Big Tobacco's Endgame
Steven F. Goldstone, the chairman and chief executive officer of one of the four most reviled corporations in America, looks like a man in need of a cigarette. A dismal funk has settled over the Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem, N.C., which is where his company, RJR Nabisco, is about to open its annual shareholders' meeting. The meeting won't be pleasant for him, but what is these days? It's reefer madness out there--not so much in Winston-Salem, one of the last of the country's pro-tobacco redoubts, but almost everywhere else.
It is perhaps the worst moment in history to be a tobacco C.E.O.
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Can I Have That in a Plain Brown Wrapper, Please?
It has been several months since I loosed myself from the choke hold of investment mania, several months since I've had a conversation like this one:
Wife: We need to buy Pampers.
Me: That's a good move--doubling-up on Procter & Gamble isn't a momentum play, but it's long-term growth, a hedge against our exposure in the volatile high-tech area.
Wife: What?
Me: Procter & Gamble. The Cincinnati-based consumer-products giant. Maker of Pampers, Ivory Snow, Tide-- .
Wife: We need Pampers. Actual Pampers.
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Farrakhan the Chasid
After spending a delightful afternoon with Minister Louis Farrakhan in his Chicago home, I can report that the leader of the Nation of Islam is actually a chasid of the Satmar sect. Or so he suggests. I consider this a scoop.
We were sitting at his immense dining room table, along with his chief of staff, Leonard Farrakhan Muhammad, who, unlike his boss, doesn't believe that it is worth the Nation of Islam's while to sit down with Jewish journalists. It's not that he's anti-Semitic, you see, it's just that Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League will eventually get to me and order my opinions trimmed to conform to those of the ADL.
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