a book thing at the New-York Historical Society.
“One sort of misconception is that she never did anything,” said the person who knows her. “She gave an interview. She talked to ABC News.”
Based on this, Chelsea had an “intermediary” contact NBC News President Steve Capus, who then called in Chelsea, he told The New York Times.
“She was kicking around what she wants to do next,” Capus said. “I asked her, ‘What are you interested in doing?’ ’’
It seems Chelsea’s intermediaries are better than your intermediaries, because, as she kicked around what she wanted to do with her life, Capus hired her on the spot. She did not take a screen test, an NBC source told me. No starter job in Boise.
Chelsea now works on NBC’s “Making a Difference” series, where she’ll interview people less fabulous than she on the “Nightly News.” Suckers.
“Wouldn’t it be fantastic to be working at one of the world’s great news networks, and be doing uplifting, meaningful stories?” said an industry vet who didn’t want to be named as trashing Chelsea.
“If her name were Chelsea Smith, I don’t think such a generous offer would be made.”
Chelsea’s résumé says she teaches at NYU, and has been seeking a Ph.D. at Oxford for, like, ever. She also works for her daddy’s foundation. But taking herself public includes refusing to do a single interview or divulging her salary, which, the source who knows her tells me, she’ll contribute entirely to charity.
Which makes things even worse. Chelsea doesn’t need the money.
Just another spoiled, aimless child of rich, successful parents chauffeured through adulthood by Mommy and Daddy’s connections.
But now that Chelsea’s become an adult public figure — as a child, the media always gave her space — it will be telling to see how a woman who treats reporters like insects will handle being one of them. The one personal detail told to me was that she now lives in New York with her hedge-funding husband, Marc Mezvinsky. The guy who vanished to become a ski bum in Wyoming before they were married a year.
But Chelsea is not the first. She has a stable of politically connected pals from whom she can ask advice. NBC also employs George W. Bush’s daughter Jenna Bush Hager to do equally soft puff pieces, and whose halting delivery makes me nervous. Meanwhile, MSNBC employs Megan McCain, daughter of presidential candidate John. Apparently, the spawn of those who lose elections are relegated to cable.
But for Chelsea, it’s not about being a star. Really. “This isn’t about a career in television for her,” said my source. “Not to be cheesy about it, she wants to use television to tell these stories.”
I can think of a lot more talented women, not named Clinton, who’d maim for this chance.
Mike finally thinkin’ — not Dinkin’
Mayor Bloomberg didn’t want to be remembered as Mayor Wimp.
It took two months of hand-wringing and flip-flopping.
But the mayor finally stepped up his game and ordered the cleansing of Occupy Wall Street lair Zuccotti Park, plus the permanent removal of tents and assorted filth.
Bloomberg’s actions were spurred, in part, by the outbreak of lung disease and body vermin among squatters, some of whom were lawless vagrants, The Post reported. But the three-term mayor also risked being remembered in the same breath as Mayor David Dinkins, who failed to act as riots erupted in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991, leading to the murder of an innocent Jewish scholar.
The ineffectual Dinkins was ousted from City Hall after a single term.
Better late than never, Hizzoner got his groove back. It’s a legacy thing.
This windbag passes lots o’ gas
Pity the 1 percent.
In addition to his palatial Park Avenue pad, junk documentarian and anti-Wall Streeter Michael Moore owns a Michigan megamansion that puts him firmly among the richest 1 percent of Americans. Poor Michael!
The guilt this guy must feel as he’s forced to contribute far more than his share of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, just by heating and cooling the place. Moore has got to commiserate with ozone bozo Al Gore, who has to heat and cool his extreme Nashville estate (which burned 20 times the national average of electricity and natural gas before a red-faced Gore plunked on solar panels) and a bigger spread near Oprah’s in posh Montecito, Calif.
Don’t hate Moore and Gore because they’re stinking rich polluters. It isn’t easy being the world’s biggest hypocrites.
No shower can wash away Sandusky’s stench
Alleged perv and ex-Penn State football coach Jerry Sandusky admits he showered with and touched preteen boys. But he’s no pedophile.
“I have horsed around with kids. I have showered after workouts. I have hugged them and I have touched their legs without intent of sexual contact,’’ he told Bob Costas.
Mike McQueary, then a graduate assistant, evidently mistook the sound of “snapping towels” for what he believed was the shower rape of a 10-year-old boy, Sandusky said.
This is too creepy for words.
Old-time rock & dole
Wall Streeters have nothing on rich lefties.
New Jersey rock stars Jon Bon Jovi and Bruce Springsteen, a noted basher of President GeorgeW.
Bush, have something in common. They’re among multimillionaires, who also include TedTurner and basketball star Scottie Pippin, who’ve received government subsidies for using their real estate to raise bees (Bon Jovi) or lease their land to an organic farmer (Springsteen).
Your tax dollars at work.