People

By Josh Tyrangiel

W. Speaks Up

GEORGE W. BUSH and Hillary Clinton don't have much in common, but they share the same blue blood. Yale Blue. (He's class of '68; she's law school '73.) And both will speak to the graduating class of '01. Clinton will deliver the traditional class-day address on May 20. While Yale doesn't normally have commencement-day speakers, the university is making an exception for the President, who--say sources close to Bush--will receive an honorary degree when he speaks on May 21. The White House and Yale had hoped to keep the visit a secret as long as possible; the President has carried "a chip on his shoulder about Yale," according to Roland Betts, a close friend and member of the Yale Corporation. Bush, seen below as an undergrad, loathed the "intellectual arrogance" he encountered there, he once told TIME. And he resented that Yale didn't give his father (class of '48) an honorary degree until 1991. But now that W is President--and daughter Barbara is a freshman--it seems he is ready to make peace with Yale. And share the Blue limelight with the former First Lady.

PRIME TIME'S FAVORITE PASTIME

Two-sport star DEION SANDERS has always referred to football as his wife and baseball as his girlfriend. His wife may want to contact a lawyer. Sanders, the only man to play in both the World Series and the Super Bowl, returned to baseball for the first time since 1997 last week and showed no interest in leaving, going 3 for 3 with a home run and a stolen base while roaming the outfield for the Cincinnati Reds. Following a series of ovations from the Ohio fans, Sanders filled the press room with his own bizarre expression of gratitude: "I've never felt appreciated like that in my life. I've always felt like a jukebox... 'You play what I push, you do what I want.' And if I don't play the record they want me to play, they're upset, and they're kicking the box." Maybe the box is playing his colossally awful rap single, It Must Be the Money.

MESSING WITH TOM IS RISKY BUSINESS

TOM CRUISE has spent the better part of a decade denying rumors that he is gay--perhaps because he has starred in films with titles like A Few Good Men, Top Gun and The Firm. Now he's filed a $100 million lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court against a porn star who may or may not have told a French magazine that Cruise was his lover. According to the suit, CHAD SLATER, who performs under the name Kyle Bradford, told Actustar that he had "a continuing homosexual affair with Tom Cruise and that this affair was discovered by Mr. Cruise's wife, leading to their divorce." Slater issued a complete denial. "I have never been to France, I have never spoken with Actustar magazine and have never said any of the alleged statements," reads a message on Slater's website. Whoever is at fault, Cruise's lawyer Bert Fields sounds like a man sitting atop one-third of a big pile of cash: "We're still trying to figure out the facts, but if [Slater's] denial turns out to be the truth, we're really going after that magazine." Please, someone call me gay.

SECRETLY, HE'S REALLY JEALOUS

Whether they turn it into a sex-farce sitcom for seniors or a Hallmark Hall of Fame special, the romance between SUZANNE PLESHETTE and TOM POSTON seems ripe for the CBS development department. Pleshette, 64, who played BOB NEWHART's wife on The Bob Newhart Show, and Poston, 79, who played Newhart's handyman on Newhart, are getting married 30 years after they first met. Newhart couldn't be happier. "Not too long ago, Suzy lost her husband, and Tom lost his wife," says Newhart. "I would see Tom on a fairly regular basis, and he was just a fish out of water. He didn't know what to do with himself. I'm so happy for them." Thus concludes the Hallmark Hall of Fame portion. Now the sitcom part. "They're like two teenagers," says Newhart. "It's too bad they don't have rumble seats so they can make out."

SURVIVAL OF THE SWEETEST

Reality TV is supposed to coarsen the culture, accelerating America's highly anticipated slide into the Sodom-Gomorrah metropolitan area. Survivor: The Australian Outback proved to be a huge letdown. TINA WESSON, sweet part-time nurse from Tennessee, took the million dollars, but sensitivity flowed from the other finalists too: COLBY DONALDSON (weepy mama's boy), RODGER BINGHAM (weepy schoolteacher), ELISABETH FILARSKI (weepy outback nymph) and KEITH FAMIE (just plain weepy--he broke down on live TV to propose marriage to his girlfriend). "I wanted it to be a kinder game," said Wesson, of the unfortunate lack of backstabbing. "I told [series creator] Mark [Burnett]...that I think a nice person could win this." The aggressive humility and kindness extended into the 10,000 hours of post-Survivor interviews as Tina, Keith and Colby insisted that "it wasn't about the money" and that they had returned changed people. Tina spoke about not giving her husband her emotional "leftovers," while Colby repeatedly chastised himself for not appreciating the outback enough. It was all very touching. Now please bring back the naked fat guy.

HE'S MAD ABOUT THE MOUSE

KIM JONG NAM, your father just starved 2 million people--what are you going to do now? Sadly, he's not going to Disneyland. A man claiming to be Kim Jong Nam, son of the certainly weird, purportedly evil North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, was deported from Japan after trying to sneak into the country with two women and a four-year-old boy he wanted to take to Tokyo Disneyland. Japan and North Korea do not have diplomatic relations, so Nam, 29, was traveling with a Dominican passport under the name Pang Xiong. The Japanese government refused comment on the case in an effort to avoid further embarrassment to North Korea, but several news agencies confirmed Nam's identity. The trip could mark a potential split between Jong Nam, the presumptive future ruler of North Korea, and his poofy-haired father. In his collection of 20,000 videotapes, Kim Jong Il is known to prefer the high jinks of Daffy Duck to Mickey Mouse.

ACTUALLY, THEY'RE BOTH KIND OF WEAK

Considering the relatively modest success of Weakest Link--the NBC game show that lost its time slot last week to King of Queens--there is a perception that perhaps hostess ANNE ROBINSON is getting too big for her britches. HOWARD STERN, for one, has had enough. After NBC made overtures to have him appear on a celebrity version of Link, Stern vowed to seek revenge for those Robinson has shamed. "I'm not gonna answer one question," said Stern on his radio show. "I'd say, 'O.K., I'm an idiot? Let's see what kind of idiot you are, you Weakest Link bitch.'" Stern added that he would also read tabloid stories about Robinson's years as an alcoholic. NBC had no comment on the matter, but it is safe to assume Stern is more likely to appear at the Friends wedding than on Weakest Link.