CBS Video: Kevin Doyle on Traveling with Hillary

Reminder: This issue hits the stands Tuesday as does the Vogue issue with the story about Chelsea.

Chelsea's Turn to Hit the Stands in Vogue!

Jonathan Van Meter, who chronicled Hillary Clinton's August 2009 Africa trip for the December Vogue that year,  has now turned his attention to Chelsea whom he followed around for several months.  As usual, he has done an excellent job.  The September issue hits the stands next Tuesday,  August 21,  the same day the Condé Nast Traveller issue featuring Chelsea's awesome mom also comes out.

I especially enjoyed the little segment below.  Until September 11, 2001 I was an avid Jeopardy viewer.  I was excellent.  My friends and I used to frequent a "Jeopardy Bar" after work from which the twin towers could be seen and from which you could be ejected while the show was on for speaking in anything other than the form of a relevant question.  I even beta-tested online Jeopardy.  But when regular broadcasting returned, and I think that was not until mid-February 2002 when finally the fire at "the pile" was extinguished,  I could not bear to go back to Jeopardy.  I don't know why.  It felt empty and pointless.  Somehow,  I found Trading Spaces which felt like a constructive replacement.  I watched it faithfully for years until a certain Senator from New York threw her chapeau into the presidential race, and I switched to cable news.

Waiting in the Wings: An Exclusive Interview with Chelsea Clinton

by Jonathan Van Meter | photographed by Mario Testino

The private reception in the library’s restaurant, Forty Two, spills out onto a big deck that overlooks the sun setting on the Arkansas River. There are margaritas and Mexican food, and the whole affair takes on the air of a big family barbecue, with children running around, folks getting tipsy, and everyone going back for seconds. Chelsea is holding court with her friends, among them interior designer Ryan Lawson and Dan Baer, a deputy assistant secretary for the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor at the U.S. Department of State. Hillary is regaling them with stories. The conversation turns to the fact that Dorothy had a real knack for making a beautiful home, which then leads to the revelation that Hillary’s guilty pleasure, the thing she does when she really wants to take her mind off her work, is to sit with a big pile of interior-design magazines and flip through them. She also admits that she enjoys some of the reality shows on the subject. And then she says, “Chelsea, did I ever tell you about the first time I actually spoke to Lindsey Graham? He came up to me one day on the floor of the Senate and said, ‘Guess who called me?’ ‘Who?’ I said. ‘A producer from the television show Trading Spaces. They want you and I to trade places. What do you say?’ And I said, ‘I don’t think so!’ ” At that, she puts her finger to her dimpled cheek and exaggeratedly twists it a couple of times and then dramatically turns on her heel and saunters away. Everyone laughs while Chelsea convulses in a silent paroxysm of laughter and disbelief, with a look on her face that says, my mom!

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Hillary Hits the Stands (Again!) This Time in Condé Nast Traveller

What a delightful surprise this morning to tune into MSNBC's "Morning Joe" and find a whole segment devoted to Kevin Doyle's excellent article in the September issue of  Condé Nast Traveller logging the secretary of state's trip through Asia in May.  Personable and enthusiastic, Doyle was a great guest and spoke highly of our lovely Mme. Secretary.  The issue hits the stands next Tuesday, August 21.  I will be buying my keepsake copy, for sure!  Meanwhile, here is the e-copy in advance with a great slideshow by Kevin's colleague Mark Seliger.  Great job, guys!  Thanks!

Where in the World is Hillary?

Nine Days with the Most Traveled Secretary of State in History

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the tomb of Humayun, a sixteenth-century Mogul emperor, in New Delhi, India. “In the modern world, we’re all interdependent, we’re all interconnected. You just can’t say that you’re only going to deal with your own kind of person, or you’re only going to meet your own kind of person, or you’re only going to listen to your own kind of person. That’s not the way the world is going to work. And we’ll either figure out how to be more integrated, or we will disintegrate.”

By Kevin Doyle

Mark Seliger

September 2012 Issue

One could be forgiven for thinking that there’s little left to reveal about Hillary Rodham Clinton. Since she first moved into the White House and onto the world stage nearly twenty years ago, her every public utterance and action (and supposedly many private ones), along with details of her life ranging from the excruciatingly intimate to the numbingly mundane, have been recorded, disseminated, dissected, debated, fictionalized, and dramatized on celluloid. But even after living under the klieg-light scorch of media scrutiny as First Lady (eight years), senator (eight years), and now the sixty-seventh secretary of state (three years and counting), there’s one very intimate detail that most people still don’t know about Hillary Clinton, and which I shall divulge: She does not sweat. Literally. She does not even glow. No matter how high the heat, not a drop nor a drip nor a bead nor so much as the faintest glisten can be detected anywhere about her person.

It’s an improbable physical anomaly that was cited more than once (along with superhuman stamina, uncommon thoughtfulness, and a steel-trap mind) by longtime aides and members of the press corps whom I joined this spring on a nine-day, nineteen-thousand-mile breakneck trip following Clinton—the most traveled secretary of state in history—to China, Bangladesh, and India. It is also a trait that translates directly to metaphor, and which serves her powerfully in her duties as America’s chief diplomat. This was abundantly clear to anyone who witnessed the trademark sangfroid she displayed in Beijing this past May, as she met with leading Chinese officials during one of the tensest diplomatic crises between the United States and China in memory.

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(I would love yo use this photo for the header here, but it belongs to Condé Nast Traveller,  alas!)