Clout: On TV, Specter gets laughs, Rendell gets laughed at

WITH THE Pennsylvania presidential primary in the national spotlight, the Keystone State is hot, hot, hot.

And that means Pennsylvania pols are hot, too.

In case you missed it, Gov. Rendell and U.S. Sen. Arlen Specter graced late-night TV this week.

Specter was on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart" hawking his new book, "Never Give In: Battling Cancer in the Senate." (He'll be at the Central Library Monday night to read from it. See item on Page 38.)

Specter showed a photo of his thin, bald self at the height of chemotherapy shaking hands with President Bush, and noted that Bush's body language seemed to say, "He doesn't look like he's going to make it. They say it's not contagious but who the hell knows?"

When Stewart asked Specter how old he is (he's 78), Specter answered: "I forget."

He said he recently looked at his birth certificate and said: "Why let a little thing like this bother me? It happened so long ago."

Rendell, meanwhile, was fodder for a David Letterman video skit. In the wake of ex-New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer's prostitution flap and ex- New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey's three-way, Letterman ran a faux announcement that Rendell wants his constituents to know he "freely and openly nails staffers, interns, whores . . . transvestite whores, elderly, you name it."

The video showed a smiling Rendell mixed with generic shots of all the above and ended with, "Ed Rendell, he's into some freaky s---, too."

Jenkintown hot spot

If Pennsylvania is now the center of the politcal universe, is the West Avenue Grille in Jenkintown the center of the center?

Six months ago, in a nationally aired newscast, NBC's Andrea Mitchell rounded up a group of women diners there to talk about what it meant to have U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton running for president.

On Tuesday, following his much praised speech on race at the National Constitution Center, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama dropped by to shoot a TV ad there, answering questions from 50 union members.

"At first, I thought it was a joke," said Bob Katz, who, along with wife, Hope, and son Dan owns and runs the restuarant. "People from the senator's camp said they'd like to use the restaurant."

The Secret Service told Katz to keep the news quiet.

"But this is a small town, so Tuesday came and there were 300 or 400 people outside waiting for him," Katz said.

Obama arrived about 2:15 p.m. and spent about two hours shooting the ad.