Media-Whore D'Oeuvres



(Gloria TNT via WDR)

"Princess TNT aka Gloria Thurn und Taxis is celebrating her birthday this weekend in Paris with a half dozen parties organized by her children. The Princess will likely be spotted on the Seine boat hopping, and partying like only she knows how. Whether or not her on off Italian lover Alexandra Borghese will be there is anybody’s guess, though we doubt her friends from Vatican City will make the trip. Gloria has been known to appear on German television heavily promoting Catholicism despite what she does behind closed doors." (Takimag)



(Obama staff members, from left, Alejandra Campoverdi, Samantha Tubman, Eric Lesser and Herbie Ziskend via NYTimes)

"'This party,' Herbie Ziskend announced, 'is in honor of John Quincy Adams.' The dirty-blond, blue-eyed 24-year-old, who once handled luggage for Barack Obama’s campaign and now works in the vice president’s office as a staff assistant, stood in the living room of a red-brick row house in Washington and flung his arms in the air as if to pay tribute to America’s sixth president. Then he paused, deflated: 'But the police are here.' Blue lights flashed through a window as Ziskend and a housemate, Jake Levine, went onto the porch to talk with the cops and promise to quiet things down. Levine, who is now 26, is a policy analyst in the energy-and-climate-change office of the White House. He and Ziskend, along with their other two housemates — Eric Lesser, 25, and Josh Lipsky, 24, who were then both White House staff assistants — were giving a party last July in their group house in Logan Circle, a neighborhood just east of Dupont Circle. People shifted nervously as they checked their BlackBerries and cellphones and talked about heading out. Ziskend reappeared. 'Everybody, it’s O.K.,' he said, grinning. 'Party is on.' 'Herbie, Herbie, Herbie,' came the chant. As a joke, someone called out 'Eric Lesser,' and the cheer shifted: 'Er-ic Les-ser! Er-ic Les-ser!' The revelers, a cross section of young, political Washington, were shouting for David Axelrod’s moon-faced, sweet-tempered special assistant, who also worked on the campaign as a baggage boy." (Nytimes)



"If you’re not going to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, no doubt you want to know exactly who is. If you are, you’ll want to know who’s going to be where. So, for your celeb-stalking needs — whether you’re after Scarlett Johansson, Bradley Cooper, Betty White, Morgan Freeman or Justin Bieber (for the kids!) — we offer the following list of expected guests, grouped by table." (Politico)



(image via GoaG)

"Last night, Adrien Grenier, Omar Epps, Cheryl Hines and Dana Delany all attended the opening of the 'Art & Soul' photography exhibition at the Library of Congress.- Art & Soul is a part of The Creative Coalition's campaign to bring national attention to the arts and to promote federal funding and support of the field. The exhibit features portraits of performing artists by Brian Smith. Brian is a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer, and has traveled the country as part of Sony Electronics' 'Artisans of Imagery.' The event gained support from Hollywood celebrities; Tim Daly, Patricia Arquette, Richard Schiff, Marlon Wayans and more were among the attendees." (Guestofaguest)



"Two years removed from his presidency, here comes the second intimate look at the George W. Bush White House, courtesy of Laura Bush. But while Karl Rove’s account was layered with policy minutiae and campaign 'strategery,' Mrs. Bush paints a picture of family life and state dinners, as she figured out what it meant to be a full-time first lady. Here is The Daily Beast’s selection of some of the most interesting bits." (TheDailyBeast)



"Few people lunch as well as Michael Grade. Lunch is, after all, elemental to the showbusiness world Grade has inhabited for almost half a century. Without lunch, titanic mergers and acquisitions would never have happened, great moments of television would never have been made, stars would never have been born. Few do lunch as masterfully as Grade. 'Michael has closed more contracts over lunch than you’ve had hot dinners,' one media chief executive with a rather confusing command of culinary metaphors tells me the day before I dine with the man who, until his unhappy departure from ITV at the start of the year, dominated Britain’s television industry. Wherever he went in that incestuous, internecine world, Grade fought wars. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he held the most senior programming jobs. First at London Weekend Television, where he unsuccessfully attempted to snatch football rights from the BBC. Then at the Beeb itself, where victories included the launch in 1985 of soap opera EastEnders to challenge ITV’s Coronation Street. He also grabbed headlines for the way he looked – the braces and big cigars (which he gave up some years ago) were adopted while at LWT but the liking for red socks was formed during a two-year sojourn running a Hollywood production company in the 1980s. In 1988, he became chief executive of Channel 4, fiercely resisting privatisation and taking back from ITV the rights to sell its own advertising." (FT)