Pinning that Monkey Tail on Donna Rice!

You all remember the excitement in 1987 when a rare role model in the American Rhapsody, Yale Divinity School grad Gary Hart, dared the media to put a tail on him and try to substantiate the rumors that he was fooling around.  Well, Gary got his wish.


From Wikipedia:

Hart '88? Monkey Business '87!

Soon after meeting Rice, Hart announced that he would run for nomination as the Democratic candidate for President. Having enjoyed a surprisingly strong campaign in 1984 against the eventual nominee, former Vice President Walter Mondale, he was widely perceived as a front-runner for the Democratic nomination in 1988. However, rumors shortly thereafter began circulating about his having an extra-marital affair, leading the candidate to challenge the media to surveil him, and to also claim that anybody who did so would "be very bored." The day before Hart's dare to the media was to appear in The New York Times, however, two reporters for the Miami Herald observed Rice coming out of Hart's Washington, D.C. townhouse, and their story was published on the same day that his challenge appeared in the Times.

"President Hart"

While Hart contended that the reporters could have no knowledge of exactly when Rice arrived or why she was there, his popular appeal nevertheless suffered a major blow, and polls taken almost immediately afterward found him to be 10 points behind Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis. Two days after their initial story, the Herald obtained a photograph of Rice sitting on Hart's lap in Bimini aboard a luxury motor yacht named Monkey Business lent by socialite Lillian Briggs. The celebrity tabloid National Enquirer immediately published the photograph, and within five days, Hart had decided to drop out of the Democratic Presidential nomination race.^[2][3]

Early on, a 'Marketing' career

Well, turns out that the comely Rice had tried her hand at a variety of callings.  She had been a marketing specialist in south FL for a pharma company before all the fuss.  After the fuss, she found an audience as celebrity endorser for No Excuses jeans, but by 1994 had found her true calling - protecting children from exploitation and abuse on the internet. 

For almost 20 years she's done a great job with Enough Is Enough, and she's still at it.

So it was in that mode and guise that Donna appeared, in 1998, and we came face to face.  I was out hob-nobbing at a big weekday-evening confab in Reston,VA with Mario Morino and the NetPreneur crowd when, Lo and Behold: Ms. Rice (by then Hughes, married to NoVa area venture capital guy Jack).

She was instantly-recognizable, very friendly, vivacious, and/but totally on-message.  I shamelessly referenced my then-four-year-old daughter to get the ball rolling, and eventually, artlessly, brought up politics (but not Presidential) - however, I couldn't get her out of trade-show-booth mode. . .

A bit like Jeannie Francis ?

. . . Just as well.