©Patrick Morgan"For now, however, all is peaceful. I’m ushered in past a secretary and standing in the doorway to her cavernous office is Helle Thorning-Schmidt, Denmark’s prime minister for the past two-and-a-half years. Thorning-Schmidt, 47, is notable for many reasons: she’s a rare Social Democrat in a sea of centre-right administrations in Europe, and largely because of that is seen as a potential head of the European Commission in Brussels. Internationally, her profile has increased massively since December last year when her “selfie” with Barack Obama and David Cameron at the memorial service for Nelson Mandela went viral. Throw in more pop culture references, such as the close parallels to the cult Danish TV series Borgen (which featured a female prime minister), the fact that she is the daughter-in-law of former UK Labour party leader Neil Kinnock, and her nickname of “Gucci Helle”, and international fascination with Thorning-Schmidt is intense. She has decided we should go to the in-house canteen to get our lunch and then take the plates to her office. We go down the grand staircase, followed by a security man, and pass through what seems to be a storeroom with a table football game ('Nobody plays it,' says Thorning-Schmidt) and discarded kitchen equipment. The canteen is small and the choice of dishes is limited, though the food looks inviting. We both take a starter of prawns and while I serve myself the warm meal of curry and rice, the prime minister chats with one of the chefs about, I think, some nice fish she ate. (Thorning-Schmidt talks to me in perfect English.) Back upstairs, we eat at a big meeting table in her office. Thorning-Schmidt encouragingly declares: 'I’m really starving.' We both polish off our prawns in a matter of seconds while making small talk about the weather. She says: 'Well, when it starts snowing here it gets a bit confused,' a line I think of later in the week as the political storm rages in Copenhagen." (FT)
"A heavy snowfall diverted some forty-odd private jets from landing in Saanen airport, thus the one percent of the one percent that came to Gstaad for a grand wedding last weekend used conventional travel methods. Actually, it was more of the one hundredth of one percent that lefties complain about, 650 of them arriving for Tatiana Santo Domingo’s marriage to Andrea Casiraghi, son of Princess Caroline of Monaco. Our host was Vera Santo Domingo, mother of the bride and widow of Julio-Mario, among the richest families of South America and a Colombian dynasty. It was obviously a young crowd—a hell of a lot younger than myself, anyway. I put some of them up in my chalet, which proved rather handy later at night when I had trouble finding my way home and negotiating any stairs whatsoever. Both Friday and Saturday nights ended late, after 6AM, yet most guests attended the goodbye brunch on Sunday. This included yours truly on a couple hours of sleep and, according to the mother of my children, dressed impeccably while in bed in my dinner jacket but having taken off my dancing shoes. My left hand had bled quite a lot all over the sheets, but otherwise there were no injuries whatsoever except for the Karamazovean hangover. Ah, how fresh and good-looking the young are after a party that lasted more than eight hours of full-time dancing, boozing, and other more destructive inhales. Two of my guests were young Christian of Hanover and his truly beautiful girlfriend Alessandra, and on Sunday morning, with as little sleep as me, they looked radiant and were rushing off to Madrid with George Scott, son of Pugs President-for-Life Nick Scott. I don’t begrudge my age—what the hell, I’ve had a hell of a ride—but I am jealous of those who look so fresh in the morning after two nights of getting hammered. One thing that struck me was how polite Christian and Alessandra were, thanking everyone and bringing us gifts for using a bed less than five hours in three days and two nights. Which brings me to ex-Soviet Union slobs who use the Alps and other places where I happen to hang out. In their visas there should be an obligatory declaration by the slobs themselves that they know two English expressions—'please' and 'thank you'—and that they will use them at every opportunity, even as they pay the hookers who solicit their business. It won’t help, but it will make me feel better. As Dorothy Parker said when asked to define horticulture, you can lead a whore to culture but you can’t make her think." (Taki)
BY ABY BAKER/GETTY IMAGES.
"As the author of two lengthy, heavily researched and thoroughly fact-checked articles that deal with that allegation—the first published in 1992, when Dylan was seven, and the second last fall, when she was 28—I feel obliged to set the record straight. As such, I have compiled the following list of undeniable facts: 1. Mia never went to the police about the allegation of sexual abuse. Her lawyer told her on August 5, 1992, to take the seven-year-old Dylan to a pediatrician, who was bound by law to report Dylan’s story of sexual violation to law enforcement and did so on August 6. 2. Allen had been in therapy for alleged inappropriate behavior toward Dylan with a child psychologist before the abuse allegation was presented to the authorities or made public. Mia Farrow had instructed her babysitters that Allen was never to be left alone with Dylan. 3. Allen refused to take a polygraph administered by the Connecticut state police. Instead, he took one from someone hired by his legal team. The Connecticut state police refused to accept the test as evidence. The state attorney, Frank Maco, says that Mia was never asked to take a lie-detector test during the investigation. 4. Allen subsequently lost four exhaustive court battles—a lawsuit, a disciplinary charge against the prosecutor, and two appeals—and was made to pay more than $1 million in Mia’s legal fees. Judge Elliott Wilk, the presiding judge in Allen’s custody suit against Farrow, concluded that there is 'no credible evidence to support Mr. Allen’s contention that Ms. Farrow coached Dylan or that Ms. Farrow acted upon a desire for revenge against him for seducing Soon-Yi.' 5. In his 33-page decision, Judge Wilk found that Mr. Allen’s behavior toward Dylan was “grossly inappropriate and that measures must be taken to protect her.” The judge also recounts Farrow’s misgivings regarding Allen’s behavior toward Dylan from the time she was between two and three years old. According to the judge’s decision, Farrow told Allen, 'You look at her [Dylan] in a sexual way. You fondled her . . . You don’t give her any breathing room. You look at her when she’s naked.' 6. Dylan’s claim of abuse was consistent with the testimony of three adults who were present that day. On the day of the alleged assault, a babysitter of a friend told police and gave sworn testimony that Allen and Dylan went missing for 15 or 20 minutes, while she was at the house. Another babysitter told police and also swore in court that on that same day, she saw Allen with his head on Dylan’s lap facing her body, while Dylan sat on a couch 'staring vacantly in the direction of a television set.' A French tutor for the family told police and testified that that day she found Dylan was not wearing underpants under her sundress. The first babysitter also testified she did not tell Farrow that Allen and Dylan had gone missing until after Dylan made her statements. These sworn accounts contradict Moses Farrow’s recollection of that day in People magazine." (VanityFair)
"Twenty-five years ago today a nation still adjusting to the idea that Ronald Reagan was no longer its president saw the release of an album called As Nasty As They Wanna Be by a Miami hip-hop collective named 2 Live Crew. While the band's arrest and subsequent trial for obscenity have justly received the lion's share of historical coverage, it seems fitting on this anniversary that we recognize the important work the band did in raising awareness for and discussion of horniness in American society. It is difficult to comprehend (or remember, if you are of a certain age) just how heavy the proscriptions against the mere mention of horniness were back in 1989—particularly living as we do in an era where apps are competing wildly to be your medium of choice in which to express your desire to or accomplishment in having already been able to do sex in its many forms to people you know so that other people you know can read about it—but many Americans found it so difficult or shameful to even admit that they might be experiencing bouts of horniness that they were unable to use the euphemisms of the period to articulate such feelings (these were mostly metaphors relating to the plumbing and chimney-sweeping trades). If you were suddenly transported back to 1989 right now the first thing you would notice was how people were actually able to pay attention to anything for more than thirty seconds, but the second thing that would make a powerful impression on you is just how embarrassed and scandalized the everyday citizens of that time would be as soon as you mentioned horniness, which, as someone who lives here in 2014, you would do almost immediately, because why would we ever bother to have a feeling that we didn't tell the whole goddamn world about?" (TheAwl)
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