"In concluding his elegant book On China, Henry Kissinger describes an ongoing debate within Chinese leadership circles. Some of its ruling class believes China should maintain its 'peaceful development' strategy in accordance with a rules-based international order, while others demand that China now adopt a more aggressive posture that directly challenges American primacy. I've just returned from a month in China and experienced some of this debate firsthand. Visits to several cities, and meetings and conversations with Chinese officials, scholars, foreign business leaders, American officials and, yes, taxi drivers produce an amalgam of impressions.The best way to make sense of the current state of affairs in China is to think of not one but several 'Chinas' -- each is real, but none by itself is the full reality. The following are six of the 'Chinas' that exist today; the question is which of these will command the future .." (Foreignpolicy)
"The numbers are close, but new data from key national battlegrounds gives Barack Obama an edge to work with. A NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll has President Obama leading Mitt Romney in swing states, including respondents in Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Wisconsin, by a count of 50 to 42 percent. The latest Quinnipiac numbers are also good news for the reelection campaign, showing Obama topping Romney in Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania on the strength of his key coalitions: young people, women, and African-Americans. The NBC poll also indicates that attacks on Romney's business record may be working. Among those polled in swing states, where the Obama campaign has focused early ads aimed at Romney's Bain years, 33 percent say what they know about Romney's business record gives them a more negative view of him. Just 18 percent say it makes them think more positively. Romney's lead when it comes to handling the economy has almost disappeared in the Quinnipiac poll, where voters are now split. In Florida, 46 percent said Romney would do a better job, compared to 44 percent for Obama, but in Florida voters lean Obama's way 47-45, while Ohio is even at 44. On Tuesday's Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell, New York's own John Heilemann said the new numbers should quiet Democrats who've been fretting about the Obama campaign's strategy — or, as David Plouffe memorably described them, 'the bed-wetters.'" (NYMag)
"President Obama is exhorting supporters on the campaign trail to avoid rounds of boos or catcalls directed toward his Republican opponent, Mitt Romney. The repeated efforts by Obama — used as recently as Tuesday at an Atlanta fundraiser — are intended to send a signal that he’s heading up a positive campaign even as he runs countless ads excoriating Romney’s business background.
It’s also part of a calculated effort to contrast his handling of the hecklers with Romney’s. The presumptive GOP nominee has witnessed crowds at his events booing Obama but has not sought to quiet them. And, in an interview on Fox News, Romney would not commit to urging his supporters and staff to stop the heckling. 'I can assure you that we do not believe in unilateral disarmament,' he said, echoing earlier comments he made that 'if you’re going to be heckling us, why, we’re not going to sit back and play [by] very different rules.' Like Romney, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the 2008 GOP nominee, faced a slew of belligerent supporters. Those attendees, however, took their Obama criticism beyond booing, including one woman at a Minnesota town hall who infamously called Obama 'an Arab.' McCain faced some initial criticism for not trying to quiet the crowds but, when he later sought to soothe his supporters’ emotions, instructing crowds to be 'respectful,' he paid a price for their outbursts. 'John McCain certainly suffered when, after picking [Sarah] Palin, his audiences sometimes turned aggressive and even violent toward Democrats,' said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University. 'This pushed him toward the far right, rather than the center he always thought he could secure, and allowed Obama to fill the void.'" (TheHill)
"'When someone comes into your house and throws shit around, you get pissed,' Anna Holmes told The Observer. She was speaking in metaphor: The house was the Gawker Media women’s interest blog Jezebel, of which she was the founding editor; the someone was the blog’s commenters, a famously undisciplined crowd. 'If you open your front door to people they just act like jerks,' agreed former Gizmodo editor Joel Johnson. Now the managing editor of Animal NY, he has abolished its comments sections altogether. Blog proprietor Nick Denton has a different plan—he’s giving them the run of the place. The commenters are creating content, after all, just like the writers. What’s the difference? 'I want to erase this toxic Internet class system,' he told The Observer in a gmail chat.'Nick has always loved to subtly and not so subtly insult his employees,' said Gawker writer John Cook. 'He thinks of us as glorified commenters.' In some cases, the writers are glorified commenters.For years, the sections served as a farm league for the blogs’ staffs. It’s where Drew Magary (BigDaddyDrew), Richard Lawson (LolCait), and Erin Gloria Ryan (MorningGloria) launched their writing careers. Now, with a new commenting system called Kinja, Mr. Denton is offering a set of housekeys to anyone who wants them. Gone are the old barriers to entry—the invites, the followers, the star-shaped badges—that kept the comments cliquish. Under the new order, the commenters babysit themselves, while a secret algorithm ranks their conversations by relevance." (Observer)
"It’s the nature of New York life that change is inexorable, that older buildings get plowed over in favor of new buildings, that yesterday’s Lower East Side pickle stall becomes today’s curtained mixology den, that Girls now tramps gleefully upon the memory of Sex and the City. But New York without Nora Ephron is just plain wrong. I join the V.F. family in mourning, and wishing futilely against, the devastating loss of our friend, colleague, and unfailingly entertaining dining companion, who passed away yesterday at the age of seventy-one. Nora was actually raised in Beverly Hills, where her parents worked as screenwriters, but in adulthood, she was New York incarnate. If you want to take a smart, funny, brisk, real-time plunge into what the city was like in the sixties and seventies, you can do no better than Wallflower at the Orgy (1970) and Crazy Salad (1975), her two collections of the stuff she wrote in those trip-wire years for New York and Esquire, among other publications. The New Journalism movement was largely a boys’ club. Nora didn’t so much push to join this club as stake out her own Nora Journalism turf, doing participatory stories about the burgeoning feminist movement (she belonged to a particularly fraught consciousness-raising group) and crafting essays about food celebrities before anyone else had realized that we as a culture had developed food celebrities. And then, she transcended mere journalism altogether to become this extraordinary polymath. I’ll spare you the full C.V. and list of credits because it’ll be done more professionally elsewhere, but here’s a sampling: Nora the Novelist (Heartburn); Nora the Oscar-Nominated Screenwriter (Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally . . . ); Nora the Movie Director (Julie & Julia, Sleepless in Seattle); Nora the Playwright (Imaginary Friends). By rights she should also have been Nora the Insufferably Smug Over-Accomplisher, but here’s the thing: this was a woman unfailingly generous of spirit, a person who authentically enjoyed making new friends of all ages, every day." (VanityFair)
"What do People Like Us, and people like them, do on a blissfully breezy Monday eve? Hit the Cinema Society and Allure screening of the Elizabeth Banks and Chris Pine flick at Chelsea's SVA Theater, followed by a rooftop shindig blocks away at Hotel Americano. The cast avec writer/director Alex Kurtzman (who based the film on his own experience meeting his half sibs for the first time at age 30) mingled with the Conde beauty glossy's EIC, Linda Wells, along with a mellow and chatty crowd including Girls' Zosia Mamet (The Daily loves you, Shosh!), Coco Rocha, Kenneth Branagh, Gina Gershon, Tyson Ballou, Rachel Roy, and Andrew Wyatt, one of the men behind the genius jams of Miike Snow." (Fashionweekdaily)
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