Ivy League star power

At precisely 11:30 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 8, a TV viewer with picture-in-picture options could watch simultaneous broadcasts featuring perhaps the two most famous American blonde women with Ivy League connections. NorthWest Cable News had Hillary Clinton (Yale Law) speaking to a campaign crowd in Tacoma. Sibling station KING-TV (5), meanwhile, welcomed Paris Hilton, a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show. Hilton's Ivy League claim? Just two days earlier, she'd been pegged Woman of the Year by the Harvard Lampoon, and her visit to the hub of higher learning included a frat party and other fun stuff. "Harvard is hot," Hilton observed, and who would know better? Also warmer than normal was the pro-Hillary-packed auditorium at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, though maybe not to the extent of the temperature at KeyArena Friday. It was crammed to capacity and said to be turning away enough overflow to make a decent midseason crowd for the Seattle SuperSonics. Reason: Barack Obama live. Clinton's competitor for the Dem nomination also was shown on live regional TV during the morning and afternoon, partly, one imagines, because, like Hilton, he has a connection with a well-known Harvard institution: He was president of the Harvard Law Review.