Monday, September 29, 2008

Media-Whore D'Oevres



(image via infinitedial)

"This is the town of money -- freewheeling, high-stakes, high-risk and big-spending. The home of the $20 martini, the seven-figure bonus, the multimillion-dollar condos owned by the titans of the Street. Washington is the town of politics -- bureaucratic, stodgy, conservative. The home of cheap happy-hour beer and clean-cut young interns living in cramped quarters on the Hill, who are about making a difference, not making money. But with Wall Street hobbled by the biggest financial crisis in generations, the culture of big money has lost some of its luster. And with the Street now looking to the U.S. Treasury for an unprecedented bailout, it's suddenly Washington that has become the center of financial action -- creating, at least for this instant, an unlikely shift of power and influence." (WashPo via DrudgiePoo)

"Sean Penn was so chuffed about snogging a bloke he sent a text to ex-wife Madonna to brag. The star plays a gay man in new movie Milk and has to kiss actor James Franco. James said: 'After our kiss Sean texted Madonna and said, I just popped my cherry kissing a guy. I thought of you. I don't know why.' " (3AMGirls)

"CHRISTOPHER Walken is a card-carrying heterosexual, but the quirky star is OK with kissing men. In his new book, 'Christopher Walken A to Z,' Robert Schnakenberg recalls how Andy Warhol claimed in his diary to have seen Walken kissing Mickey Rourke on the lips at a party. Asked later about the liplock, Walken remarked, 'Actors do kiss each other. I don't think there's anything going on between me and Mickey.'" (PageSix)

"Here is John McCain’s Republican running mate showing off her curves in a saucy red Baywatch-style swimsuit. She was just 20 and known by maiden name Sarah Heath when she did her Pamela Anderson impression during the 1984 Miss Alaska contest." (Newsoftheworld)

"The old hunter-gatherer model of journalism is no longer sufficient. Now that information is so plentiful, we don't need new information so much as help in processing what's already available. Just as the development of modern agriculture led to a demand for varieties of processed food, the information age has created a demand for processed information. We need someone to put it into context, give it theoretical framing and suggest ways to act on it. The raw material for this processing is evidence-based journalism, something that bloggers are not good at originating. Not all readers demand such quality, but the educated, opinion-leading, news-junkie core of the audience always will. They will insist on it as a defense against 'persuasive communication,' the euphemism for advertising, public relations and spin that exploits the confusion of information overload. Readers need and want to be equipped with truth-based defenses ...Nonprofit-financed investigative operations like ProPublica and the Center for Public Integrity might lead to a demonstration effect for local philanthropists. Mixing profit and nonprofit motivations might be awkward, but ProPublica's cooperation with '60 Minutes' for its maiden effort was an encouraging start." (AJR)

"Wearing black to a wedding is a major faux pas, but that didn't seem to stop the attendees of last night's Cinema Society and LancĂ´me-sponsored screening of Rachel Getting Married ... The film's writer, Jenny Lumet, didn't quite have the same luck with her first choice of outfit. 'I'm wearing a beautiful black suit from Theory,' she said. 'I was wearing a Gucci suit, but my 5 month old daughter spit up all over it' .. Guests including Alan Cumming, Bobby Cannavale, Matthew Modine, Jill Hennessy, Beth Ostrosky, Georgina Chapman, Amy Sacco, Rachel Roy, Dennis Basso, Bee Shaffer, Nigel Barker, Meredith Melling-Burke, Shoshanna Lonstein Gruss, Eleanor & Jon Ylvisaker, and Daniel Benedict crammed into the hotel's lobby .." (Fashionweekdaily)

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