Media-Whore D'Oevres



(image via Todd Heisler/The New York Times)

"...Rumors from CBS News and reported in the news media may have, inadvertently or not, done what the meeting failed to do: ensured Ms. Couric’s early departure. Though some people close to Ms. Couric, as well as some professional associates, said Thursday they believed that it was now likely she would not remain as anchor through the election, and might even leave in the next few weeks, that point was adamantly denied by the senior executives closest to the decision." (NYTimes)

"On Thursday night, Savannah College of Art and Design's SCAD Style Étoile Awards transformed the French Embassy into a patriotic art experience, complete with live installations of works by Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, Manet, and Magritte ... Of course, the evening was about the honors, with Cardin, Elle Decor editor-in-chief Margaret Russell, and interior designer Jonathan Adler receiving the evening's sleek glass trophies from SCAD president Paula S. Wallace, who co-hosted the evening with Piuerre Vimont, ambassador of France to the United States ... Guests like Lee Radziwill, André Leon Talley, Anne Slater, Kim Garfunkel, New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, and Blaine Trump mused over the nearly seven-foot tall photographs of the night's big winners." (Fashionweekdaily)

"As president of Island Urban Records, Jermaine Dupri has spent a lot of time thinking about the future of music. And his latest brainchild is... TAG Records, a joint venture with, yes, TAG Body Spray, the favored scent of skeezy dudes everywhere. When I first saw this press release in my inbox, I thought it had to be a way-late April Fool's joke. I still wish it were." (Popwatch)

"Until he was an ex-president, I never felt any special fondness for Bill Clinton. From the start, he seemed a bit skeevy to me. On the night in 1992 that he accepted the nomination, as he dined in midtown with Hillary and the Gores, he was introduced to a reporter from Spy, of which I was then editor. The future president smiled, popped to his feet, and ushered the reporter off for a private chat. Spy had just published a cover story called '1,000 Reasons Not to Vote for George Bush—No. 1: He Cheats on His Wife.' 'I want to thank you guys,' Clinton told the man from Spy, 'for leveling the playing field with that piece you did on Bush’s girlfriends.' But were there more women? he asked repeatedly in the course of a several-minute-long chat." (Kurt Andersen/NYMag)

"Last summer, in Detroit’s St. Paul Church of God in Christ, I watched Bill Cosby summon his inner Malcolm X. It was a hot July evening. Cosby was speaking to an audience of black men dressed in everything from Enyce T-shirts or polos to blazers and ties. Some were there with their sons. Some were there in wheelchairs. The audience was packed tight, rows of folding chairs extended beyond the wooden pews to capture the overflow. But the chairs were not enough, and late arrivals stood against the long shotgun walls, or out in the small lobby, where they hoped to catch a snatch of Cosby’s oratory ... Cosby had come to Detroit aiming to grab the city’s black men by their collars and shake them out of the torpor that has left so many of them—like so many of their peers across the country—undereducated, over-incarcerated, and underrepresented in the ranks of active fathers. No women were in the audience. No reporters were allowed, for fear that their presence might frighten off fathers behind on their child-support payments. But I was there, trading on race, gender, and a promise not to interview any of the allegedly skittish participants." (Atlantic)

"General Electric stunned investors with its first quarterly profit drop in five years, as last month’s capital markets upheaval forced unexpected writedowns on the value of some securities, and warned that full-year earnings would miss its forecast. The results triggered a broader selloff on some the world’s stock markets amid concern that GE’s dreary outlook reflected deteriorating economic conditions. Shares in GE fell 11.3 per cent to $32.61 in pre-market trading." (FT)

"Barack Obama will likely overwhelm John McCain in campaign spending, if the Illinois senator wins his party's presidential nomination, in what would be the first time in four decades a Democrat will enjoy such an advantage. And he could do it whether he accepts federal campaign- finance limits or raises all the money privately. Obama, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, has amassed $234 million -- three times more than Republican McCain has raised. That puts Obama on the verge of shattering the fundraising mark set by President George W. Bush in 2004... For the first several elections after 1976, the Republican and Democratic candidates spent the same amount of money. When the political parties cranked up their fundraising, the Republicans generally gained an advantage. Obama will erase that advantage, whether he chooses to take public money or not." (Bloomberg)

"Julian Schnabel is trying to convince Manhattanites that pink is the new granite, but nobody's buying it. Literally. The Schnabel-designed Palazzo Chupi -- a Malibu Barbie tower which turns living on the Hudson into a vacation in Venice -- is having problems attracting residents. It was recently revealed that Richard Gere has been secretly selling his customized 4 bedroom, 4-bathroom pad for $17,995,000 (with a celebrity-style $4 million markup), and he's never even moved in." (BlackBookMag)

"Ethnic disaggregation also seems to have deleterious effects on cultural vitality. Precisely because most of their citizens share a common cultural and linguistic heritage, the homogenized states of postwar Europe have tended to be more culturally insular than their demographically diverse predecessors. With few Jews in Europe and few Germans in Prague, that is, there are fewer Franz Kafkas. Forced migrations generally penalize the expelling countries and reward the receiving ones. Expulsion is often driven by a majority group's resentment of a minority group's success, on the mistaken assumption that achievement is a zero-sum game. But countries that got rid of their Armenians, Germans, Greeks, Jews, and other successful minorities deprived themselves of some of their most talented citizens, who simply took their skills and knowledge elsewhere. And in many places, the triumph of ethnonational politics has meant the victory of traditionally rural groups over more urbanized ones, which possess just those skills desirable in an advanced industrial economy." (Foreign Affarirs)