Who will be the first man or woman overboard when the Nation magazine's First Annual Seminar Cruise sets sail this Sunday? The magazine's publisher, editor and many of its contributors join 400 fellow sailors for an eight-day voyage around the Caribbean. Robert Bly is a passenger, as are an assortment of psychiatrists, retired teachers, mall builders and other Nation readers willing to pony up $1,800 to $2,900 for a berth. The trip, says a proud Nation spokesperson, sold faster than all group cruises except the New Kids on the Block trip. Cruisers will get a chance to jawbone about liberalism, labor, environmentalism, impeachment, identity politics and the future of the left -- plus, says Nation editor Victor Navasky, "shuffleboard, dancing to Guy Lombardo, whatever else people do on cruise ships." If all goes well, Nation contributors, several of whom have been publicly feuding over the years, will avoid tearing one another's throats out. Just last month, Nation columnists Alexander Cockburn and Christopher Hitchens (a frequent Salon contributor) used their columns to lash one another for their respective views on the question of whether George Orwell was a snitch who gave British leftists' names to the British Secret Service. Meanwhile, Eric Alterman and Katha Pollitt exchanged some heavy vitriol in Slate wherein -- in an e-mail exchange with Andrew Sullivan -- Pollitt slammed Alterman's diary as "self-satisfied and vain and vainglorious." Declaring Slate an unfit place to air intra-Nation feuds, Alterman proceeded with exquisite cruelty to "find it sad .... to read the same tired tripe over and over from the pen of a writer who once appeared on her way to being a great poet and gave it all up to write a single column, over and over, for the past 15 years." Later in her Slate exchange with Sullivan, Pollitt rips a Hitchens column about Viagra: "Rape humor, nasty darts at feminists, reflections on alcohol and potency, all decorated with literary references and tied up in syntactical knots. Talk about the attraction of the moth to the flame!" Cockburn and Alterman have, of course, also exchanged a few venomous rounds in the Nation's letters page. Though Cockburn is determinedly amiable about his shipmates today, there are those who remember that he tempestuously derided Katrina vanden Heuvel and her husband, Stephen Cohen, for what he deemed their foolish fantasies about Mikhail Gorbachev; declared Navasky an awful journalist who would have been good running a nightclub or circus; mocked Pollitt for knee-jerkery; and once -- in addition to having had a probable hand in the vicious hatchet job on Cockburn's Counterpunch co-editor, Ken Silverstein, in the Village Voice some years back -- referred to Alterman as "3/4 brown noser, 1/4 cheeky chappy." Needless to say, the Nation cruise was itself the subject of some contentiousness among the magazine's contributors. Navasky says he is flying Barbara Ehrenreich to St. Thomas, where she'll moderate a seminar on "labor, environmentalism and the global corporation," but won't confirm that Ehrenreich isn't sailing with the group because of political problems she has with cruise ships. (Ehrenreich did not respond to an e-mail inquiry about this subject.) Cockburn says his only problem with the cruise is that it will take place in the Caribbean, "which is full of black people who quite rightfully hate whites and would cheerfully kill us all if it didn't disturb the flow of money into their own hands." Next time, Cockburn says, he hopes the Nation Cruise, will be on the Aegean, but, he says, "then we'd have to worry about Turkish human rights." All of the Nation contributors Media Circus spoke to, many of whom declined to speak on the record, agreed that the animosity between the magazine's columnists would be tempered by the sea air and camaraderie of the floating hotel. "We never see each other in person so we're a little abstract. It's easy to take pot shots at people who are just words on a page," offered Pollitt. "After spending time together everyone may be surprised by how much nicer we all are in real life." Though Cockburn noted that "a lifeboat stuffed with Nation contributors would pose interesting questions of triage if I were in charge," he too said he is certain no one will bother with any old enmity. "We'll be too busy wondering what to wear to the cruise's formal event," he said. "I think it's going to be known as the love boat in the end," says Navasky. "The Nation contributors are all such nice people -- in print, they're fearsome; in person, they are all just lovely people." Nice. But don't forget to pack those personal, portable life preservers.

We don't just report the news, we make it Days after he told the Judiciary Committee that he did not appear on TV talk shows, Kenneth Starr appeared on a magazine show, "20/20," whereupon he gave Diane Sawyer unsurprising answers to questions about his views on infidelity, his office and his investigation of President Clinton. Nor was it surprising that Starr gave his first prime-time interview to "20/20" -- which reportedly beat out competition from other shows at ABC and other network shows like "60 Minutes." The "20/20" interview with Sawyer was produced by Chris Vlasto, a name familiar to readers of Jim McDougal's "Arkansas Mischief." In his book, which was written with Curtis Wilkie, McDougal credits Vlasto with convincing him to cooperate with Starr's investigation. Wilkie remembers that Vlasto spent a lot of time in Arkansas in his capacity as producer in charge of ABC's Whitewater coverage and that Vlasto was probably the one news guy McDougal felt most comfortable with. Wilkie remembers that shortly after his conviction, McDougal confided to Vlasto that he (rightly, it turned out) feared he would die in prison. In the book, McDougal writes that Vlasto responded by saying, "'Listen Jim, you don't have to go out this way. Walk in to see Kenneth Starr, he'll greet you with open arms.' He recommended that I at least talk with the independent counsel." McDougal's subsequent cooperation set the Whitewater investigation and all that was to follow in motion. Any conflict involved in Vlasto's playing a role in the story of the Starr investigation and producing a piece on it? Vlasto wouldn't comment. ABC's Washington bureau chief did not return a call seeking information as to whether the network has rules governing whether producers may produce segments on stories in which they play a part. Where's the Tickle Me Stoic doll? Movie tie-ins are old hat, but here's a new one: book tie-ins. Tom Wolfe's "A Man in Full" apparently makes mention of Epictetus, the venerable first century Stoic philosopher who was born a Roman slave. Enter HarperCollins, trumpeting Epictetus' "A Manual for Living: A New Interpretation" and "The Art of Living: The Classic Manual on Virtue, Happiness, and Effectiveness," in modern translation, published -- since 1994 and 1995 -- by HarperCollins. "If Wolfe sparks an explosion of interest in Epictetus, we want people to know we're the ones who have these volumes," says an amused HarperCollins spokesperson who voiced the hope that, as the ancient text "The Art of War" became a bible for the business-minded in the go-go '80s, perhaps Epictetus might guide the multitudes during the remainder of the more austere '90s. Epictetus' formula for a happy, meaningful and flourishing life comes in the form of clean, aphoristic instruction, viz., "Know What You Can Control and What You Can't," "Seeking to Please Is a Perilous Trap," "Stay Away From Most Popular Entertainment" and, a special one for those attending the First Annual Nation Seminar Cruise, "Speak Only With Good Purpose." The HarperCollins spokesperson concedes that Epictetus sales weren't exactly zooming along before "A Man in Full," but says it's too soon to tell whether the Wolfe book will cause a bump in sales. Jonathan Kwitny dies Jonathan Kwitny, 57, died of cancer last week in New York. Kwitny, an excellent investigative journalist and a gentleman, was the author of eight books, including one on the CIA and one on drug smuggling for people with AIDS. His latest book was "Man of the Century: The Life and Times of Pope John Paul II." There will be a memorial service in New York on Dec. 17 at 6 p.m. at the Friends Meeting House on Rutherford and East 15th streets.