Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Democrats have made a national cause of turning Texas blue, even though the chances that Wendy Davis will win the governor’s race this fall remain small — and the likelihood that Texas will be a true battleground any time before 2028 probably even smaller. Georgia, on the other hand, is happening now. Democrats here don’t have to wait for the demographic projections to come true. The state’s voting population is already much more African-American than even 10 years ago, Latinos are on the rise, and there’s a business community relocating to the Atlanta metro area at a pace that looks a lot like the migration to Northern Virginia and the North Carolina research triangle the past 15 years that turned both states into presidential battlegrounds. Those shifts, together with the surprisingly competitive candidacies of Senate hopeful Michelle Nunn and gubernatorial contender Jason Carter, have convinced more than a few Democrats here that the Republican lock on the Peach State could be broken as soon as November. It’s a tall task, no question: Nunn has her hands full against businessman David Perdue — who edged out Rep. Jack Kingston in the Republican Senate primary runoff Tuesday night — as does Carter in his bid to oust Republican Gov. Nathan Deal. But a win by either Democrat would deliver a jolt so powerful that it could potentially reshape the national political landscape: Yes, Texas has its 38 electoral votes, but putting Georgia’s 16 votes in play could do just as much to complicate the GOP’s path to the White House. 'Georgia’s next in line as a national battleground state,' Carter said during a break at a campaign stop last week. 'If you look at sheer numbers, people can dispute whether it’s red or blue, but everybody knows where it’s headed.'" (Politico)










"David Gregory’s time is nearly up at 'Meet the Press,' sources told Page Six, and he could be replaced as moderator of the nation’s longest-running TV show soon after the November midterm elections. While NBC News President Deborah Turness has publicly supported the embattled Gregory, there are serious concerns about the losing battle to turn around the show’s sinking ratings.Viewership is down a whopping 43 percent compared to when Gregory ascended to the moderator’s chair in December 2008, after the death of Tim Russert. The show finished in third place behind CBS’s 'Face the Nation' and ABC’s 'This Week' in the second quarter of 2014. An NBC source said, 'The discussion is whether to make a change before or after the midterm elections. Just after the midterms would give the new moderator time to settle in.' According to insiders, NBC political director and chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd is the rightful heir to Gregory, but he has not been officially offered the job." (P6)














"Wednesday, July 23, 2014. A warm, somewhat humid day in New York. But beautiful. I went to dinner with my friend Emilia at Sette Mezzo. Emilia, whom I have known since the 1970s, always treats me to lunch or dinner on my birthday which is this coming Saturday. We’ve been doing this for years. Just as we were finishing up, a man and a woman came in to take the table next to ours, and Emilia said to me, 'oh, it’s Essie!' I didn’t know who Essie was except that she was obviously a friend of Emilia’s. Then Emilia showed me her fingernails and told me that the color was called Hot something-or-other, and said: 'this is Essie’s.' I asked how they knew each other. Emilia and Essie both said: 'from the salon.' I figured since the nails were Essie’s and they knew each other from the salon, I started to talk to Essie about her business at the salon and how the clientele all spill their innermost secrets to the staff. Essie agreed but then told me that she didn’t own the 'salon,' that she was a customer. Then why did Emilia tell me her fingernails were Essie’s? Probably most women reading this already know the story. Essie manufactures the fingernail polish and her brand is called Essie. She and two others are the most famous fingernail polish in the world. Essie recently sold her business to L’Oreal for $50 million, or something like that. Then Essie and Emilia started talking about houses in East Hampton. Emilia’s building one and Essie is buying one. Essie, at that moment was the most famous woman in the restaurant even if people didn’t know who she was, or even that she was famous. She’s probably one of the most famous names in America, maybe the world since you may have noticed, as almost every woman and girl is wearing polish on their fingernails and toes. Emilia wears one of Essie’s greens -- Turquoise & Caicos -- on her toes. I don’t like green nail polish. I don’t know why. But then as a clever woman once said to a man who told her he didn’t like the color of her lipstick, 'then you shouldn’t wear it darling.' Then again, Emilia has great taste and style. She’d tell me it’s because of Essie." (NYSD)

photo credit: Shutterstock

"Whether it is more painful to be justly than unjustly accused is a difficult question to answer: sometimes I think the one, sometimes the other. Likewise, it is uncertain whether success or failure in life, wealth or poverty, is the greater test of character. But on the whole I have preferred the failures in life whom I have met to the successes, perhaps because I feel an instinctive affinity with them. Success is to failure as, in the opening sentence of Anna Karenina, happy families are to unhappy ones. There are so many interesting ways to fail, indeed an almost infinite number. Even the most unimaginative person can usually find an original way to make a mess of things. By comparison with failure, then, success is a dull dog. Give me a Chekhovian hopeless case any time rather than a dashing romantic hero. Personally I have never taken the character test of riches, but I think I am ready for it now; at any rate, I am at least sufficiently mature. But never having cared very deeply for money (although I have also never had any vocation for actual poverty), it is too late in the day for me to take it now. I shall have to await my next life to find out. In this life I entrust my savings, such as they are, to advisers, in the hope that they are not of the Bernie Madoff school of finance and investment; but for all I know, or can be bothered to find out, they may be. After all, one can’t be interested in everything, and it so happens that my financial affairs have never really captured my imagination." (Theodore Dalyrimple)