The Reliable Source
When Nobuyuki Idei, chairman of Sony, asked Howard Stringer, chairman of Sony America, to set up a little dinner for various Washington VIPs next month, Stringer enlisted his old friend Sally Quinn, our Post colleague, to help pick a venue and organize a guest list.</br></br>Quinn suggested using the newly refurbished former presidential yacht Sequoia, docked at the Washington Marina. But when she toured the 106-foot vessel a few weeks ago, she spotted trouble: A framed photograph commemorating Japanese Emperor Hirohito and Empress Nagako's 1975 cruise with President Ford was accompanied by a brass plaque bearing the inscription: "In 1945, President Harry Truman reportedly decided, while on the Sequoia, to drop the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, Japan."</br></br>Quinn immediately asked that the offending plaque be removed, and a new plaque -- omitting the reference to Hiroshima -- was ordered from a Capitol Hill framing shop. Yesterday, after dinner organizers got wind of our inquiries, the order for the new plaque was canceled; instead the whole display will be hidden away. Quinn told us: "My initial reaction was that the whole point of entertaining people is to make them feel comfortable, and it seemed this would be a little insensitive to the guest of honor."</br></br>One problem resolved, another cropped up during last week's inspection by a Sony advance team: The onboard television set is a Sharp. We hear that the Sony folks demanded that it be replaced with one of their own models, but Sony Vice President Anne Murfogen told us she merely asked that the Sharp be stowed. "Nobody will be watching TV," she said. We guess a screening of "Pearl Harbor" is out of the question.</br></br>Stringer, meanwhile, told us: "We're throwing a party for the chairman of Sony, who has rarely been in Washington, and we thought it was a great opportunity for him to meet politicians, business leaders and journalists -- that's all." Among the invited guests, we hear, are Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), AOL Time Warner chairman Steve Case and PBS anchor Jim Lehrer. "I don't know anything about captions on pictures," Stringer said. "That's not an issue with me or the Japanese executives."