Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"The Gavi is going down fast. By now, (Charles) Murray is positively convivial. 'I don’t think this is the gin talking ... but I want to be briefly more optimistic,' Murray declares. He discloses that he sometimes plays poker at a casino in Charles Town, West Virginia, and that he will, in fact, head over there after our lunch has finished. 'The ways in which it reinvigorates your confidence in America is really interesting,' Murray says. 'I remember sitting at a table a couple of months ago. And at a poker table there’s lots of camaraderie. And so here I am at a typical table at Charles Town. Big guys with lots of tattoos, sleeveless T-shirts, one of them an accountant, the other looks like he comes from a gang. There was an Iranian-American and Afghan-American. Incredible polyglot mix of people – all speak perfect idiomatic English – and the conversation turned to the fact that my daughter was going to marry an Italian. ‘Well, do you trust him?’ they said. ‘You know, you can’t trust those Italians.’ Murray guffaws at the recollection." (FT)

"IMF chief Christine Lagarde says the global financial crisis would have been less severe had there been more women in top finance jobs. Lagarde told the Women in the World Summit, 'If Lehman Brothers had been a bit more Lehman Sisters . . . we would not have had the degree of tragedy that we had as a result of what happened.' The bank collapsed in 2008, sending the economy spiralling. She added, 'The degree of risk-taking on the part of women is significantly lower and more cautious than that of men. It could be that as a result . . . less money is made, but less risk is being taken, and less damage is being done.' She won applause from a dinner audience including Angelina Jolie, Madeleine Albright, Tory Burch and Gayle King. Host and Newsweek/Daily Beast Editor-in-Chief Tina Brown introduced Bank of America chief Brian Moynihan as a sponsor and said, “Kudos to Brian for hosting some of the same rabid journalists for dinner who would much prefer to have him for lunch.'" (PageSix)

"What’s a better way to blow the last few thousands of your Wall Street bonus than on a prostitute?The market is shriveling up, however. In recent months, The NYPD has made some strong sweeps in removing high profile prostitutes off the streets. Well, out of their apartments—no one actually walks the streets anymore thanks to Craiglist and Rentboy.com. But some of their apartments are a bit iffy. The Upper East Side madam draws her men into the lair at 304 East 78th Street that the Post so eloquently describes for about $2,000 a night: 'Welcome to the Hovel of Love — and help yourself to free Coors Light, instant coffee and only the finest in economy his-and-her pleasure products.And who needs 900-count linen when synthetic paisley fabrics are so much more washable?'" (Observer)

"We must begin today, I’m afraid, by sullying our hands with the unsavory subject of brand association, that ineffable pillar of culture responsible for such teachable moments as the Kardashianisation of Christian Louboutin stilettoes (poor Christian must look at Kim’s plastic parts hovering atop his red-soled nude peep-toes and wonder if it’s all worth it) and Abercrombie & Fitch’s callous proposal that our old friend Mike the Situation be paid not to wear A&F clothes. So here’s a tricky philosophical conundrum, a Zen kōan for the 1 percent set, as it were: a famous Russian oligarch is casually browsing in his local Hermès, when suddenly and dramatically he’s served a $5 billion writ by his sworn nemesis, with the incident caught on security cameras—dust-up between respective retinues of bodyguards et tout—and instantly reported around the world. Good or bad publicity for Hermès? Over the years, the French accessories peddler has weathered its fair share of dubious PR, though it is not this column’s place to say whether the nadir was a white Hermès scarf featuring in a Basic Instinct sex scene, Oprah’s accusation of racism or the grim revelation that Posh Spice owns more than 100 Birkin bags. But as for the London Sloane Street branch’s historic participation in what I like to title Roman Abramovich Gets Sued For Billions, Goes to Court, and (Maybe) Gets a Heart: greater advertising than money can buy or, to delicately coin an analogy, a rippling DTF Guido in logoed sweatpants fiasco? Only a tumultuous ride through the Dickensian rags-to-riches tale of Red Rom’s life will qualify us, albeit humbly and tentatively, to judge. In the weeks leading up to that fateful encounter, Roman had been assiduously avoiding his vengeance-bent enemy. 65-year-old Boris Berezovsky, a pugnacious former Kremlin insider, was granted asylum in the UK around a decade ago after a dangerous falling out with President Putin, and in early 2007 had filed papers at the Royal Courts of Justice asserting that Roman, his one-time business partner, had swindled him out of billions back in the day." (TheAwl)

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"Folk queen Joan Baez says she and Steve Jobs in the 1980s were 'an odd combination.' Baez, older than Jobs, tells The Times of London’s Ed Potton that Jobs was 'totally left brain, and I have none.” She adds, “Mostly we argued . . . He said he could create with a computer a classical quintet that would be as magnificent as any there ever was. I said there couldn’t be the soul in it. On the other hand . . . his last words? ‘Oh wow! Oh wow!’ He was probably rearranging the Golden Gate.' Were they in love? Baez responds, 'Maybe, or maybe I was just fascinated.' She adds, 'I had friends who said: ‘Marry him! You’ll never have a financial problem in your life.’ But I couldn’t quite do it.'" (PageSix)

"DON CORNELIUS had many stories, and he liked to keep most of them to himself. But there was one that he recited many times, never concealing his pride in the retelling.It was 1972, and James Brown was making his first appearance on Soul Train,' the television show Mr. Cornelius had created two years before. As Mr. Brown looked around at the set, with its gyrating bell-bottom-clad dancers, he turned to Mr. Cornelius and asked plainly, “Who is backing you on this, man?' It’s just me, James,' Mr. Cornelius said he replied. Mr. Brown thought perhaps his host hadn’t understood the question. He asked again, and again. Both times, Mr. Cornelius replied with the same four words. 'It’s just me, James.' It was a sentiment that reverberated throughout Mr. Cornelius’s life, which ended at age 75 with a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head in his Sherman Oaks, Calif., home on Feb. 1." (NYTimes)

"'Oh my god, you have to tell your mother you said that!' Julianne Moore is flipping her perfect red hair, laughing loudly and long and at a pitch that suggests she isn’t actually amused. I have just asked her, in what was not quite a roundabout enough way, something about being a middle-aged sex symbol. In my defense (Mom and everyone else), it is one of the very few things that Moore—longtime liberal, pro-choice activist, and West Village resident—shares with Sarah Palin, whom she plays in HBO’s Game Change, based on the book by Mark Halperin and New York’s John Heilemann, premiering March 10. Middle-aged might not be the first word that comes to mind to describe Moore, whose cobalt-blue dress is topped with a Peter Pan collar—a sartorial reference to a character who never ages that seems about right for the exquisite 51-year-old. But it quickly becomes clear it’s not just my mother she feels cosmic solidarity with; it is Palin-as-mom, not Palin-as-object-of-desire, that drove the remarkably empathetic portrayal Moore, a mother of two, gives in the film." (NYMag)