Media-Whore D'Oeuvres



"From the time of her infamous wardrobe selection, money had been an issue in Palin’s politics. Her relationship with the McCain campaign had been plagued by financial misunderstanding. In her book Going Rogue, she claimed that the McCain campaign had left her on the hook for her Troopergate bills. Palin was furious. 'Deep down, she wanted to make money,' a McCain adviser says. 'There was always financial stress. They’re not wealthy people.' Palin knew there were ways to solve her money problems, and then some. Planning quickly got under way for a book. And just weeks after the campaign ended, reality-show producer Mark Burnett called Palin personally and pitched her on starring in her own show. Then, in May 2009, she signed a $7 million book deal with HarperCollins. Two former Palin-campaign aides—Jason Recher and Doug McMarlin—were hired to plan a book tour with all the trappings of a national political campaign. But there was a hitch: With Alaska’s strict ethics rules, Palin worried that her day job would get in the way. In March, she petitioned the Alaska attorney general’s office, which responded with a lengthy list of conditions. “There was no way she could go on a book tour while being governor” is how one member of her Alaska staff put it. On Friday morning, July 3, Palin called her cameraman to her house in Wasilla and asked him to be on hand to record a prepared speech. Around noon, in front of a throng of national reporters, she announced that she was stepping down as governor. To many, it seemed a mysterious move, defying the logic of a potential presidential candidate, and possibly reflecting some hidden scandal—but in fact the choice may have been as easy as balancing a checkbook. Less than a year later, Sarah Palin is a singular national industry ..." (Gabriel Sherman/NYMag)



(image via usmagazine)

"The Back-Up Plan, Jennifer Lopez's latest romantic comedy, opened this past weekend and grossed a lousy $12.3 million—and ably described what Lopez desperately needs right now, career-wise. This latest bomb cements a professional plummet that threatens to make one of the biggest stars of movies and music over the past decade little more than Mrs. Marc Anthony. At the height of her career, between 1997 and 2002, when she rolled with Puffy or Ben Affleck and a posse a dozen deep, Lopez made up to $12 million per movie. During this period, she made nine films, which grossed between $24 million and $94 million domestically. Since then, The Back-Up Plan has been more typical, in the mold of Gigli and An Unfinished Life, which collected an unrespectable $6 million and $8 million, respectively. Lopez's music sales mimic that trajectory. Lopez stormed on to the Billboard charts over that same period, releasing four albums that sold a combined 10.7 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and providing her a $5 million per album deal at Sony, says a source close to that deal. Her three subsequent releases barely cracked 1 million copies in total—a stunning collapse that can't all be attributed to an overall decline in CD sales—and her latest single, 'Louboutins,' an ode to shoes that cost more than most people's rent, flopped at radio. 'If your pitch has been 'Jenny from the block,' says one person whose music-related company has done business with J. Lo, 'you don't do a song about $700 shoes. Know your demographic.'" (Peter Lauria/TheDailyBeast)



"Senate majority leader Harry Reid decided to prioritize immigration for at least two reasons, one of them naked political self-interest: his standing with Latinos in his own state is not where it needs to be for him to be re-elected, and he promised them, quite recently, that he would move aggressively on immigration. According to Democratic strategists, Latinos need to make up at least 15 percent of the electorate in Nevada for Reid to have a chance at winning. They're now saying they'll turn out at about a rate of 10 percent. The White House, knowing full well that Reid's leadership on health care may have permanently damaged his re-election chances, is not going to stand in Reid's way. Reid's second rationale is also political: he reasons that the toughest vote House Democrats took in 2009 was on the Waxman-Markey Climate Change legislation. He doesn't want to subject his vulnerable Senate colleagues to the same pressures, and he doesn't want to bring up a bill that would hurt the Democratic Party's chances of keeping the House of Representatives. Add to this the sudden nationalization of the immigration issue by the passage of Arizona's draconian new law allowing police to demand the papers of suspected illegal immigrants on sight. The Democrats reason that the politics of immigration being what they are, getting an actual bill through Congress by November is not likely. (Senator Lindsay Graham understands this, too.) What is likely is a bill that will allow Democrats who need to oppose immigration reform in theory because of its alleged "amnesty" provisions to do so -- while allowing the party, behind the scenes, to whip up the Hispanic vote and communicate to Latinos that the promise of pushing reform is being fulfilled." (Mark Ambinder/TheAtlantic)



(image via gossipcop)

"Hollywood's power elite came out to show their love for Conan O'Brien Saturday, with a slew of bold-faced names attending the Legally Prohibited from Being on Funny Television tour's stop at the Gibson Ampitheater. As O'Brien noted, the venue was 'literally just 400 yards away' from the NBC Universal west coast HQ. 'If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of bad ideas being greenlit,' Coco quipped. But plenty of showbiz A-listers though hangin' with Conan was a good idea. Particularly since O'Brien's reps at William Morris Endeavor were nice enough to throw a backstage bash before the show for a variety of celebs, producers and, of course, agents. Among those cuckoo for Coco backstage: Russell Brand and g.f. Katy Perry, Jim Carrey, Craig Robinson, 'Parks and Recreation' stars Aziz Ansari and Nick Offerman, and Jonah Hill. Behind-the-scenes types were also out in force, led by Comcast Entertainment Networks chief Ted Harbert, Katherine Pope (the ex-NBC exec who now runs Peter Chernin's TV company), 'The Office' producer Greg Daniels, his wife (and former Lifetime entertainment boss) Susanne Daniels and 'Cleveland Show' exec producer Rich Appel. Meanwhile, how's this for classy: NBC late-night chief Rick Ludwin showed up, too. Ludwin was the man who ensured Conan survived his early days at NBC, when some forces inside the network were determined to dump him." (TheWrap)



(image via Jonathan Becker/Vogue)

"Ash clouds may have stopped Bebel Gilberto, scion of the famous bossa nova family, from singing at the New Museum's Spring Gala last night, but the mood was like the dress code: anything but black. Honoring a Brazilian theme, bright tropical colors were in bloom on dresses across a palm tree-bedecked floor. Perhaps most notable among the crowd was former White House social secretary Desiree Rogers, in a buoyant yellow dress designed by Francisco Costa (of Calvin Klein) that seemed to reach for summer. Rogers has been in New York this week for meetings and seemed relaxed. She was at the gala with native-born Brazilian Costa. Of her replacement as social secretary she had only kind things to say: 'I love Julianna Smoot. I think she's doing a great job.' Michelle Obama's post-Rogers outfits have been likewise 'great.' If there were any lingering hard feelings from the White House party crashers imbroglio Rogers wasn't letting on. But she will be back in Washington, DC next week, packing." (Matt Sledge/HuffPo)



(image via swiftysny)

"A beautiful, sunny Saturday with hints of rain late in the day, and spritzing after midnight into Sunday with more until mid-evening when the rains came. I went to Swifty’s to dinner, guest of Shirley Lord Rosenthal. The conversation got around to the Medical Marijuana issue in California and drug abuse and who and what. One of the guests, Dr. Mitch Rosenthal is a founder of Phoenix House. There were two other doctors at the table as well as the asst. DA, and a variety of opinions. Ironically the sentencing of the son of Michael Douglas did not come up. There are a variety of opinions about that out there also. Somehow the whole matter seems futile; a man has a very self-destructive habit, and for that he’s incarcerated. It’s a little like the olden days when if you had debt you couldn’t pay, you had to go to prison. Debt nowadays of course is quite another matter and if you can’t pay, maybe you’ll be Too Big To Fail and so Uncle Sam will keep you in marbles." (NYSocialDiary)



"David Hockney was in the Boy Scouts (motto: 'Be Prepared'), so he points out that in tailoring terms he was ready for the advent of the iPad. One of the tricky aspects of this new Apple Inc. device -- intermediate between a cell phone and a laptop in size -- is the difficulty of carrying it about. Hockney, though, has always had his suits made with a large internal jacket pocket for carrying sketch books. He demonstrates by opening the natty, paint-stained charcoal-striped number he’s wearing. Within there’s a pouch of the kind in which poachers used to hide game. This is where he tucks his iPad. In fact, he’s using this portable hi-tech gizmo in much the way he used to employ a pad of paper. It’s his latest drawing medium. A couple of weeks ago, I got a text from him reading: 'I have got an iPad, what a joy! Van Gogh would have loved it, and he could have written his letters on it as well. I do love it, I must admit,' Hockney, 72, confirms. 'I thought the iPhone was great when I bought one the year before last, but this takes it to a new level. It’s a new medium, eight times the size of the iPhone.'" (Bloomberg)



"When Thomas McMahon and his Indian backers were deciding where to locate an Asian commodities exchange, they turned initially to Hong Kong – attracted by its proximity to China and the mainland’s booming, commodity-hungry economy. Three years later, the exchange, a subsidiary of India’s Financial Technologies group, is about to open – not in Hong Kong but nearly four hours’ flying time to the south in Singapore. 'We looked at Hong Kong with a view to being able to serve the China market, but we decided that we couldn’t run a viable independent commodities exchange from there – the business environment just wasn’t right,' says Mr McMahon, a former director of Nymex Asia. 'Inversely, Singapore was very welcoming. The authorities were completely happy with the concept of an independent foreign-owned exchange competing with the existing exchange and the view seemed to be there should be a totally competitive environment, which is just what we wanted.' The city-state’s enthusiasm for what will be called the Singapore Mercantile Exchange, and its willingness to countenance potential collateral damage to the locally listed incumbent, the Singapore Exchange, neatly illustrates the business-friendly approach that is helping the island to emerge as a strong competitor to Hong Kong in the battle to be Asia’s 21st-century international business capital. Others put it more graphically. 'You walk into Changi airport and they practically give you a hedge fund start-up kit,' James de Castro, one of the founders of Hong Kong-based Asia Alternative Asset Management, told a recent conference on the island’s financial centre. The prize is huge." (FT)