PEOPLE

By Belinda Luscombe

LOOK WHO'S TRASH TALKING

She's the conservative lioness who runs brother Pat's campaigns. He's basketball's multihued satyr. Now both ANGELA ("Bay") BUCHANAN and DENNIS RODMAN will be mouthing off on air. Buchanan will replace Mary Matalin on CNBC's Equal Time, and she's clear about her mission. "I'm involved in a movement," she says. "This is a terrific opportunity to have our issues kept in the public debate." Rodman's vision is a bit murkier. MTV says the freestyle show will have guests and commentary. But the Tattooed One calls his program "something totally different" with "all of my real-life stuff." Where does one begin to count the differences between the two TV talkers? "I'm not going to change my hair style every week," says Buchanan.

SEEN & HEARD

Whoopi Goldberg has something to help her forget Theodore Rex, her new straight-to-video movie. She has agreed, for a rumored $6 million, to put her thoughts to paper. More musings than memoir, the unnamed work shouldn't upset those, like Ted Danson, who have made whoopee with the author in the past.

After eight wives, nine children and two Oscars, Mickey Rooney can hardly be expected to do anything just once. Almost 24 years to the day after his first bankruptcy petition, Rooney filed again, this time because he owes the tax man $1.75 million. "A man has to do what he has to do," the 75-year-old told Variety's Army Archerd.

WHAT'S FRENCH FOR SAPPY?

American Presidents, from Abe Lincoln to Jimmy Carter, have expressed a softer side by writing poetry. French Presidents prefer love stories. Valery Giscard d'Estaing even penned an erotic novel. Now a novella by FRANCOIS MITTERRAND, written in 1940 when he was 23 and in the army, has been auctioned for $7,600. Premier Accord is the story of a young man's love for Elsa, who is "supple, gay, effervescent...a Persian at the sword, her pink curves like a jar of hair cream." Pardon?

BOWE AND THE LOW-BLOW SHOW

Boxing is never a beauty pageant, but the sport turned acutely ugly last week in Madison Square Garden when Riddick Bowe's heavyweight bout became an audience-participation slugfest. Bowe was clearly losing to underdog Andrew Golota when Golota punched him below the belt for the fourth time. Bowe hit the canvas, and the referee disqualified Golota. But Bowe's supporters, including promoter Rock Newman, stormed the ring, one of them smashing Golota over the head with a mobile phone. The crowd, smelling blood, started melees of its own, throwing chairs and punches until police regained sufficient control to make 10 arrests.