Media-Whore D'Oeuvres



"'How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?' demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It's a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He's in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany's president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him. 'The dinner comes with the position, sir,' says his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Flynn. McChrystal turns sharply in his chair. 'Hey, Charlie,' he asks, 'does this come with the position?' McChrystal gives him the middle finger." (The Runaway General/RollingStone)



"Oprah Winfrey's last season in syndication will be an expensive one for sponsors. According to ad buyers, CBS Television Distribution (CTD) has been seeking big price hikes in the upfront market for commercials in The Oprah Winfrey Show, and is looking for 'crazy numbers' for spots in her final episode in September 2011--several times the $100,000 per 30 seconds some advertisers already pay. Numbers ranging from $500,000 up to $1 million are being bandied about on the advertising grapevine for spots on the final broadcast. One buyer said that after feeling out the market, CTD might have decided not to sell some of the commercials for the final week of Oprah during the upfront, and instead to wait and watch demand and pricing grow as the daytime queen takes her victory lap. CTD says spots are moving quickly. 'Oprah's a legend of the likes we'll probably never see again on television, so there's a real excitement and frenzy around The Oprah Winfrey Show's final season,' said a CTD spokesperson. 'Advertisers realize that this is their last chance to be part of history, so ad time for the final season, final week and final episode are selling at a rapid pace and for record dollars. Everyone wants to jump on board for what will be a momentous TV milestone.'" (BroadcastandCable)



"A continent away from Kyrgyzstan, Africans like myself cheered this spring as a coalition of opposition groups ousted the country's dictator, President Kurmanbek Bakiyev. 'One coconut down, 39 more to harvest!' we shouted. There are at least 40 dictators around the world today, and approximately 1.9 billion people live under the grip of the 23 autocrats on this list alone. There are plenty of coconuts to go around. The cost of all that despotism has been stultifying. Millions of lives have been lost, economies have collapsed, and whole states have failed under brutal repression. And what has made it worse is that the world is in denial. The end of the Cold War was also supposed to be the 'End of History' -- when democracy swept the world and repression went the way of the dinosaurs. Instead, Freedom House reports that only 60 percent of the world's countries are democratic -- far more than the 28 percent in 1950, but still not much more than a majority." (ForeignPolicy)



"Bret Easton Ellis has embarked on a massive, multi-media tour to promote Imperial Bedrooms, the follow-up (25 years later) to his first novel, Less Than Zero which was written when he was 20 and came to define youthful sex and drug excess in the 80s. After a party at the Chateau Marmont's infamous penthouse last week, Ellis and over 300 fans were at the Coronet Theater another night for live readings from Ellis' previous novels like Glamorama, The Informers, The Rules of Attraction and Lunar Park. Hosted by James Van Der Beek, the highlight was when Joel McHale did a very dramatic reading from American Psycho. 'Where were you when they made the film version,' Ellis asked McHale afterwards. A short, sexy film, directed by Matthew Ross starring Van Der Beek and Kip Pardue in the roles they played in The Rules of Attraction, was also screened. Today at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square, Andrew McCarthy, who played main character Clay in Less Than Zero, will reprise his role by reading as the (somewhat grown-up, but still drugged-out) Clay from Imperial Bedrooms." (Papermag)



" I started out at a floral design shop on First Avenue between 51st and 52nd called ZeZe. It was a book signing for Susan Isaacs and her 12th novel , As Husbands Go, (Scribner). I’d met her several times before. Thinking about her personality and her productivity, I was reminded of Linda Fairstein. I told her this when we met and she told me they were very good friends. These are remarkable people. Not high energy but Big energy. I met Susan through our mutual friend Larry Ashmead of HarperCollins. Larry signed me to a book deal there at the same time he was publishing Susan’s 'After All These Years.' I hadn’t read her before and presumed her books were basically contemporary 'women’s' novels. I may be right to a book salesperson, but I picked up the book (which Larry had sent to me) to have a look, and was transported by the voice immediately. I read the book straight through in a couple of days. Back to last night ..." (NYSocialDiary)



"'I think seeing sunlight at the Boom Boom Room is a first for most of us here,' smiled Charlotte Sarkozy at the reception she hosted for her good friend Barbara Bui at The Standard last night. True, the cocktail was a pretty early affair, but the hostess also had Solstice rays on her side. And the last time she had an affair for Bui in Gotham, she held it in her own kitchen. 'This might be a tiny bit easier,' she added as she passed around champagne, brie and fries to guests like Alexandra Richards, Andre, and Joanna Coles." (Fashionweekdaily)



"German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle will brief French and Polish officials on a joint proposal for Russian-European 'cooperation on security,' according to a statement from Westerwelle’s spokesman on Monday. The proposal emerged out of talks between German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev earlier in June and is based on a draft Russia drew up in 2008. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov will be present at the meeting. Peschke said, 'We want to further elaborate and discuss it within the triangle [i.e., France, Germany and Poland] in the presence of the Russian foreign minister.' On the surface, the proposal developed by Merkel and Medvedev appears primarily structural. It raises security discussions about specific trouble spots to the ministerial level rather than the ambassadorial level, with a committee being formed consisting of EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and Russia’s foreign minister." (Stratfor)



"It’s renegotiations time for the Big Bang gang. The CBS comedy is coming off a red-hot third season and a gigantic off-network syndication deal, putting the cast of the show in a prime position for big salary bumps. Which brings me back to a post I did a month ago titled Is The Big Bang Theory the next Friends? The two comedies share a similar setup: ensemble multi-camera sitcoms about single twentysomethings, the majority of them living in two apartments across the hall; similar ratings strength: Big Bang is now the highest-rated scripted series on TV just like Friends once was; and now the two also share the same time slot, Thursday 8PM, after CBS decided to move Big Bang there in the fall. Yes, I felt the two comedies had a lot in common… until now. One of the signature moves of the Friends cast was that they negotiated their deals together in an all-for-one, one-for-all fashion, getting to $100,000 per episode each in their first go-around with producer Warner Bros. TV after two seasons and eventually to $1 million per episode." (Deadline)



(Guinean military junta chief Captain Moussa Dadis Camara via Reuters)

"GENERAL SÉKOUBA KONATÉ, Guinea’s interim president, is so keen to make sure his country’s election for a new head of state runs smoothly that he has appointed a 16,000-strong military and paramilitary task-force to keep order during the polls. In the past three years Guinea, a west African country rich in bauxite and iron ore, has seen general strikes, popular uprisings, military crackdowns and a coup. But on June 27th Guineans are due peacefully to elect a civilian president. The road to democracy is likely to be bumpy, especially if armed soldiers supervise the votes. General Konaté, known as 'El Tigre' for his combat prowess, was deputy leader of a junta that seized power in 2008 after the death of Lansana Conté, Guinea’s dictator for 24 years. The junta’s leader, Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, at first promised proper elections. But when, in September, he suggested he would run for office himself, Guinea’s opposition groups marched in protest through the capital, Conakry. The captain’s supporters killed at least 150 protesters. His soldiers gang-raped scores of women. The country faced a bleak future until last December, when Dadis, as he is generally known, was shot in the head by an aide and went abroad for treatment." (TheEconomist)



"David (Spade) and Chris (Rock) came in and Howard (Stern) said he was laughing already. Chris said that Artie was still gone. David said he could see the cobwebs on the chair. Chris said they'll find out that Howard is behind the whole heroin thing. Chris said that Howard is like on a Johnny Carson like schedule working like 2 days a week. He said that Carson was lax and that's when Leno took over. He said that Howard hired the one guy who could take over and he got him all addicted to heroin so he wouldn't be able to do that. Howard said Chris is great coming in on the attack like that. Howard said he did that to Leno and Letterman too. Howard said Chris went on Letterman first and brought up the cheating thing with him. Howard said Chris was very funny with that. He said he thought it was great the way he went on and attacked like that. Robin said Chris did that when Howard was getting married too." (Marksfriggin)