Courteney Cox joins Twitter; Tim Gunn says he’s been celibate for 29 years

Courteney Cox. (Christopher Polk - Getty Images for the Broadcast Television Journalists Association) Courteney Cox has joined Twitter, giving us normal folks a chance to feel like we’re IRL friends with her. The actress has been tweeting nice things at her “Cougar Town” fans, as well as a cute picture of a dog. I think she’s got this Twitter thing down! (@CourteneyCox)

Tim Gunn is known as the kindly mentor on “Project Runway.” And that’s pretty much all we knew about him ... until now. The fashionisto told the panelists on ABC’s “The Revolution” he has been celibate for 29 years: “Do I feel like less of a person for it? No! Not even remotely.” Read the reason behind the decision, at the link. (EW)

James Farentino, a veteran actor of the big and small screen, died of heart failure Tuesday. The Golden Globe-winner, who you might recognize from “The Final Countdown,” “Dynasty,” “E.R.” or “Melrose Place,” was 73. (AP via WaPo)

A jury has ordered a hospital to pay Garth Brooks $1 million for failing to build a women’s health center in honor of his late mother after he gave a $500,000 donation. The other half a million in the ruling was for punitive damages. (AP via WaPo)

Joan Rivers has some unkind words for Chelsea Handler , after the jump.

Joan Rivers fired off a retaliatory comment at Chelsea Handler this week, calling her “an ordinary girl who was [expletive] somebody high up in the industry.” She added, “Wherever she is, she’s drunk.” After the comments went public, one of Handler’s Twitter followers asked her, “SO! Are you really a drunkin [expletive]? BC Joan Rivers said you are!!! lol” Handler replied, “I am!” Link is NSFW. (Buzzfeed)

Is Whitney Houston “broke as a joke?” Not according to her rep. (CNN)

Miley Cyrus should attempt to never be photographed with cake. Link is NSFW. (TMZ)

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JFK Jr. aide recalls secrecy, drama of his final years

John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette at a New York gala in May 1999. (Mike Segar/Reuters) In the summer of 1995, buzz was swirling around John F. Kennedy Jr., as it so often did. The New York Post, citing anonymous sources, reported that America’s most eligible bachelor was engaged. As the calls poured into his office, his aide issued a flat denial: “The stories. . . are untrue. He is not engaged.”

Now it can be told: They lied. He was already engaged to Carolyn Bessette, whom he wed a year later in a stealth ceremony that set the standard for paparazzi-proof VIP nuptials.

Kennedy’s aide RoseMarie Terenzio — who reveals the episode in a new memoir — admits that the lie was a less-than-karmic start for her PR career. Now, she says, “I tell all my clients, ‘I will not lie for you’ . . . Those people would remember I’d lied to them and they wouldn’t talk to me again.”

RoseMarie Terenzio (Christian Lucidi) But Kennedy was saddled with a unique kind of fame that she believes made lying necessary. The media fuss would have overshadowed the launch of his new politics-meets-pop-culture magazine, George — and overwhelmed a relationship he wanted to keep private and normal.

“If you’re an actor and you don’t want to be famous anymore, you stop acting. If you’re a singer and you don’t want to be famous, you stop singing,” Terenzio told us. “John couldn’t stop being John.”

You won’t find much dirt in Terenzio’s new book about the late Kennedy scion, “Fairy Tale Interrupted.” (Cynics, don’t groan: The fairy tale was not John-John’s but hers, a working-class Bronx kid swept up in his glamorous world.) She was nuts about her boss, for whom she worked from 1994 until his 1999 death, and pals with Bessette, who treated her to lavish shopping sprees and makeovers.

Terenzio’s juiciest revelation concerns the couple’s final days. Other writers have claimed the marriage was in trouble, but Terenzio says Bessette was merely worn down by the fame and scrutiny. Irked by a lack of solo time with her husband, Bessette balked at attending a Kennedy cousin’s Hyannis wedding — until Terenzio talked her into boarding the doomed flight with him.

The book is mostly a window into the time a president’s son tried to make it in New York publishing, in the final giddy years before the Internet changed everything. (“I miss it so much, for so many reasons,” Terenzio says of the era.) She describes the paparazzi swarms, the colleagues jockeying for Kennedy’s favor, the publishers trotting him before advertisers like a prize pony — and Kennedy’s willingness, to a point, to play the game. He asked Madonna to pose on the cover in pillbox hat and suit, à la Jackie. She turned him down, Terenzio writes — though he succeeded, scandalously, in posing Drew Barrymore as Marilyn, singing her infamous “Happy Birthday” to his dad.

Hard times were on the horizon for magazines, but Terenzio believes that if her boss hadn’t died, George (which folded just over a year later) would have thrived in years to come. “With tea parties and hanging chads and Obama — oh, it was ahead of its time!”

Read earlier in the Washington Post archives: The death of John F. Kennedy Jr., July 1999

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50 years ago, Kennedy’s order empowered federal unions

That notion has come under attack recently. Nonetheless, federal unions labor on, seeking, in the words of the order, to provide workers “an opportunity for greater participation in the formulation and implementation of policies and procedures affecting the conditions of their employment.”

Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said Kennedy’s action was “a major step forward and helped to create the most highly respected civil service in the world.”

William R. Dougan, president of the National Federation of Federal Employees, said that “collective bargaining has made inestimable gains in the quality of work life for millions of federal workers over the past half-century. Top-down decisions on safety and health matters, work schedules, reorganizations and many other workplace issues have been replaced with a collaborative process where workers have a definitive voice in how they accomplish their mission.”

What Kennedy might not have realized when he signed the document Jan. 17, 1962, was the impact his action would have on union membership. The rate of union membership in the federal government is several times that of the private sector, which in 2010 stood at just 6.9 percent of that workforce, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

At the federal level, about 63 percent of federal workers are unionized, estimates Robert Tobias, a former president of the National Treasury Employees Union and now director of Key Executive Leadership Programs at American University. Although BLS does not confirm Tobias’s estimate, it’s clear unions have a strong presence in the federal government.

A major reason is that the order told agency officials not to mess with employees who want to join or organize a union.

“Employees of the Federal Government shall have, and shall be protected in the exercise of, the right, freely and without fear of penalty or reprisal, to form, join and assist any employee organization or to refrain from any such activity,” Section 1(a) said. It further instructed agency heads to ensure “that no interference, restraint, coercion or discrimination is practiced within such agency to encourage or discourage membership in any employee organization.”

“It’s huge,” Tobias said of the order’s impact on federal organizing. Government agencies are not allowed to campaign against unions, as businesses can. Agency officials are prohibited from firing or taking action against labor activists (which is not to say it never happens).

But the executive order does not stop Congress from taking aim at federal unions. An American Federation of Government Employees statement put it this way: “At a time when government workers are currently under partisan attack, recognizing the significance of Executive Order 10988 is especially important to remind everyone of the long journey government workers have taken, and to re-energize workers for the battles ahead.”

The first shots in those battles have been fired.

Almost as soon as the Obama administration granted transportation security officers collective bargaining rights last year, Republicans introduced legislation to take them away.

“Collective bargaining advocated by the Obama Administration could restrict their ability to accomplish their job,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) said in a February statement. “Not only would this change to allow bargaining restrict flexibility, the litigation it creates will lead to significant cost increases for taxpayers.”

His statement offered no proof that bargaining would restrict flexibility or increase costs.

In June, a House subcommittee considered legislation sponsored by Rep. Phil Gingrey (R-Ga.) that would no longer allow union officials to do union business on government time. “Official time” is essentially the trade-off unions get for being required to represent everyone in a bargaining unit, even if they are not dues-paying members. Kennedy’s executive order says labor organizations “shall be responsible for representing the interests of all such employees without discrimination and without regard to employee organization membership.”

Rep. Dennis A. Ross (R-Fla.), chairman of the House federal workforce subcommittee, said he thinks unions have too much power.

“As the payrolls grow, so too does the electoral power of government unions, and a death spiral begins,” he said. “Politicians courting favor promise unrealistic wages and benefits in exchange for votes. .?.?. This naturally politicizes public service and leads to a massively political workforce that is supposed to work for all Americans.”

Gregory Junemann, president of the International Federation of Professional & Technical Engineers, considers comments like that a warning.

“If President Obama doesn’t get reelected,” Junemann said, “federal unions are going to face an agenda of extinction.”

For Joe Davidson’s previous columns, go to postlocal.com. You can follow the Federal Diary on Twitter: @JoeDavidsonWP.

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Maryland DC Brian Stewart to make $350,000 annually over next two years

Maryland defensive coordinator Brian Stewart signed a two-year contract that will pay him $350,000 in guaranteed annual compensation when he agreed to replace Todd Bradford earlier this month. All of Coach Randy Edsall’s assistants now are under contract through at least the 2013 season.

Bradford, who agreed to an undisclosed buyout with Maryland, also was making $350,000 annually on the three-year deal he signed last year.

Stewart – whose contract was obtained via a public records request – can earn up to $110,000 in performance-based bonuses each year, though none of them are tied to his ability to recruit.

In December, Maryland hired Mike Locksley to replace Gary Crowton as the team’s offensive coordinator, and Locksley’s contract contained several recruiting-based bonus clauses. Locksley received a four-year deal worth $500,000 in guaranteed annual compensation.

Stewart spent the past two seasons as the defensive coordinator at Houston. He also has extensive experience as an assistant at the NFL level. He is expected to implement a 3-4 base defense at Maryland.

In 2011 – Bradford’s only season as the team’s defensive coordinator – the Terrapins ranked No. 102 in the nation in scoring defense (34.3 ppg allowed), No. 108 in total defense (457.2 ypg allowed), No. 111 in rushing defense (219.8 ypg allowed) and No. 74 in passing defense (237.4 ypg allowed).

More from Post Sports:
— Stewart to install aggressive 3-4 scheme
— Maryland hires Stewart as defensive coordinator
— Maryland, Bradford agree to buyout terms

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