Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Some of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s most private conversations, on issues from her husband’s affair to health care policy, are part of newly published documents revealed in the archives of one of her best friends. The trove of documents include correspondence, journal entries, memos and interviews from the mid-1970s to about 2000 from one of Clinton’s best friends, political science professor Diane Blair, who died in 2000. While they have been open to the public since 2010, The Washington Free Beacon reported on and published the contents of the files for the first time on Sunday night. In the documents, Clinton’s private thoughts on a number of hot button topics from her years as Arkansas’s first lady to her time in the White House are revealed. After it was reported that President Bill Clinton had an affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, Hillary Clinton called Lewinsky a 'narcissistic loony tune' in a phone call with Blair, defending her husband and calling the affair a mistake spurred in part by politics, her own failures and the loneliness of the presidency. Blair noted that Clinton told her they 'tried to manage' Lewinsky after the affair ended but things grew 'beyond control.' In a 1993 entry, Clinton supported single-payer health care at a White House dinner with Blair, calling it 'necessary.' The sentiment directly contradicts what presidential candidate Clinton told The New York Times in a 2008 interview, when she told the paper, 'You know, I have thought about this, as you might guess, for 15 years and I never seriously considered a single-payer system.' The archives were donated to the University of Arkansas library after Blair’s death in 2000 by her husband, former Tyson Foods chief counsel Jim Blair, and were made public in 2010." (Politico)

"A swarm of Kennedys gathered in Manhattan Saturday night in vintage gowns and fedoras for a ‘50s-themed, 50th-birthday party for Vicki Kennedy, wife of Max Kennedy. Max’s sister Kerry toasted Vicki for always inviting the extended family and friends on her schooner, Glide. 'You may think you’re marrying one of us,' she warned the dates of the younger generation, 'but the rest of us will be coming along!' Max closed the toasts with a poem for his wife. The nearly 40 guests at the private loft on 36th Street included Kick Kennedy, Mariah and Cara Kennedy Cuomo, Max Kennedy Jr., Summer and Noah Kennedy, Tim and Sam Shriver, Kennedy family lawyer Richard Farley and tech investor Jonah Goodhart, who hosted the party." (P6)









"Last season we argued that celebrities were the new celebrities and, if the past two days of the Fall/Winter 2014 shows are any indication, we'd say the trend persists. While the A-list usually doesn't show up until the bigger shows over the weekend and later in the week, the past two days of New York Fashion Week haven't disappointed where star sighting is concerned. From shots of hunks like Bryan Greenberg and Kellan Lutz to pop divas like Kelly Rowland and Carrie Underwood, we've compiled all of the major front row action, below. And check back every day because we'll be updating our front row report on the reg." (Paper)




















"It was well into the audition process for 12 Years a Slave when Steve McQueen began to despair. He’d seen over a thousand actors for the role of the long-­suffering Patsey, and no one quite had the 'majestic grace' he thought the part required. By the time he watched the tape sent in by an unknown Kenyan actress named Lupita Nyong’o, he’d started to question his own judgment—'I just kind of rubbed my eyes in disbelief and needed someone else to confirm what I was seeing.' McQueen showed the audition to his 14-year-old daughter. Her response: 'Wow. Who is she?' So it was that Lupita Nyong’o found herself where she is, which at this particular moment is the NoMad Hotel, sipping verbena tea, sleek in black pants and black sweater, and sitting with legs and hands crossed politely as a driver waits outside and the lunch staff scours the pantry for gluten-free bread. 'I haven’t always been gluten-free,' Nyong’o explains in a measured tone, after scanning the menu and coming up short. 'I’ve done it for maybe nine months.' Which, like carrying a baby, is roughly the amount of time it could take a lovely young woman who lives in Brooklyn with a roommate from school to morph, via a team of publicists and stylists and handlers, into a Bona Fide Star. Just back from the awards circuit in L.A. (the SAG and Critics’ Choice Awards, which she won; the Golden Globes, which she didn’t), Nyong’o, 30, was this year’s standout fresh face, floating gracefully down a succession of red carpets in a series of bold-colored, eye-catching, sophisticated gowns (she shares a stylist with Michelle Dockery of Downton Abbey). On March 2, she may very well take home the Oscar for Best Supporting Actress, but in the meantime, she’s perfecting the role of the grateful, gracious ingénue nominee." (NYMag)










"Yesterday a friend invited me to see the Encores! Revival production of  Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh’s 'Little Me' with book by Neil Simon at City Center. I saw the original version directed by producer Cy Feuer when it opened at the Lunt-Fontaine in 1962, with Bob Fosse doing the choreography. That was the heyday of mid-century Broadway musicals. At around that time Broadway was festooning with great shows – 'Hello Dolly,' 'How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying,' 'Funny Girl,' 'Cabaret,' 'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,' as well as a bevy of long running hits including 'Gypsy,' which closed that January, 'My Fair Lady' was still running (it closed after a six year run – then a record) that September, and  'Sound of Music' which closed after an almost four year run, that November." (NYSD)