Media-Whore D'oeuvres

"The U.S.-Russian 'reset,' meant to repair relations between the two former rivals, has been led by U.S. President Barack Obama and his counterpart, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The White House sees the reset, along with its key deliverable, the New START nuclear reductions treaty, as part of its effort to strengthen Medvedev's credibility within the Russian system, as opposed to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Vice President Joseph Biden spoke of how New START fits into the administration's drive to empower Medvedev at a small roundtable on Nov. 20 with a group of foreign affairs columnists, including your humble Cable guy. 'I do believe that there is a play here,' he said. 'Medvedev has rested everything on this notion of a reset. Who knows what Putin would do? My guess is he would not have gone there [in terms of committing to the reset], but maybe.'  Russia experts aren't so sure that passing New START would strengthen Medvedev's position vis a vis Putin. Most of them believe that Putin was, is, and will likely remain the more powerful of the two Russian leaders. Biden acknowledged that nobody in Washington, including himself, really knows what's going on inside the Kremlin between Medvedev and Putin, but he truly believes that a stronger 'reset' policy, which includes ratifying New START, is good for Medvedev -- and a stronger Medvedev is good for U.S.-Russia relations. 'The centerpiece of where Medvedev is, is this reset. And [START] is the crown jewel inside that reset, because it wasn't Putin pushing this, it was Medvedev,' Biden explained." (ForeignPolicy)

"For years, every hustler I know has been frantically wondering, 'What does the Pope feel about condom use? I think he's, like, against it, right? I will only do what he says. He's the one I turn to for sexual wisdom, after all.' As they've fucked, sucked, fisted, rimmed, and felched, many an escort has been known to look heavenward to try and fathom exactly what Pope Benedict might want them to do regarding scumbags. And now that his royal eminence concedes that condoms might be useful for these people, they're all flocking to church (while staying on their knees) to pick up the free condoms and the official blessing from their clients, the priests. Some are even forgetting about their hourly rates because they feel so sanctified by the pope's sage advice that they feel like enchanted creatures of God, spreading their butt cheeks for the lord and all his glory. It's 'ho-llelujah time. The Pope is so on top of 30-year-old trends!" (Musto)

 

"If Mr. Mittman was more beatific than usual, it was because he was having a very good day. That afternoon, the Wired advertising team had popped bottles to toast their 800 pages sold for the year, erasing the financial losses of 2009, when Wired was thinner than an iPhone. Now Mr. Mittman could boast that it was the fastest-growing monthly at Condé Nast, up 24 percent over 2009. 'I have to give Si [Newhouse] and Chuck [Townsend] some huge kudos, because it takes tremendous, you know, brass you-know-whats—you know?—to look at business units and believe in them and plan for investment at a time when not too many folks were thinking that way,' Mr. Mittman told The Observer.The 37-year-old is part of a new breed of less bombastic executives at the company after the humbling recessionary plummet in luxury advertising. As a publicist put it, he is 'big but not Mr. Big' (the ballsy Sex and the City character modeled after a Condé publisher)." (Observer)

"Last night at the New Amsterdam Theater on West 42nd Street (between 7th and 8th), currently the home of Disney’s 'Mary Poppins,' there was a book signing for John Loring and his biography of Joseph Urban, titled aptly Joseph Urban (Abrams, publishers). Mr. Urban was one of the most influential designers of the first third of the 20th century and the breadth of his work is still apparent almost a century later right here in New York.Viennese by birth, upbringing and early education, Joseph Urban came to America in 1911 at age 39 to become the art director for the Boston Opera. Florenz Ziegfeld, the celebrated producer of Broadway musical revues known as The Follies, hired him in 1914 to design stage sets for him, and for more than a decade thereafter Urban’s designs dominated the Follies." (NYSocialDiary)