"Morocco's King Mohammed VI has walked a delicate line between monarchy and democracy, introducing a new, more liberal constitution in March 2011 as protests broke out throughout the country. This 'third way"' stalled the demonstrations, but some doubt these changes will be more than cosmetic. The king has cultivated an image based on openness and charity work -- he's been called 'the king of the poor.' In a dispatch for Foreign Policy, James Traub describes his public relations campaign: 'the lead item on the news almost every evening is the king, in djellaba and fez, inaugurating a new maternity hospital, or mosque, or anti-poverty initiative.' But when not appearing in photo ops on state-owned television stations, he comes across as aloof given his enormous wealth -- an estimated $2.5 billion dollars -- while a quarter of Moroccans live below the international poverty line." (ForeignPolicy)
"TWO days after President Obama’s first debate against Mitt Romney, Stephanie Cutter, a deputy campaign manager for the Obama re-election effort, decided to tweak Mr. Romney for his attack on federal funding for PBS. On Twitter, Ms. Cutter, known for her dry sense of humor and sharp edge, circulated a photo of Big Bird outside an Obama rally with the hashtag #ProtectSesameStreetNotWallStreet to her 42,700-plus followers. The Big Bird attacks started to take on a life of their own. The following week, the Obama campaign introduced a tongue-in-cheek ad that compares Big Bird to Bernard L. Madoff and other corporate criminals. 'Big, yellow, a menace to our economy,' the ominous voice-over intoned. It was a typical quick-response effort by Ms. Cutter, doing damage control after an admittedly lackluster performance by the president. 'She spotted right away that this was something that was trending out there and that was making an impact,' David Axelrod, the president’s chief strategist, said of Ms. Cutter, who was not involved in the making of the ad itself. Ms. Cutter, who turns 44 on Oct. 22, has emerged as Mr. Obama’s one-woman attack squad. In the process, she has become a popular but polarizing face of a campaign that until recently had been largely dominated by middle-aged white men." (NYTimes)
"(US Attorney Preet) Bharara has certainly made plenty of enemies in banking since his appointment as one of the federal government’s chief law enforcement officers three years ago. This June, his office secured its latest high-profile conviction, former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, on four counts of insider trading (Gupta will be sentenced later this month). This followed the prosecution of Raj Rajaratnam, the head of Galleon Group, a $7bn hedge fund, who last year was given an 11-year jail term for insider trading. Since 2009, Bharara’s office has filed charges of insider trading against 72 hedge fund portfolio managers, consultants, lawyers and company officials, in the most wide-ranging investigation into Wall Street fraud since the “greed is good” era of the late 1980s. At the FT office, a few hours before our lunch, I’ve yet to hear from Bharara which restaurant he has chosen. I’m beginning to worry he might stand me up, when I receive an email directing me to Trinity Place Bar & Restaurant, a spot tucked within an old bank vault in the financial district, near the footprint of the World Trade Center. The entrance is guarded by a 35-tonne vault door dating from 1904. As I begin to look over the menu, Bharara appears, wearing the prosecutor’s uniform of dark suit, blue shirt and red striped tie. He kisses me on the cheek and takes a seat next to me, explaining, in his quickened manner, that he chose this place because it has symbolic meaning. When he was waiting for the Senate to confirm him in his post, he met a trusted friend here to think about how he would approach his task. As we study the menu, he says: 'This is going to ruin me for the day. I eat almost no lunch. I have a big dinner but I don’t have a big lunch.' He adds: 'I don’t eat green things, no vegetables.' He asks whether I’d like to split a plate of tuna and salmon tartare as an appetiser. 'I’m a big fan of meat,' he says ... 'I don’t like coffee but I need caffeine,' Bharara explains, adding that he has already consumed several Diet Cokes today ... Earlier this year, Bharara, who has just turned 44, appeared on the cover of Time magazine under the headline, 'This Man is Busting Wall Street'. As well as the convictions, his office has been praised for its use of techniques, such as wiretaps or secretly recorded phone conversations, previously reserved almost exclusively for investigations into organised crime rings." (FT)
"Jay-Z may have rocked Brooklyn’s Barclays Center first, but it was Babs who brought the bigger stars to the borough. For Barbra Streisand’s Thursday show, Universal Studios President Ron Meyer set up some posh pre-gaming at Peter Luger Steakhouse, hosting a dinner for 20, including billionaires Ron Perelman and Robert Kraft, Michael Douglas, SNL guru Lorne Michaels, ex-Paramount head Sherry Lansing and director William Friedkin, Vanity Fair’s Graydon Carter, talent manager Sandy Gallin and 'Raging Bull' producer Irwin Winkler. A spy says major topics of talk were Meyer’s upcoming awards contender 'Les Misérables' and Douglas’ playing Liberace in HBO’s 'Behind the Candelabra' ... At a 40/40 Club after-party, Streisand was 'mobbed by friends,' including Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, Rosie O'Donnell, Regis Phibin ... Said a VIP, of the crowd, 'It was like the rich previously from Brooklyn,' including Woody Allen." (PageSix)
"Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg celebrated the opening of How They Changed Our Lives, Senators as Working People, a new photography installation exploring the influence of elected officials in shaping our daily lives, at Mana Contemporary in Jersey City on Sunday, October 7, 2012. The installation presents portraits taken by Bonnie of 113 U.S. Senators of the 109th-110th congresses alongside text highlighting each lawmaker's key legislative achievement. The exhibit is open to the public through Saturday, October 20, 2012. Guests in attendance included Bonnie Englebardt Lautenberg and Sen. Frank R. Lautenberg, Gene Lemay, Shai Baitel, Yigal Ozeri, and Lois Robbins." (NYSocialDiary)
"'Your future is in Hollywood—I can make you the next Bela Lugosi,' said James Toback looking at me straight in the eye. Jimmy Toback is a hell of a fellow. An obsessive with an encyclopedic knowledge of sports and other data, he directed such great films as The Gambler, Fingers (which made Harvey Keitel into a star), wrote the screenplay for Bugsy, and has just wrapped Seduced & Abandoned, starring Taki and Alec Baldwin, not necessarily in that order. S&A is going to Sundance and our hopes are high. Jimmy says that I came out fine, 'the only man in Cannes among the movie crowd with some dignity.' It’s a bit like calling someone an intellectual because his bookcase is bigger than his TV ... Toback has lost a fortune on the green tables, but when he enters a room his presence turns it into a crowded cocktail party. At the Norman Mailer Center’s annual awards he held court about Seduced & Abandoned, tennis, the coming elections, underwater explorations of Nigerian lakes, why Brits drink—he was once married to Mimi Russell, the Duke of Marlborough’s niece—modern celebs’ insatiable appetite for the limelight, and other such matters, including the reasons why young girls go to bed with older men. I take a table every year with Michael Mailer, who produced Seduced & Abandoned, and this time there was a bonus. Oliver Stone and I made up after thirty-five years of sniping at each other. 'I’ve finally seen the light,' I told him, 'and I’m now a pacifist without even being bisexual.' He burst out laughing and invited me to the Boom Boom Room downtown. What would Norman Mailer have made of a black-tie gala in his name at a fancy hotel? One never knew with Norman, but he most likely would have loved it. All of his nine children were there, and writers such as Gay Talese, Garrison Keillor, Joyce Carol Oates, and Robert Caro got up onstage and regaled us with Mailer stories. Alec Baldwin was the Master of Ceremonies and did a hell of a job moving things along at a fast pace. I sat there drinking and asking Mrs. James Toback why attractive nice women always marry bad boys." (Taki Theodoracopulos)
"Sarah Jessica Parker’s support for the sitting president is well documented: this summer, for instance, she starred in an Obama-campaign ad, and then opened up her home in Manhattan’s West Village for a $40,000/plate re-election fund-raiser, co-hosted by Anna Wintour. Knowing her real-life zests for both Obama and fashion—not to mention her Sex and the City character’s Vogue fetish—we asked Parker which dinner guest, Obama or Wintour, seemed the more surreal person to have hanging out at home. 'I wasn’t nervous [about Anna] at all,' Parker told us at Thursday night’s amfAR Inspiration Gala in Los Angeles, just as the vice-presidential debate was getting under way in a parallel universe. 'I was happy that she was there, of course. She was a great comfort, because she had [hosted similar events] so many times. I was just thrilled, especially for my children, since they were there.' (In write-ups of the evening, it was noted that Parker’s son made the president laugh when he interrupted Obama’s speech with applause. The president responded, 'He wants to fire up the crowd.')" (VanityFair)
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