via tvnewser
Thursday, May 16, 2013
Media-Whore D'oeuvres
"The White House took a series of steps Wednesday to make up with the Washington press corps.
The wooing took several shapes and followed a disastrous press briefing on Tuesday at which White House press secretary Jay Carney was torn apart over the Department of Justice’s seizure of Associated Press phone records. To bolster President Obama’s free-press credentials, the White House announced Wednesday it had asked Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to reintroduce a press shield law that would allow media organizations to challenge subpoenas of phone records and offer legal protections for protecting confidential sources. The White House also took the step of handing out records of emails related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which is designed to push back at suggestions it has not been transparent and bolster its case it has been truthful about the attack. Finally, Carney started his daily briefing on Wednesday with a bit of self-mockery, standing before a screen showing a montage of facial grimaces and contortions he made during Tuesday’s contentious briefing. He called it 'The many faces of Jay.' Obama has had a relatively good relationship with the press, which conservatives often complain is a potent part of Obama’s political base." (TheHill)
"Peter Baker reports that President Obama occasionally fantasizes, as many presidents do, of imitating a 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a politician who suddenly started saying exactly what he thought ... You can see Obama’s Bulworth fantasies popping out from time to time, especially when reporters ask him why he can’t force Republicans to pass sensible compromises ...
The trouble is that these answers, while true, don’t actually help Obama. Any political scientist will tell you that the scope for possible legislation in this term is very narrow: The median House member is a very conservative Republican who represents a district that voted for Mitt Romney, and whose biggest political risk is losing a primary to an even more conservative Republican. But most political reporters and analysts don’t pay attention to the political science. They like narratives that revolve around the president as a protagonist. When you confront them with structural analysis that confounds their narratives, they just get upset with you. It serves no purpose. That’s why I advised Obama to use 'less real talk and more bullshit.'A post-presidency Obama who actually spoke his mind, rather than fashion himself a post-partisan eminence, as post-presidents do — now that would be awesome. But the reason politicians don’t go Bulworth is that it doesn’t work. The truth about legislative dynamics is complicated and depressing. People don’t want to hear it." (Jonathan Chait)
"While Daniel Webster died an American in 1852, his political legacy does not belong to just one state, but two: New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Born in New Hampshire, Webster represented the Granite State in the House of Representatives from 1813 to 1817. But he then moved to Massachusetts seeking to improve his legal career, only to wind up returning to the House as a Bay State congressman in 1823. (Republican ex-Sen. Scott Brown is currently pondering the reverse move.) Webster went on to have a lengthy stay in the Senate, becoming part of the upper chamber’s revered 'Great Triumvirate' with Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. As a transplanted New Hampshirite representing Massachusetts, Webster’s individual case demonstrates how politics can be affected by the movement of Americans from state to state. In the aftermath of the 2012 election, the'demographics as destiny' discussion has dominated political analysis, with the latest data being provided by last week’s U.S. Census report on the 2012 electorate. But one demographic statistic hasn’t received much attention in the conversation: state nativity rates — that is, the percentage of people residing in a state who were born there. Does that statistic tell us anything about the politics of a state? If we order the states by nativity percentage (Chart 1) while also considering which party each state supported in 2012, we find that there are more Blue states than Red states with lower levels of nativity. Yet it’s obvious that high nativity rates in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin did not keep Barack Obama from winning those states in 2012." (Sabato)
"Donald Trump and wife Melania were among mourners at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home on the Upper East Side last night expressing condolences to prominent real estate developer Richard LeFrak and sister Francine after the death of their mother, Ethel, who died on Tuesday at age 93. Also in the room filled with white roses were Richard’s wife, Karen, Ethel’s grandsons Jamie and Harry, and close friends Somers Farkas, Dennis Basso and his husband, Michael Cominotto. The funeral for well-known philanthropist Ethel is today at 1 p.m. at Temple Emanu-El. Ethel’s husband, famed housing developer Samuel J. LeFrak, died in 2003." (PageSix)
"Last week certainly was the apex of this season’s contemporary art events here in New York. This time it had a decidedly New York/London spirit. There was the inspiring source of the Met’s Punk: Chaos to Couture, which was London in the 1970s. There was the fantastic Frieze Art Fair (now in its second year) at Randall’s Island, the satellite creation of the London magazine and art fair that bears the same name. And then, there were the masses of artists, museum professionals and collectors that pack the triennial fundraising dinner thrown for the Tate Americas Foundation, which supports the acquisition of art from the 'new world' for one of the UK’s most important and dynamic institutions — The Tate. I just returned from a month in England so perhaps I felt the British vibe more this year. And Tracey Emin, one of Britain’s best known contemporary artist installed a sculpture, entitled Roman Standard on view all summer at Petrosino Square at Spring and Lafayette Street in Soho as an adjunct to her two-gallery show at the Lehmann Maupin galleries on 26th in Chelsea and on Christie Street in the Bowery. While I don’t know if he has any interest whatever in contemporary art, we also have Prince Harry in town this week." (NYSocialDiary)
"The cowardly move by the Justice Department to subpoena two months of the A.P.’s phone records, both of its office lines and of the home phones of individual reporters, is potentially a breach of the Justice Department’s own guidelines. Even more important, it prevented the A.P. from seeking a judicial review of the action. Some months ago, apparently, the government sent a subpoena (or subpoenas) for the records to the phone companies that serve those offices and individuals, and the companies provided the records without any notice to the A.P. If subpoenas had been served directly on the A.P. or its individual reporters, they would have had an opportunity to go to court to file a motion to quash the subpoenas. What would have happened in court is anybody’s guess—there is no federal shield law that would protect reporters from having to testify before a criminal grand jury—but the Justice Department avoided the issue altogether by not notifying the A.P. that it even wanted this information. Even beyond the outrageous and overreaching action against the journalists, this is a blatant attempt to avoid the oversight function of the courts. It is not, again, as if the government didn’t have options. The D.C. Circuit (in a 2005 opinion upholding a finding of contempt against the Times’s Judith Miller and Time’s Matt Cooper for refusing to testify about who had disclosed Valerie Plame’s identity as a C.I.A. operative) has held that there isn’t a First Amendment privilege for journalists to refuse to testify before a criminal grand jury, as has the Second Circuit (in a 2006 case in which the government was trying to find out who told the Times about a planned raid on two foundations suspected of providing aid to terrorists). In the wake of the decisions, there was a renewed effort to pass a federal shield law—though the proposed law would not have provided absolute protection in cases of national security—but, with the rise of WikiLeaks, that discussion died." (NewYorker)
"We've all heard the stories. The friend of a friend who wrote a $50,000 check from the maternity ward to secure Junior's spot in the high school graduating class of 2030. The couple that built a library/parking structure/music room as a well-meaning gesture after they toured the school and 'saw a need." Then there's the one about the admissions director who pointed to two stacks of paperwork on her desk and said, "This is the pile of candidates we're considering. Yours is in the other one.' Over the past 18 months these tales have tagged along with me as I toured 12 private schools, attended open houses, and simulated playdates with my five-year-old twins, who on one occasion cavorted in a schoolyard with numbers pinned to their shirts like livestock at a state fair, all in the name of kindergarten admission. We live in Los Angeles, a city where the private school process is just as cutthroat as in New York, as it is in Chicago, San Francisco, and Atlanta. The incessant babble about where little Wolfie or Juniper or Harlow (remember, I live in L.A.) will learn to hold a pencil correctly, to the tune of $25,000 per year, often includes the terms fundraising, development, advancement, and capital campaigns. In a word: money. Money is not my native language, which explains why I'm a writer, not a hedge fund manager. So I needed a crash course in private school economics. What are the real financial expectations of the families applying to private schools these days?" (TownandCountry)
"The White House took a series of steps Wednesday to make up with the Washington press corps.
The wooing took several shapes and followed a disastrous press briefing on Tuesday at which White House press secretary Jay Carney was torn apart over the Department of Justice’s seizure of Associated Press phone records. To bolster President Obama’s free-press credentials, the White House announced Wednesday it had asked Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to reintroduce a press shield law that would allow media organizations to challenge subpoenas of phone records and offer legal protections for protecting confidential sources. The White House also took the step of handing out records of emails related to the terrorist attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, which is designed to push back at suggestions it has not been transparent and bolster its case it has been truthful about the attack. Finally, Carney started his daily briefing on Wednesday with a bit of self-mockery, standing before a screen showing a montage of facial grimaces and contortions he made during Tuesday’s contentious briefing. He called it 'The many faces of Jay.' Obama has had a relatively good relationship with the press, which conservatives often complain is a potent part of Obama’s political base." (TheHill)
"Peter Baker reports that President Obama occasionally fantasizes, as many presidents do, of imitating a 1998 Warren Beatty movie about a politician who suddenly started saying exactly what he thought ... You can see Obama’s Bulworth fantasies popping out from time to time, especially when reporters ask him why he can’t force Republicans to pass sensible compromises ...
The trouble is that these answers, while true, don’t actually help Obama. Any political scientist will tell you that the scope for possible legislation in this term is very narrow: The median House member is a very conservative Republican who represents a district that voted for Mitt Romney, and whose biggest political risk is losing a primary to an even more conservative Republican. But most political reporters and analysts don’t pay attention to the political science. They like narratives that revolve around the president as a protagonist. When you confront them with structural analysis that confounds their narratives, they just get upset with you. It serves no purpose. That’s why I advised Obama to use 'less real talk and more bullshit.'A post-presidency Obama who actually spoke his mind, rather than fashion himself a post-partisan eminence, as post-presidents do — now that would be awesome. But the reason politicians don’t go Bulworth is that it doesn’t work. The truth about legislative dynamics is complicated and depressing. People don’t want to hear it." (Jonathan Chait)
"While Daniel Webster died an American in 1852, his political legacy does not belong to just one state, but two: New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Born in New Hampshire, Webster represented the Granite State in the House of Representatives from 1813 to 1817. But he then moved to Massachusetts seeking to improve his legal career, only to wind up returning to the House as a Bay State congressman in 1823. (Republican ex-Sen. Scott Brown is currently pondering the reverse move.) Webster went on to have a lengthy stay in the Senate, becoming part of the upper chamber’s revered 'Great Triumvirate' with Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun. As a transplanted New Hampshirite representing Massachusetts, Webster’s individual case demonstrates how politics can be affected by the movement of Americans from state to state. In the aftermath of the 2012 election, the'demographics as destiny' discussion has dominated political analysis, with the latest data being provided by last week’s U.S. Census report on the 2012 electorate. But one demographic statistic hasn’t received much attention in the conversation: state nativity rates — that is, the percentage of people residing in a state who were born there. Does that statistic tell us anything about the politics of a state? If we order the states by nativity percentage (Chart 1) while also considering which party each state supported in 2012, we find that there are more Blue states than Red states with lower levels of nativity. Yet it’s obvious that high nativity rates in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin did not keep Barack Obama from winning those states in 2012." (Sabato)
"Donald Trump and wife Melania were among mourners at Frank E. Campbell Funeral Home on the Upper East Side last night expressing condolences to prominent real estate developer Richard LeFrak and sister Francine after the death of their mother, Ethel, who died on Tuesday at age 93. Also in the room filled with white roses were Richard’s wife, Karen, Ethel’s grandsons Jamie and Harry, and close friends Somers Farkas, Dennis Basso and his husband, Michael Cominotto. The funeral for well-known philanthropist Ethel is today at 1 p.m. at Temple Emanu-El. Ethel’s husband, famed housing developer Samuel J. LeFrak, died in 2003." (PageSix)
"Last week certainly was the apex of this season’s contemporary art events here in New York. This time it had a decidedly New York/London spirit. There was the inspiring source of the Met’s Punk: Chaos to Couture, which was London in the 1970s. There was the fantastic Frieze Art Fair (now in its second year) at Randall’s Island, the satellite creation of the London magazine and art fair that bears the same name. And then, there were the masses of artists, museum professionals and collectors that pack the triennial fundraising dinner thrown for the Tate Americas Foundation, which supports the acquisition of art from the 'new world' for one of the UK’s most important and dynamic institutions — The Tate. I just returned from a month in England so perhaps I felt the British vibe more this year. And Tracey Emin, one of Britain’s best known contemporary artist installed a sculpture, entitled Roman Standard on view all summer at Petrosino Square at Spring and Lafayette Street in Soho as an adjunct to her two-gallery show at the Lehmann Maupin galleries on 26th in Chelsea and on Christie Street in the Bowery. While I don’t know if he has any interest whatever in contemporary art, we also have Prince Harry in town this week." (NYSocialDiary)
"The cowardly move by the Justice Department to subpoena two months of the A.P.’s phone records, both of its office lines and of the home phones of individual reporters, is potentially a breach of the Justice Department’s own guidelines. Even more important, it prevented the A.P. from seeking a judicial review of the action. Some months ago, apparently, the government sent a subpoena (or subpoenas) for the records to the phone companies that serve those offices and individuals, and the companies provided the records without any notice to the A.P. If subpoenas had been served directly on the A.P. or its individual reporters, they would have had an opportunity to go to court to file a motion to quash the subpoenas. What would have happened in court is anybody’s guess—there is no federal shield law that would protect reporters from having to testify before a criminal grand jury—but the Justice Department avoided the issue altogether by not notifying the A.P. that it even wanted this information. Even beyond the outrageous and overreaching action against the journalists, this is a blatant attempt to avoid the oversight function of the courts. It is not, again, as if the government didn’t have options. The D.C. Circuit (in a 2005 opinion upholding a finding of contempt against the Times’s Judith Miller and Time’s Matt Cooper for refusing to testify about who had disclosed Valerie Plame’s identity as a C.I.A. operative) has held that there isn’t a First Amendment privilege for journalists to refuse to testify before a criminal grand jury, as has the Second Circuit (in a 2006 case in which the government was trying to find out who told the Times about a planned raid on two foundations suspected of providing aid to terrorists). In the wake of the decisions, there was a renewed effort to pass a federal shield law—though the proposed law would not have provided absolute protection in cases of national security—but, with the rise of WikiLeaks, that discussion died." (NewYorker)
"We've all heard the stories. The friend of a friend who wrote a $50,000 check from the maternity ward to secure Junior's spot in the high school graduating class of 2030. The couple that built a library/parking structure/music room as a well-meaning gesture after they toured the school and 'saw a need." Then there's the one about the admissions director who pointed to two stacks of paperwork on her desk and said, "This is the pile of candidates we're considering. Yours is in the other one.' Over the past 18 months these tales have tagged along with me as I toured 12 private schools, attended open houses, and simulated playdates with my five-year-old twins, who on one occasion cavorted in a schoolyard with numbers pinned to their shirts like livestock at a state fair, all in the name of kindergarten admission. We live in Los Angeles, a city where the private school process is just as cutthroat as in New York, as it is in Chicago, San Francisco, and Atlanta. The incessant babble about where little Wolfie or Juniper or Harlow (remember, I live in L.A.) will learn to hold a pencil correctly, to the tune of $25,000 per year, often includes the terms fundraising, development, advancement, and capital campaigns. In a word: money. Money is not my native language, which explains why I'm a writer, not a hedge fund manager. So I needed a crash course in private school economics. What are the real financial expectations of the families applying to private schools these days?" (TownandCountry)
Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Media-Whore D'Oeuvres
"The sudden barometric change in Washington has arrived so rapidly that it is hard to comprehend. 'The town is turning on President Obama,' announced Politico honchos and custodians of the conventional wisdom Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, and they’re right. Republicans are gleefully unleashing a vast investigative apparatus; erstwhile supporters like Jon Stewart are mortified. The black clouds may dissipate within a few days or weeks, or they may hover over the White House for the rest of Obama’s term. In the meantime, it is dizzying enough that, even in such a short period of time, we ought to step back and ask, what the hell just happened here? Scandal is a powerful, yet weirdly amorphous term of art in politics. Conceptually, the division between a scandal and a mere controversy or flub or policy dispute is hard to define. It required a peculiar sequencing of events to transform what would on their own have been normal political controversies into the nebulous, all-encompassing Obama Scandals. The episode began at dawn last Friday, when ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl broke explosive news about Benghazi. Until that point, the Benghazi story had been confined almost entirely to the right-wing fever swamps, where it lingered as a symbol of Obama’s desire to appease radical Islamists. Karl changed that by reporting that he had obtained the administration’s e-mails, and they showed, in contrast to its claims, a one-sided intervention on behalf of the State Department. Karl’s report produced among mainstream and liberal reporters a sense of embarrassment at having dismissed the story as a weird partisan obsession. 'For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession,' wrote Alex Koppelman in a scathing and widely circulated online commentary for The New Yorker, 'But now there is something to it.'" (Jonathan Chait)
"Gawker media overlord Nick Denton is engaged, reports Confidenti@al, The Daily News gossip page. Mr. Denton proposed to his actor boyfriend, Derrence Washington, over the weekend and they are planning on a wedding next May in upstate New York. The Gawker owner also updated his Facebook page this morning to reflect his new relationship status. 'This is the one event even I wouldn’t gossip about,' Mr. Denton told the gossip page Confident@l. 'Nobody else compares. You know how guys wrestle with marriage, with all the possibilities they’re giving up. I’m not giving up anything.'" (Observer)
"The Wintour of Our Disconnect. There was a funny piece in yesterday’s Daily Mail Online about how Anna Wintour allegedly wouldn’t allow the Kardashians’ mother, Kris Jenner, to attend the Met Costume Ball. Because – as reported in the Mail – Wintour is alleged to have said: 'One Kardashian is enough!' (And one more than was allowed entry in 2012.) ...Last night I went over to Roosevelt House to hear a lecture by David Stockman who wrote the current bestseller 'The Great Deformation; The Corruption of Capitalism in America' ... I am familiar with the Stockman book, and you may be too. Although I haven’t read it yet, I will because its subject is, in my opinion, as pertinent to the health of our society as ecology is to our planet. The book and Mr. Stockman have had a lot of media exposure including many of the financial blogs including the non-mainstream financial media. So I was curious to see what he would talk about. He’s a very good speech-giver. I hadn’t known that he had been a Congressman (from Michigan) before he joined the Reagan Administration at its beginning. He learned well. He began his adult life in Divinity School. His path that led to politics and finances seems entirely coincidental in the telling. Although in retrospect he must have had a proactive attitude about what interested him. His story on how he became involved with Ronald Reagan and Reagan’s first Director of the OMB is a fascinating political anecdote, and an accidentally rewarding story (and a story of political reward) ... It was an engaging and enlightening talk. He communicates on a learned but nevertheless understandable level. He would have been a very good teacher. Because that is basically what his book is. When pressed for a thought on what he thinks this is all leading to, like a consummate politician, he avoided a direct answer but provided other substantive thoughts to consider. You can tell I was impressed? As I said, it’s a tome, 'The Great Deformation.' But I’m not so afraid of tomes anymore, if I think I’m going to learn something. I have a strong feeling this is one of those books. I also came away from the evening with a much altered personal opinion of this man whose public image and political/economic history was familiar to me. He’s very reliable in telling us about ourselves, which is ultimately what politics and finance are: us and how we respond to the mechanism of corruption in the human condition." (NYSocialDiary)
"Ashton Kutcher’s contentious divorce with Demi Moore has now spiraled into a $10 million battle over his venture capital fund with Madonna’s manager Guy Oseary and billionaire Ron Burkle, Page Six can exclusively reveal. Kutcher and Oseary earlier this month announced their fund A-Grade investments, set up to invest in tech start-ups, was valued at $100 million and they were raising money from outside investors. But a source familiar with the proceedings between Kutcher and Moore, who split in November 2011, told us, 'Ashton and Demi are still not divorced, and no settlement has been agreed, even though they have been in negotiations for over a year. Ashton made a lot of money after they married, but he doesn’t believe he owes her as much as she is asking for.'
Our source continued, “Ashton set up A-Grade with Oseary and Burkle in 2010, when he and Demi were still together, but he recently told her lawyers the fund had not made substantial money. In fact, he claimed he had only put about $1 million into it. 'Now it seems Ashton and Oseary were working towards a private offering based on a valuation of $100 million. Ashton owns 20 percent of the fund, under California law, Demi should be entitled to half of his share — $10 million.'" (PageSix)
"Angelina Jolie has received more support after publicizing her preventative double mastectomy in a New York Times editorial that was published this morning. Following her son Brad Pitt’s statement earlier today, Jane Pitt has issued her well wishes about the surgery, which was performed over the course of three months this spring. 'We’re so very proud of Angie,' she said in a statement. '[T]his means so much to our family especially our grandchildren. We love her dearly.' The sentiment was echoed by Jolie’s brother, James Haven, who adds in a separate statement, 'My sister like our mother always put her children first. . . I am so grateful to be her brother.' Jolie opted to have the surgery after her doctors determined that she had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and carries a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which spikes her chances of developing the disease. Jolie’s doctors also determined that the actress has a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, which her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died of in 2007. In his statement to The Evening Standard this morning, Brad Pitt said, 'All I want for is for her to have a long and healthy life, with myself and our children. This is a happy day for our family.'" (VanityFair)
"Leonardo DiCaprio pulled off a record-breaking art auction for charity with Christie’s on Monday that raked in $38.8 million. 'The Great Gatsby' star had personally asked 33 artists — including Banksy, Julian Schnabel, Urs Fischer and Peter Beard — to donate or create new works for the auction, dubbed The 11th Hour. DiCaprio also donated a painting by Andreas Gursky from his own collection, and spent time at Christie’s phoning bidders to entice them in advance of the auction, sources said. Spotted at the sale (to benefit wildlife conservation through DiCaprio’s foundation) were Bradley Cooper, Mark Ruffalo, Tobey Maguire, Salma Hayek and François-Henri Pinault, whose family owns the auction house. The night’s biggest sale came after gallerist Larry Gagosian was locked in a bidding war with billionaire Vladimir Doronin, and spent $6.5 million for an abstract work by Mark Grotjahn, whom Gagosian represents. Pharmaceutical mogul Stewart Rahr — who we exclusively reported yesterday reached a $250 million divorce deal with his wife of 43 years — splashed out on works including a Robert Longo tiger drawing for $1.6 million and a portrait of his pal DiCaprio by Elizabeth Peyton for more than $1 million. The auction — which had been expected to bring in about $18 million — wound up setting record highs for 13 of the artists, and a source said it was “the biggest auction to benefit the environment ever.” DiCaprio bought a Takashi Murakami work for himself for $735,000. His 'Gatsby' co-star Maguire shelled out $262,500 for a Sergej Jensen work. Anonymous donors kicked in $5.5 million to the overall tally. DiCaprio’s foundation has set its sights on saving tigers, sharks and rainforests, and many of the works for sale were animal or nature-themed." (PageSix)
"The sudden barometric change in Washington has arrived so rapidly that it is hard to comprehend. 'The town is turning on President Obama,' announced Politico honchos and custodians of the conventional wisdom Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei, and they’re right. Republicans are gleefully unleashing a vast investigative apparatus; erstwhile supporters like Jon Stewart are mortified. The black clouds may dissipate within a few days or weeks, or they may hover over the White House for the rest of Obama’s term. In the meantime, it is dizzying enough that, even in such a short period of time, we ought to step back and ask, what the hell just happened here? Scandal is a powerful, yet weirdly amorphous term of art in politics. Conceptually, the division between a scandal and a mere controversy or flub or policy dispute is hard to define. It required a peculiar sequencing of events to transform what would on their own have been normal political controversies into the nebulous, all-encompassing Obama Scandals. The episode began at dawn last Friday, when ABC News reporter Jonathan Karl broke explosive news about Benghazi. Until that point, the Benghazi story had been confined almost entirely to the right-wing fever swamps, where it lingered as a symbol of Obama’s desire to appease radical Islamists. Karl changed that by reporting that he had obtained the administration’s e-mails, and they showed, in contrast to its claims, a one-sided intervention on behalf of the State Department. Karl’s report produced among mainstream and liberal reporters a sense of embarrassment at having dismissed the story as a weird partisan obsession. 'For a long time, it seemed like the idea of a coverup was just a Republican obsession,' wrote Alex Koppelman in a scathing and widely circulated online commentary for The New Yorker, 'But now there is something to it.'" (Jonathan Chait)
"Gawker media overlord Nick Denton is engaged, reports Confidenti@al, The Daily News gossip page. Mr. Denton proposed to his actor boyfriend, Derrence Washington, over the weekend and they are planning on a wedding next May in upstate New York. The Gawker owner also updated his Facebook page this morning to reflect his new relationship status. 'This is the one event even I wouldn’t gossip about,' Mr. Denton told the gossip page Confident@l. 'Nobody else compares. You know how guys wrestle with marriage, with all the possibilities they’re giving up. I’m not giving up anything.'" (Observer)
"The Wintour of Our Disconnect. There was a funny piece in yesterday’s Daily Mail Online about how Anna Wintour allegedly wouldn’t allow the Kardashians’ mother, Kris Jenner, to attend the Met Costume Ball. Because – as reported in the Mail – Wintour is alleged to have said: 'One Kardashian is enough!' (And one more than was allowed entry in 2012.) ...Last night I went over to Roosevelt House to hear a lecture by David Stockman who wrote the current bestseller 'The Great Deformation; The Corruption of Capitalism in America' ... I am familiar with the Stockman book, and you may be too. Although I haven’t read it yet, I will because its subject is, in my opinion, as pertinent to the health of our society as ecology is to our planet. The book and Mr. Stockman have had a lot of media exposure including many of the financial blogs including the non-mainstream financial media. So I was curious to see what he would talk about. He’s a very good speech-giver. I hadn’t known that he had been a Congressman (from Michigan) before he joined the Reagan Administration at its beginning. He learned well. He began his adult life in Divinity School. His path that led to politics and finances seems entirely coincidental in the telling. Although in retrospect he must have had a proactive attitude about what interested him. His story on how he became involved with Ronald Reagan and Reagan’s first Director of the OMB is a fascinating political anecdote, and an accidentally rewarding story (and a story of political reward) ... It was an engaging and enlightening talk. He communicates on a learned but nevertheless understandable level. He would have been a very good teacher. Because that is basically what his book is. When pressed for a thought on what he thinks this is all leading to, like a consummate politician, he avoided a direct answer but provided other substantive thoughts to consider. You can tell I was impressed? As I said, it’s a tome, 'The Great Deformation.' But I’m not so afraid of tomes anymore, if I think I’m going to learn something. I have a strong feeling this is one of those books. I also came away from the evening with a much altered personal opinion of this man whose public image and political/economic history was familiar to me. He’s very reliable in telling us about ourselves, which is ultimately what politics and finance are: us and how we respond to the mechanism of corruption in the human condition." (NYSocialDiary)
"Ashton Kutcher’s contentious divorce with Demi Moore has now spiraled into a $10 million battle over his venture capital fund with Madonna’s manager Guy Oseary and billionaire Ron Burkle, Page Six can exclusively reveal. Kutcher and Oseary earlier this month announced their fund A-Grade investments, set up to invest in tech start-ups, was valued at $100 million and they were raising money from outside investors. But a source familiar with the proceedings between Kutcher and Moore, who split in November 2011, told us, 'Ashton and Demi are still not divorced, and no settlement has been agreed, even though they have been in negotiations for over a year. Ashton made a lot of money after they married, but he doesn’t believe he owes her as much as she is asking for.'
"Angelina Jolie has received more support after publicizing her preventative double mastectomy in a New York Times editorial that was published this morning. Following her son Brad Pitt’s statement earlier today, Jane Pitt has issued her well wishes about the surgery, which was performed over the course of three months this spring. 'We’re so very proud of Angie,' she said in a statement. '[T]his means so much to our family especially our grandchildren. We love her dearly.' The sentiment was echoed by Jolie’s brother, James Haven, who adds in a separate statement, 'My sister like our mother always put her children first. . . I am so grateful to be her brother.' Jolie opted to have the surgery after her doctors determined that she had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and carries a “faulty” gene, BRCA1, which spikes her chances of developing the disease. Jolie’s doctors also determined that the actress has a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, which her mother, Marcheline Bertrand, died of in 2007. In his statement to The Evening Standard this morning, Brad Pitt said, 'All I want for is for her to have a long and healthy life, with myself and our children. This is a happy day for our family.'" (VanityFair)
"Leonardo DiCaprio pulled off a record-breaking art auction for charity with Christie’s on Monday that raked in $38.8 million. 'The Great Gatsby' star had personally asked 33 artists — including Banksy, Julian Schnabel, Urs Fischer and Peter Beard — to donate or create new works for the auction, dubbed The 11th Hour. DiCaprio also donated a painting by Andreas Gursky from his own collection, and spent time at Christie’s phoning bidders to entice them in advance of the auction, sources said. Spotted at the sale (to benefit wildlife conservation through DiCaprio’s foundation) were Bradley Cooper, Mark Ruffalo, Tobey Maguire, Salma Hayek and François-Henri Pinault, whose family owns the auction house. The night’s biggest sale came after gallerist Larry Gagosian was locked in a bidding war with billionaire Vladimir Doronin, and spent $6.5 million for an abstract work by Mark Grotjahn, whom Gagosian represents. Pharmaceutical mogul Stewart Rahr — who we exclusively reported yesterday reached a $250 million divorce deal with his wife of 43 years — splashed out on works including a Robert Longo tiger drawing for $1.6 million and a portrait of his pal DiCaprio by Elizabeth Peyton for more than $1 million. The auction — which had been expected to bring in about $18 million — wound up setting record highs for 13 of the artists, and a source said it was “the biggest auction to benefit the environment ever.” DiCaprio bought a Takashi Murakami work for himself for $735,000. His 'Gatsby' co-star Maguire shelled out $262,500 for a Sergej Jensen work. Anonymous donors kicked in $5.5 million to the overall tally. DiCaprio’s foundation has set its sights on saving tigers, sharks and rainforests, and many of the works for sale were animal or nature-themed." (PageSix)
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Tuesday, May 14, 2013
Media-Whore D'Oeuvres
"When Steve Jobs died in October 2011, crowds of mourners gathered outside of Apple stores, leaving impromptu memorials to the fallen businessman. Many in Occupy Wall Street, then in full bloom, stopped to mourn the .001 percenter worth $7 billion, who didn’t believe in charity and whose company had more cash in hand than the U.S. Treasury while doing everything in its power to avoid paying taxes.A new, and potentially dominant, ruling class is rising. Today’s tech moguls don’t employ many Americans, they don’t pay very much in taxes or tend to share much of their wealth, and they live in a separate world that few of us could ever hope to enter. But while spending millions bending the political process to pad their bottom lines, they’ve remained far more popular than past plutocrats, with 72 percent of Americans expressing positive feelings for the industry, compared to 30 percent for banking and 20 percent for oil and gas." (TheDailyBeast)
"President Barack Obama returned to the city this afternoon for a trio of star-studded fund-raising events. Mr. Obama’s first stop was the West Village home of movie producer Harvey Weinstein and his wife, fashion designer Georgina Chapman, where about 65 people paying between $16,200 and $20,000 gathered around tables draped in white linen to hear the president speak. Among those spotted in the crowd: Justin Timberlake, decked out in trendy, black-rimmed glasses and slicked-back hair, his wife, actress Jessica Biel, and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, according to pool reports. In remarks to the group, the president talked about the Boston Marathon bombing and the West, Texas explosion, and how they had brought the nation together ... The president then headed to a second home, this time in TriBeCa, for a dinner hosted by Alexandra Stanton, a former advisory to ex-Gov. David Paterson, and her husband, Sam Natapoff. Approximately 60 guests paid between $16,200 and $20,000 to attend the event, a Democratic National Committee official said. The president once again spoke about the recent events, but also spoke about the immigration bill, the escalating situation in Syria, the Middle East peace process, and his goal of 'reinvigorating a sense of hope and possibility' for both Israel and the Palestinians. 'Deep down there is still this incredible appetite for peace,' he reportedly told the group, while warning that the 'window of opportunity is growing smaller by the day.' After dinner, Mr. Obama was set too head to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a final event with Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, attended by approximately 140 guests paying between $7,500 and $32,400." (Observer)
"Vanity Fair Daily: The book gives much more detail of the branding and look of certain expensive tween-marketed merchandise. I’m thinking about when you describe the connection between Victoria Secret’s Pink line and why Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr was a target for the Bling Ring. Nancy Jo Sales: 'It’s really alarming to find out, through doing the research for the book, about the explosion of teen and even child lingerie. That market has become a billion-dollar market. Like teddies for teenagers—it’s so disturbing. Their obsession with underwear had something to do with this whole 'pornification' thing. They wanted to look sexy. Looking sexy in a celebrity’s clothes, well that’s even sexier. Especially Miranda Kerr, who’s a Victoria’s Secret model. The fact that they stole the underwear just seems so weird, but it’s not weird when you think about it, because they’re growing up at a time when their culture is constantly telling them to be sexy. Everything from toys to video games to music to fashion is hypersexualized for girls. Stealing their underwear was part of a whole trend to emulate these celebrities. They don’t just want expensive underwear; they want Paris Hilton’s underwear. VFD: At one point in the book, you compared the Bling Ring’s robberies to storming the gates of Versailles. What did you mean by that? Nancy Jo Sales: I remember when I started talking about [the robberies] with people, they would laugh and think it was funny, and say, Oh, those celebrities deserve it. They have enough. Which is actually exactly what Rachel Lee used to say, according to Nick Prugo. It’s really about class resentment and income resentment. Celebrities are not necessarily the richest people of all, but on the face of it, they seem to be representative of the very richest people. The very richest people are people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, but Paris Hilton appears to represent this 'rich bitch' kind of flippant heiress. Every single one of the people they robbed was connected to some entertainment product that was about wealth and privilege. Paris, it was The Simple Life; Audrina Patridge, of course, The Hills, about rich girls in L.A.; it just went on and on. It’s really so much about America today, the inequality of wealth distribution and the way that affects people’s psyches, and kids’ psyches, and the way that it causes all of these unattainable desires. It trickles down in stuff like YouTube shopping vlogs—haul vlogs—or in extreme cases, the Bling Ring." (VFD)
"MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was. We often speak of 'Mommy’s mommy,' and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a 'faulty' gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer. My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman. Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average. Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex." (Angelina Jolie)
"Last night at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, the American Ballet Theatre held its Opening Night Spring Gala. This is one of those big beautiful social events on the Spring calendar. Black tie, and the ladies dress for it. Honorary Chairs were Michele Obama, Caroline Kennedy and Blaine Trump. President Obama happened to be in town but I don’t know if the First Lady made it up to Lincoln Center. I don’t know if any of honorary chairs were there; I didn’t see them (which means nothing). Co-chairs for the evening were Sloan Lindemann Barnett, Nina Rennert Davidson, Karin Luter, Kalliope Karella Rena, Christine Schwarzman, Tracy Snyder and Monica Wambold. These are the girls who sell the tickets (tables) and raise the money to pay for everything including the ballet. At least five of them have multi-billionaire husbands or fathers and the rest of them have access to big funds. This is how the opera and ballet survive in New York. " (NYSocialDiary)
"When Steve Jobs died in October 2011, crowds of mourners gathered outside of Apple stores, leaving impromptu memorials to the fallen businessman. Many in Occupy Wall Street, then in full bloom, stopped to mourn the .001 percenter worth $7 billion, who didn’t believe in charity and whose company had more cash in hand than the U.S. Treasury while doing everything in its power to avoid paying taxes.A new, and potentially dominant, ruling class is rising. Today’s tech moguls don’t employ many Americans, they don’t pay very much in taxes or tend to share much of their wealth, and they live in a separate world that few of us could ever hope to enter. But while spending millions bending the political process to pad their bottom lines, they’ve remained far more popular than past plutocrats, with 72 percent of Americans expressing positive feelings for the industry, compared to 30 percent for banking and 20 percent for oil and gas." (TheDailyBeast)
"President Barack Obama returned to the city this afternoon for a trio of star-studded fund-raising events. Mr. Obama’s first stop was the West Village home of movie producer Harvey Weinstein and his wife, fashion designer Georgina Chapman, where about 65 people paying between $16,200 and $20,000 gathered around tables draped in white linen to hear the president speak. Among those spotted in the crowd: Justin Timberlake, decked out in trendy, black-rimmed glasses and slicked-back hair, his wife, actress Jessica Biel, and fashion designer Tommy Hilfiger, according to pool reports. In remarks to the group, the president talked about the Boston Marathon bombing and the West, Texas explosion, and how they had brought the nation together ... The president then headed to a second home, this time in TriBeCa, for a dinner hosted by Alexandra Stanton, a former advisory to ex-Gov. David Paterson, and her husband, Sam Natapoff. Approximately 60 guests paid between $16,200 and $20,000 to attend the event, a Democratic National Committee official said. The president once again spoke about the recent events, but also spoke about the immigration bill, the escalating situation in Syria, the Middle East peace process, and his goal of 'reinvigorating a sense of hope and possibility' for both Israel and the Palestinians. 'Deep down there is still this incredible appetite for peace,' he reportedly told the group, while warning that the 'window of opportunity is growing smaller by the day.' After dinner, Mr. Obama was set too head to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel for a final event with Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, attended by approximately 140 guests paying between $7,500 and $32,400." (Observer)
"Vanity Fair Daily: The book gives much more detail of the branding and look of certain expensive tween-marketed merchandise. I’m thinking about when you describe the connection between Victoria Secret’s Pink line and why Victoria’s Secret model Miranda Kerr was a target for the Bling Ring. Nancy Jo Sales: 'It’s really alarming to find out, through doing the research for the book, about the explosion of teen and even child lingerie. That market has become a billion-dollar market. Like teddies for teenagers—it’s so disturbing. Their obsession with underwear had something to do with this whole 'pornification' thing. They wanted to look sexy. Looking sexy in a celebrity’s clothes, well that’s even sexier. Especially Miranda Kerr, who’s a Victoria’s Secret model. The fact that they stole the underwear just seems so weird, but it’s not weird when you think about it, because they’re growing up at a time when their culture is constantly telling them to be sexy. Everything from toys to video games to music to fashion is hypersexualized for girls. Stealing their underwear was part of a whole trend to emulate these celebrities. They don’t just want expensive underwear; they want Paris Hilton’s underwear. VFD: At one point in the book, you compared the Bling Ring’s robberies to storming the gates of Versailles. What did you mean by that? Nancy Jo Sales: I remember when I started talking about [the robberies] with people, they would laugh and think it was funny, and say, Oh, those celebrities deserve it. They have enough. Which is actually exactly what Rachel Lee used to say, according to Nick Prugo. It’s really about class resentment and income resentment. Celebrities are not necessarily the richest people of all, but on the face of it, they seem to be representative of the very richest people. The very richest people are people like Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, but Paris Hilton appears to represent this 'rich bitch' kind of flippant heiress. Every single one of the people they robbed was connected to some entertainment product that was about wealth and privilege. Paris, it was The Simple Life; Audrina Patridge, of course, The Hills, about rich girls in L.A.; it just went on and on. It’s really so much about America today, the inequality of wealth distribution and the way that affects people’s psyches, and kids’ psyches, and the way that it causes all of these unattainable desires. It trickles down in stuff like YouTube shopping vlogs—haul vlogs—or in extreme cases, the Bling Ring." (VFD)
"MY MOTHER fought cancer for almost a decade and died at 56. She held out long enough to meet the first of her grandchildren and to hold them in her arms. But my other children will never have the chance to know her and experience how loving and gracious she was. We often speak of 'Mommy’s mommy,' and I find myself trying to explain the illness that took her away from us. They have asked if the same could happen to me. I have always told them not to worry, but the truth is I carry a 'faulty' gene, BRCA1, which sharply increases my risk of developing breast cancer and ovarian cancer. My doctors estimated that I had an 87 percent risk of breast cancer and a 50 percent risk of ovarian cancer, although the risk is different in the case of each woman. Only a fraction of breast cancers result from an inherited gene mutation. Those with a defect in BRCA1 have a 65 percent risk of getting it, on average. Once I knew that this was my reality, I decided to be proactive and to minimize the risk as much I could. I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex." (Angelina Jolie)
"Last night at the Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center, the American Ballet Theatre held its Opening Night Spring Gala. This is one of those big beautiful social events on the Spring calendar. Black tie, and the ladies dress for it. Honorary Chairs were Michele Obama, Caroline Kennedy and Blaine Trump. President Obama happened to be in town but I don’t know if the First Lady made it up to Lincoln Center. I don’t know if any of honorary chairs were there; I didn’t see them (which means nothing). Co-chairs for the evening were Sloan Lindemann Barnett, Nina Rennert Davidson, Karin Luter, Kalliope Karella Rena, Christine Schwarzman, Tracy Snyder and Monica Wambold. These are the girls who sell the tickets (tables) and raise the money to pay for everything including the ballet. At least five of them have multi-billionaire husbands or fathers and the rest of them have access to big funds. This is how the opera and ballet survive in New York. " (NYSocialDiary)
Monday, May 13, 2013
Media-Whore D'Oeuvres
"Karl Rove called conservative Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol 'inexplicable' on Monday for criticizing Rove’s super PAC Hillary Clinton Benghazi attack ad, adding that more people have seen the ad than subscribe to The Weekly Standard. On Fox’s 'Fox News Sunday,' Kristol said that Rove’s American Crossroads shouldn’t have released an ad last week that criticized former Secretary of State Clinton for her handling of the September 11, 2012, attack at the U.S. post in Benghazi, Libya, in which ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others were killed. 'I do not like these conservative Republican groups putting ads out about Hillary Clinton. What is the point of that? That is just fundraising by American Crossroads and other groups. It’s ridiculous. There’s no campaign going on. Let’s pull the partisanship back,' Kristol said on “Fox News Sunday.' Monday, Rove responded to the criticism on Fox News saying that his conservative super PAC was completely justified in the released the ad. 'You know, look, I understand that criticism of the Obama administration is going to immediately have Democrats saying, ‘You’re politicizing, it is all politics.’ [But] I’m surprised Bill Kristol — whose magazine has been critical of the Obama administration — would join in the chorus. That chorus consists of [White House press secretary] Jay Carney and people in Democrat leadership and it is a little bit inexplicable. I just say this: This [ad] was appropriate. We need to help the American people grasp this,' Rove said on Fox News." (Politico)
"It is a quiet evening in Place des Vosges, Paris, when, all at once from every direction, crowds of men and women, hundreds of them, descend upon the square. The people, dressed elegantly in all white—the men in clean, crisp trousers and jackets and the women in summer dresses or light pantsuits—quickly set small tables and chairs in perfect straight lines and lay out elaborate picnics, along with excellent bottles of French wine, of course. They take their seats and wave white napkins in the air, and begin to enjoy their lavish picnics, conversation and merriment. As day fades to dusk, the group lights sparklers and dances to live music. Then, when the clock strikes midnight, they pack up their things and leave the park as if they had never come. This magical event marks the opening scene of Diner en Blanc: The World’s Largest Dinner Party, a recent documentary film by director and producer Jennifer Ash Rudick, an Upper East Side author and journalist. Ms. Rudick’s film showcases an event that is simultaneously perfectly public—it is out of doors, after all—and very exclusive—'Diner en Blanc,' the elegant, impromptu picnic that has graced Paris’ most beautiful outdoor spaces annually for nearly 25 years, and has now expanded into 22 cities around the world, including New York. The film, which offers the first behind-the-scenes look into the making of the unusual yet surprisingly simple celebration, premiered at the Palm Beach International Film Festival in Florida last month to a warm reception, and will hit the Hamptons International Film Festival this summer. Diner en Blanc, perhaps Paris’ best-kept and most refined secret, is a sort of flash mob for the sophisticated set." (Observer)
"Karl Rove called conservative Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol 'inexplicable' on Monday for criticizing Rove’s super PAC Hillary Clinton Benghazi attack ad, adding that more people have seen the ad than subscribe to The Weekly Standard. On Fox’s 'Fox News Sunday,' Kristol said that Rove’s American Crossroads shouldn’t have released an ad last week that criticized former Secretary of State Clinton for her handling of the September 11, 2012, attack at the U.S. post in Benghazi, Libya, in which ambassador Christopher Stevens and three others were killed. 'I do not like these conservative Republican groups putting ads out about Hillary Clinton. What is the point of that? That is just fundraising by American Crossroads and other groups. It’s ridiculous. There’s no campaign going on. Let’s pull the partisanship back,' Kristol said on “Fox News Sunday.' Monday, Rove responded to the criticism on Fox News saying that his conservative super PAC was completely justified in the released the ad. 'You know, look, I understand that criticism of the Obama administration is going to immediately have Democrats saying, ‘You’re politicizing, it is all politics.’ [But] I’m surprised Bill Kristol — whose magazine has been critical of the Obama administration — would join in the chorus. That chorus consists of [White House press secretary] Jay Carney and people in Democrat leadership and it is a little bit inexplicable. I just say this: This [ad] was appropriate. We need to help the American people grasp this,' Rove said on Fox News." (Politico)
"It is a quiet evening in Place des Vosges, Paris, when, all at once from every direction, crowds of men and women, hundreds of them, descend upon the square. The people, dressed elegantly in all white—the men in clean, crisp trousers and jackets and the women in summer dresses or light pantsuits—quickly set small tables and chairs in perfect straight lines and lay out elaborate picnics, along with excellent bottles of French wine, of course. They take their seats and wave white napkins in the air, and begin to enjoy their lavish picnics, conversation and merriment. As day fades to dusk, the group lights sparklers and dances to live music. Then, when the clock strikes midnight, they pack up their things and leave the park as if they had never come. This magical event marks the opening scene of Diner en Blanc: The World’s Largest Dinner Party, a recent documentary film by director and producer Jennifer Ash Rudick, an Upper East Side author and journalist. Ms. Rudick’s film showcases an event that is simultaneously perfectly public—it is out of doors, after all—and very exclusive—'Diner en Blanc,' the elegant, impromptu picnic that has graced Paris’ most beautiful outdoor spaces annually for nearly 25 years, and has now expanded into 22 cities around the world, including New York. The film, which offers the first behind-the-scenes look into the making of the unusual yet surprisingly simple celebration, premiered at the Palm Beach International Film Festival in Florida last month to a warm reception, and will hit the Hamptons International Film Festival this summer. Diner en Blanc, perhaps Paris’ best-kept and most refined secret, is a sort of flash mob for the sophisticated set." (Observer)
Media-Whore D'Oeuvres
"The only thing that worried Michael Douglas about playing Liberace, the flamboyant Las Vegas superstar, was the fourteen-inch penis. 'It may not have been fourteen inches,' Douglas explained to me on a cold spring afternoon, 'but it was huge.' He was sitting in a plush, forest-green velvet club chair in the study of his Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park West. Douglas’s gray hair was combed straight back from his face in a kind of lion’s mane, and he was dressed in head-to-toe black. The brightness of the day was streaming in from the windows, which had the effect of backlighting: Between the silver hair, the dark clothes, and the naturally cinematic setting, Douglas looked like someone accustomed to the spotlight. 'Liberace loved sex,' Douglas continued, 'and I didn’t have a problem with that. But, at one point, Steven Soderbergh [the director of Behind the Candelabra, which airs on HBO on May 26] wanted to show Lee [as Liberace was known] watching a gay porno. I said, ‘Steven—you can’t do this!’ He said, ‘It’s HBO—it’s all right!’ I said, ‘It’s not that: I’d like my kids to see this R-rated movie, but I don’t want to show them a fourteen-inch dick!’ It was the only thing I objected to, so we cut to different parts of the apartment during the porno.” Douglas paused. “You know, Lee also loved to decorate. He had his passions: his career, his homes, which were over the top, and his private life as a gay man.' Although it was only a few decades ago, Behind the Candelabra takes place in another world, a place where being openly gay and famous was viewed as an impossibility. For Liberace, who sued a London newspaper and won when it insinuated about his sexuality, revealing his lust for men would have been, in his mind, career suicide. The movie, which isn’t really a biography, is the story of Liberace’s life with Scott Thorson, a naïve 18-year-old (perfectly played by Matt Damon with wide-eyed innocence mixed with the entitlement of youth) who was Liberace’s live-in boyfriend for five years. Their relationship—Liberace was 57 when they met backstage at one of Lee’s sold-out Vegas extravaganzas—was intense, bizarre, and, despite the glitz and glamour, remarkably like that of any married couple." (NYMag)
" A European friend sent me an email correcting my reference to LuAnn de Lesseps as The Countess de Lesseps in my Thursday Diary. According to Debretts, that is not the proper way to address the divorced wife of a titled count. I knew that, but as an American, it makes no difference to me what’s proper in that department since it’s a national (and political) salutation that is distinctly foreign. The de Lesseps family title is French. It's 19th century fame harkens back to a forebear, Ferdinand de Lesseps who, in the late 19th century, built the Suez Canal, and got a Thank You Very Much from the Powers That Were, via a title, although Ferdinand's father was made a count by Napoleon when he was Emperor of dear old France. Its use in the 21st century is really anachronism with a Capital A but still happily employed whenever necessary. People rank and rag-on the business of titles but like the sound of them anyway, for it separates the riff from the raff, as well as other human endeavors in the making and getting. Honorary titles are all over the place in Europe, and many are now centuries old, along with the 'notable' and ancestral ones. It’s a brand of score-keeping for some observers and players. You can even buy one if you know the right people." (NYSocialDiary)
"For one of my oldest friends, Manuela, who lives in England here’s what happened at the book parties: The first party was held at my friend Vanessa Noel’s shoe store which happens to be the ground floor of her sandstone townhouse on the upper east side of Manhattan. Extremely nice. Vanessa is a talented artist in her own right and shoes are lucky to have her attention. I say this with certainty because I have seen her paintings and I know how good she is. Miserably, I forgot to have my photo taken with Vanessa! And the reason I forgot was the instant overwhelm of old and new friends ... ps: Particularly extraordinary was meeting longtime FB pal Ron (Mwangaguhunga). So that was the New York party! Forgive the blurry shots but I had to heist them (long story). Anyway, as perhaps is evident from the glee on my face in these shots I immediately forgot the plot. All my plans of whom exactly I wanted shots with, and whom I wished to introduce to whom, well, I remembered not one of these artful plans until days later. Such was the abundance of good cheer that my mind was erased and all I could do was savor the moment and revel in it." (Christina Oxenberg)
"Bill and Hillary Clinton will not support Anthony Weiner in his dream of becoming mayor even though they love his wife, Huma Abedin, sources say. 'The Clintons wish Weiner would just disappear. Every time he pops up, it’s a reminder of Bill’s scandal with Monica Lewinsky, and it isn’t helpful to Hillary’s hopes for 2016,' one Democrat told Page Six. Abedin has worked for the former US senator and secretary of state for many years, and traveled with her as her 'body woman,' her closest aide. It is believed that Abedin is still on the Clintons’ payroll although she isn’t working at the Clinton Foundation. Abedin will no doubt be one of Hillary’s first hires for her presidential campaign team. 'The Clintons love Huma. She has a job for life, no matter how much of an embarrassment her husband is,' said our source. 'Hillary considers her to be another daughter.' Bill flew to Los Angeles last month to campaign for Wendy Greuel, who is up against Eric Garcetti in the May 21 election for mayor. But he is not expected to endorse any of the New York mayoral candidates." (PageSix)
"As expected, ABC’s Barbara Walters announced her retirement on 'The View' today. The show kicked off with Walters introducing a brief career retrospective, followed by her formal announcement: 'I have been on television–continuously–for over 50 years,' Walters said. 'But in the Summer of 2014, a year from now, I plan to retire from appearing on television at all. It has been an absolutely joyful, rewarding, challenging, fascinating and occasionally bumpy ride, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I am perfectly healthy, this is my decision and I have been thinking about it for a long time. This is what I want to do.' The audience in 'The View' studio was filled with executives, including ABC News president Ben Sherwood ('Not only the best president of a news division but also the tallest,' Walters quipped), ABC executive VP Vicki Dummer, ABC entertainment president Paul Lee, Disney-ABC TV group president Anne Sweeney and Disney CEO Bob Iger, who shared the story of when he first met Walters back in 1976." (TVNewser)
"The Washington Post’s financials provide a good glance at the current status of legacy media struggling with the shift to digital. Unlike others large dailies, the components of the Post’s P&L clearly appear in its statements, they are not buried under layers of other activities. Product-wise, the Post remains a great news machine, collecting Pulitzer Prizes with clockwork regularity and fighting hard for scoops. The Post also epitomizes an old media under siege from specialized, more agile outlets such as Politico, ones that break down the once-unified coverage provided by traditional large media houses ... The iconic newspaper has been slow to adapt to the digital era. Its transformation really started around 2008. Since then, it has checked all the required boxes: integration of print and digital productions; editors are now involved on both sides of the news production and all relentlessly push the newsroom to write more for the digital version; many blogs covering a wide array of topics have been launched; and the Post now has a good mobile application. The 'quant' culture also set in, with editors now taking into account all the usual metrics and ratios associated with digital operations, including a live update of Google’s most relevant keywords prominently displayed in the newsroom. All this helped the Post collect 25.6 million unique visitors per month, vs. 4 to 5 million for Politico, and 35 million for the New York Times that historically enjoys a more global audience.
Overall, the Washington Post Company still relies heavily on its education business..." (MondayNote)
"The affair between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson has been one of Hollywood’s favorite tales — in films from Oscar-winning 'The King’s Speech' to Madonna’s 'W.E.' — but a new book exposes the story of Edward’s affair with a Parisian prostitute before he met Wallis. In 1917, Prince Edward, 23, was holed up at the Hotel Meurice (where Kanye West just recorded an album) and became smitten with Marguerite Alibert, a high-class demimondaine. 'It was, of course, the lady’s performance in bed which was the most desirable and significant feature of the prince’s stay in Paris,' writes Andrew Rose in 'The Woman Before Wallis: Prince Edward, the Paris Courtesan and the Perfect Murder.' Edward broke things off, and Alibert years later married Egyptian playboy Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey. But in an argument at the Savoy in London, Alibert murdered her new husband with a handgun. 'Marguerite’s arrest posed some awkward questions for the prince’s people' about the couple’s involvement, says the book, out from Picador. The book further reveals that the prosecutor in the case approached the prince’s personal secretaries to 'help keep the prince’s name out of the media.' Since trials at the time rarely lasted longer than a week, the royals were tipped off as to when the court date would take place so that, 'the royal household could safely announce that the prince would visit his ranch in Alberta' for six weeks." (PageSix)
"The only thing that worried Michael Douglas about playing Liberace, the flamboyant Las Vegas superstar, was the fourteen-inch penis. 'It may not have been fourteen inches,' Douglas explained to me on a cold spring afternoon, 'but it was huge.' He was sitting in a plush, forest-green velvet club chair in the study of his Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park West. Douglas’s gray hair was combed straight back from his face in a kind of lion’s mane, and he was dressed in head-to-toe black. The brightness of the day was streaming in from the windows, which had the effect of backlighting: Between the silver hair, the dark clothes, and the naturally cinematic setting, Douglas looked like someone accustomed to the spotlight. 'Liberace loved sex,' Douglas continued, 'and I didn’t have a problem with that. But, at one point, Steven Soderbergh [the director of Behind the Candelabra, which airs on HBO on May 26] wanted to show Lee [as Liberace was known] watching a gay porno. I said, ‘Steven—you can’t do this!’ He said, ‘It’s HBO—it’s all right!’ I said, ‘It’s not that: I’d like my kids to see this R-rated movie, but I don’t want to show them a fourteen-inch dick!’ It was the only thing I objected to, so we cut to different parts of the apartment during the porno.” Douglas paused. “You know, Lee also loved to decorate. He had his passions: his career, his homes, which were over the top, and his private life as a gay man.' Although it was only a few decades ago, Behind the Candelabra takes place in another world, a place where being openly gay and famous was viewed as an impossibility. For Liberace, who sued a London newspaper and won when it insinuated about his sexuality, revealing his lust for men would have been, in his mind, career suicide. The movie, which isn’t really a biography, is the story of Liberace’s life with Scott Thorson, a naïve 18-year-old (perfectly played by Matt Damon with wide-eyed innocence mixed with the entitlement of youth) who was Liberace’s live-in boyfriend for five years. Their relationship—Liberace was 57 when they met backstage at one of Lee’s sold-out Vegas extravaganzas—was intense, bizarre, and, despite the glitz and glamour, remarkably like that of any married couple." (NYMag)
" A European friend sent me an email correcting my reference to LuAnn de Lesseps as The Countess de Lesseps in my Thursday Diary. According to Debretts, that is not the proper way to address the divorced wife of a titled count. I knew that, but as an American, it makes no difference to me what’s proper in that department since it’s a national (and political) salutation that is distinctly foreign. The de Lesseps family title is French. It's 19th century fame harkens back to a forebear, Ferdinand de Lesseps who, in the late 19th century, built the Suez Canal, and got a Thank You Very Much from the Powers That Were, via a title, although Ferdinand's father was made a count by Napoleon when he was Emperor of dear old France. Its use in the 21st century is really anachronism with a Capital A but still happily employed whenever necessary. People rank and rag-on the business of titles but like the sound of them anyway, for it separates the riff from the raff, as well as other human endeavors in the making and getting. Honorary titles are all over the place in Europe, and many are now centuries old, along with the 'notable' and ancestral ones. It’s a brand of score-keeping for some observers and players. You can even buy one if you know the right people." (NYSocialDiary)
"For one of my oldest friends, Manuela, who lives in England here’s what happened at the book parties: The first party was held at my friend Vanessa Noel’s shoe store which happens to be the ground floor of her sandstone townhouse on the upper east side of Manhattan. Extremely nice. Vanessa is a talented artist in her own right and shoes are lucky to have her attention. I say this with certainty because I have seen her paintings and I know how good she is. Miserably, I forgot to have my photo taken with Vanessa! And the reason I forgot was the instant overwhelm of old and new friends ... ps: Particularly extraordinary was meeting longtime FB pal Ron (Mwangaguhunga). So that was the New York party! Forgive the blurry shots but I had to heist them (long story). Anyway, as perhaps is evident from the glee on my face in these shots I immediately forgot the plot. All my plans of whom exactly I wanted shots with, and whom I wished to introduce to whom, well, I remembered not one of these artful plans until days later. Such was the abundance of good cheer that my mind was erased and all I could do was savor the moment and revel in it." (Christina Oxenberg)
"Bill and Hillary Clinton will not support Anthony Weiner in his dream of becoming mayor even though they love his wife, Huma Abedin, sources say. 'The Clintons wish Weiner would just disappear. Every time he pops up, it’s a reminder of Bill’s scandal with Monica Lewinsky, and it isn’t helpful to Hillary’s hopes for 2016,' one Democrat told Page Six. Abedin has worked for the former US senator and secretary of state for many years, and traveled with her as her 'body woman,' her closest aide. It is believed that Abedin is still on the Clintons’ payroll although she isn’t working at the Clinton Foundation. Abedin will no doubt be one of Hillary’s first hires for her presidential campaign team. 'The Clintons love Huma. She has a job for life, no matter how much of an embarrassment her husband is,' said our source. 'Hillary considers her to be another daughter.' Bill flew to Los Angeles last month to campaign for Wendy Greuel, who is up against Eric Garcetti in the May 21 election for mayor. But he is not expected to endorse any of the New York mayoral candidates." (PageSix)
"As expected, ABC’s Barbara Walters announced her retirement on 'The View' today. The show kicked off with Walters introducing a brief career retrospective, followed by her formal announcement: 'I have been on television–continuously–for over 50 years,' Walters said. 'But in the Summer of 2014, a year from now, I plan to retire from appearing on television at all. It has been an absolutely joyful, rewarding, challenging, fascinating and occasionally bumpy ride, and I wouldn’t change a thing. I am perfectly healthy, this is my decision and I have been thinking about it for a long time. This is what I want to do.' The audience in 'The View' studio was filled with executives, including ABC News president Ben Sherwood ('Not only the best president of a news division but also the tallest,' Walters quipped), ABC executive VP Vicki Dummer, ABC entertainment president Paul Lee, Disney-ABC TV group president Anne Sweeney and Disney CEO Bob Iger, who shared the story of when he first met Walters back in 1976." (TVNewser)
"The Washington Post’s financials provide a good glance at the current status of legacy media struggling with the shift to digital. Unlike others large dailies, the components of the Post’s P&L clearly appear in its statements, they are not buried under layers of other activities. Product-wise, the Post remains a great news machine, collecting Pulitzer Prizes with clockwork regularity and fighting hard for scoops. The Post also epitomizes an old media under siege from specialized, more agile outlets such as Politico, ones that break down the once-unified coverage provided by traditional large media houses ... The iconic newspaper has been slow to adapt to the digital era. Its transformation really started around 2008. Since then, it has checked all the required boxes: integration of print and digital productions; editors are now involved on both sides of the news production and all relentlessly push the newsroom to write more for the digital version; many blogs covering a wide array of topics have been launched; and the Post now has a good mobile application. The 'quant' culture also set in, with editors now taking into account all the usual metrics and ratios associated with digital operations, including a live update of Google’s most relevant keywords prominently displayed in the newsroom. All this helped the Post collect 25.6 million unique visitors per month, vs. 4 to 5 million for Politico, and 35 million for the New York Times that historically enjoys a more global audience.
Overall, the Washington Post Company still relies heavily on its education business..." (MondayNote)
"The affair between King Edward VIII and Wallis Simpson has been one of Hollywood’s favorite tales — in films from Oscar-winning 'The King’s Speech' to Madonna’s 'W.E.' — but a new book exposes the story of Edward’s affair with a Parisian prostitute before he met Wallis. In 1917, Prince Edward, 23, was holed up at the Hotel Meurice (where Kanye West just recorded an album) and became smitten with Marguerite Alibert, a high-class demimondaine. 'It was, of course, the lady’s performance in bed which was the most desirable and significant feature of the prince’s stay in Paris,' writes Andrew Rose in 'The Woman Before Wallis: Prince Edward, the Paris Courtesan and the Perfect Murder.' Edward broke things off, and Alibert years later married Egyptian playboy Prince Ali Kamel Fahmy Bey. But in an argument at the Savoy in London, Alibert murdered her new husband with a handgun. 'Marguerite’s arrest posed some awkward questions for the prince’s people' about the couple’s involvement, says the book, out from Picador. The book further reveals that the prosecutor in the case approached the prince’s personal secretaries to 'help keep the prince’s name out of the media.' Since trials at the time rarely lasted longer than a week, the royals were tipped off as to when the court date would take place so that, 'the royal household could safely announce that the prince would visit his ranch in Alberta' for six weeks." (PageSix)
|
Saturday, May 11, 2013
Media-Whore D'Oeuvres
"More than 200 Belgian police officers and authorities in two other countries on Wednesday swept up more than 30 people and recovered some of the $50 million in diamonds stolen in a carefully orchestrated robbery in Brussels in February, investigators said. The raids in France, Belgium and Switzerland took place on Tuesday and Wednesday and rounded up middlemen, intermediaries and at least one man suspected of being part of the team that held up a Brink’s armored car at the Brussels airport nearly three months ago. The vehicle was carrying 120 packets of rough and polished diamonds from Antwerp, the gem trading hub in Belgium. The heavily armed robbers, disguised as police officers, struck with lightning precision just 18 minutes before the diamonds were to be transferred to a flight bound for Zurich. They got away in minutes without firing a shot.
"More than 200 Belgian police officers and authorities in two other countries on Wednesday swept up more than 30 people and recovered some of the $50 million in diamonds stolen in a carefully orchestrated robbery in Brussels in February, investigators said. The raids in France, Belgium and Switzerland took place on Tuesday and Wednesday and rounded up middlemen, intermediaries and at least one man suspected of being part of the team that held up a Brink’s armored car at the Brussels airport nearly three months ago. The vehicle was carrying 120 packets of rough and polished diamonds from Antwerp, the gem trading hub in Belgium. The heavily armed robbers, disguised as police officers, struck with lightning precision just 18 minutes before the diamonds were to be transferred to a flight bound for Zurich. They got away in minutes without firing a shot.
A Swiss investigator, who declined to be named because of the continuing inquiry, said that almost a third of the stolen diamonds were seized in Geneva, where authorities also confiscated about $110,000 and a number of luxury cars. Those arrested in Switzerland, including a Geneva lawyer, were all middlemen and intermediaries involved in efforts to cut and sell the diamonds, the investigator said. Caroline De Wolf, a spokeswoman for the Antwerp World Diamond Center, a trade organization that promotes the diamond business in Belgium, said the group was still waiting for more information about which diamonds were recovered." (NYTimes)
"Soon after moving into Liberace’s gaudy Las Vegas mansion in 1977, Scott Thorson, then a teenage hunk in the foster care system, learned that the jewel-smitten showman could love just as extravagantly as he decorated. Touring the premises before their relationship began, Liberace pointed out some decorative highlights, which included 17 pianos, a casino, a quarry’s worth of marble and a canopied bed with an ermine spread. On the ceiling was a reproduction of the Sistine Chapel with Liberace’s face painted among the cherubs. When the pair became a couple, Liberace, who was 40 years older, was just as excessive. He couldn’t bear to let Mr. Thorson out of his sight. 'We were at a hotel in Florida and Liberace had the manager give us another suite, with windows that faced the beach,' said Mr. Thorson, now 54. 'He knew I’d be near the water and he wanted to be able to look at me.' Liberace even wanted Mr. Thorson nearby when he worked. So for years, Mr. Thorson would don a chauffeur’s costume covered in rhinestones and drive 'Mr. Showmanship' on stage in a bejeweled Rolls-Royce. Mr. Thorson would put the car in park, then open the door for Liberace, who would emerge in a fur coat with a 16-foot train. If you missed this routine, which ran for years at the Vegas Hilton, you can catch a re-enactment in an upcoming HBO movie, 'Behind the Candelabra,”' which is based on Mr. Thorson’s autobiography of the same name and stars Matt Damon as Mr. Thorson and Michael Douglas as Liberace. One person who may miss the movie’s debut, on May 26, is Scott Thorson. He currently is an inmate at the Washoe County jail here, and while the place has its share of amenities — including television — HBO isn’t one of them." (NYTimes)
"Life is definitely beautiful…as long as one can see, that is, which for two miserable days last week I couldn’t. Having had a glaucoma operation on my eyes two months ago, I needed to use drops for a while but didn’t pay attention—too many girls in their summer dresses, and things like that. The next thing I knew, a pain started in one eye, I ignored it and went out and smoked and drank, then woke up the next day, opened my bleary eyes, and felt nothing but extreme pain in both. I quickly shut them and the pain went away. I tried opening them again, and it got worse ... Like Dr. Johnson said, imminent death, or blindness in my case, concentrates the mind, so I lay around with my eyes closed and the brain working overtime. I tried to think of the beauty of women—past and present—but it was too frustrating. So I switched to art. Edward Hopper and Childe Hassam, to be exact. No one captured American life like Hopper, the loneliness and loveliness of the seaside and its haunting aesthetic. Hopper’s stillness is art at its finest. It engages the viewer’s psyche and imagination, the latter as necessary to appreciate the artist as the eye. While his contemporaries were switching to abstract bullshit, Hopper continues to be a true painter, churning out tranquil vacation spots, gritty city scenes, and hauntingly beautiful and poignant scenes of everyday life. Childe Hassam, who died a year before I was born, is my second-favorite artist. His Impressionist style is just right, depicting gardens, nature, and—the picture I’d give forty of the best Picassos for—5th Avenue on Easter Sunday, the very same canvas that got Brooke Astor’s son in trouble with the Feds. She had it hanging in her drawing room, but she was gaga and thought she was Agamemnon. Her son sold it for little and helped himself to some of the moolah that was coming to him anyway. Now he’s facing two years, which I find disgraceful. He’s an 85-year-old gentleman who served in World War II with distinction and a man who has never broken the law. The streets are full of vicious criminals and bombers, and the state is sending a gent to jail because his mother was a socialite and gave some of the Astor money away." (Taki)
"I went to lunch at Michael’s with Liz
Peek who heads the Couture Council at FIT. Their annual luncheon that
opens Fashion Week every September will honor Michael Kors this
year. This was the only time I was there this week.Very busy.
Bill vanden Heuvel was lunching with his daughter
Katrina, publisher of The Nation; Tory
Burch was lunching with Cathy Horyn of the
Times; Dr. Gerald Imber was with Da Restuvem:
Kramer, Greenfeld, Bergman and della Femina.
Judy Price was with Linda
Buckley head of public relations at Tiffany & Co. Linda was wearing a pearl necklace that you’ve seen in the Tiffany ads here on
NYSD. When I told her I recognized it, she told me she was going to be wearing
it to the Cannes Film Festival which begins next week. The occasion: Tiffany’s
relationship to the Baz Luhrman 'The Great Gatsby'
for which Tiffany created a special collection of jewelry. Peggy
Siegal, who was one table over with Peter Greenberg
the Travel Editor of CBS News, will no doubt be making the trip.
Moving on around the room: Roger
Friedman of Showbiz411 with Jill Brooke; Andrew
Stein with Christine Taylor; Desiree Gruber with
Peter Castro of People; Star Jones
and Dr. Holly Phillips, Peter Brown with Pat
Kluge; Lisa Linden with Tiffany Moller; Sanford & Stein;
Jean Doumanian; David Kohl; David Landau; Alexandra Trower; Catherine Saxton
with The Countess de Lesseps; Beverly Camhe; Bernard Gershon;
Joannie Danielides; Jack Kliger; Diane Clehane with
Dave Zinczenko and Patrick Connors and
Stephen Perrine. Dave, who wrote the blockbuster “Eat This, Not
That” series (7 million copies in North America) for Rodale Press, is movin’ on
up to his own imprint at Random House, Zinc Ink. He will also write three
health/fitness books for the imprint, among other projects. Good news for
everybody." (NYSocialDiary)
"To: Anthony Weiner From: Acme Strategists, Inc. RE: Weiner for Mayor 2013 It was terrific meeting with you last week. We are honored that you are considering hiring us at this incredibly complicated turning point in your life, as you wrestle with a final decision about jumping into this year’s race for mayor. No doubt it’s a tough, deeply personal call for both you and Huma. But we’re pretty sure that you, like us, were up late last night cheering as the returns came in from South Carolina. If Mark Sanford can hike the Appalachian Trail all the way back to Congress, why can’t Anthony Weiner tweet his way to City Hall? We know that time is tight. On May 15, you’re required to file fund-raising documents with the city’s Campaign Finance Board, and the press will be combing the reports to see if you’ve begun paying consultants. And by June 10 you need to declare your candidacy in order to be eligible to receive taxpayer campaign financing. So, as you asked, we’ll be blunt in our assessment of your chances and in our advice about how Acme could assist in waging the fight. Frankly we are surprised you are interested in our help, because it’s clear you’ve been meticulously plotting a comeback pretty much since the day you quit Congress in June 2011. You obviously haven’t lost your gift for manufacturing media attention: That confessional April cover story in the Times Magazine was a masterstroke—just enough disclosure and contrition—and no doubt you’ve calculated every other chess move between now and Primary Day in September. Your intention to enter the mayor’s race as late as possible is wise, and suggests a metaphor. You’re a hockey nut, so we know you loved the heightened drama of the strike-shortened NHL season. Most city voters with real lives aren’t paying attention to the 2013 campaign yet—and those few who are listening find the declared candidates duller than a mid-season Avalanche-Lightning game. You’ll be the Rangers, sprinting into the playoffs. Yet part of what startled us about your soliciting our input was that it plays against your reputation for keeping your own counsel. In preparing this analysis, we reached out to some of our clients who hold high-ranking political office, including some who remained your friends through the recent unpleasantness, and whose support would be crucial to Weiner 2013. “People like to be asked, ‘What do you think?’ a senior Democrat told us. 'But my conversations with Anthony weren’t him asking for advice. It was him telling me what he intends to do. He’s changed less than you’d expect. Someone who had genuinely changed would have done his penance working for, say, Habitat for Humanity. Anthony thinks his penance is running for mayor.' You elicit strong reactions inside the firm as well. We don’t pretend to be purists; we’ve represented our share of despots, thieves, and egomaniacs. But your situation presents unique hurdles." (NYMag)
"Yesterday was the Women & Science Lecture and Luncheon
at the Rockefeller University on York Avenue and 67th Street. I’ve
attended one other luncheon of theirs a couple of years ago. It’s a Springtime
luncheon, in a large white, airy tent on the rather cramped yet astoundingly
beautiful campus overlooking the East River. Wherever there aren’t buildings or
public spaces in use, there are flowers and fauna.This is a very prestigious luncheon in the New York scheme of things. Its roster
of supporters are some of the most active philanthropists in New York and the
world. Rockefeller University, a/k/a Rockefeller Institute, and at the time of
its founding more than a century ago, Rockefeller Hospital, once upon a time
ministered to patients. During the Depression of the 1930s, children of
financially stressed working people, a/k/a the poor found excellent free
treatment there. It is one of those great Rockefeller-founded
philanthropies that makes tangible differences in the lives of individuals and
the health and welfare of society. Today it is the first institution in our
country that is devoted solely to biomedical research. The Women &
Science luncheon is a fund-raiser, organized by large group of women and men.
They contribute more than $1 million annually to support research and education
at the university." (NYSocialDiary)
"The last time I met the Archbishop of Canterbury was on a bumpy helicopter ride over the North Sea. He was wearing a bright red jumpsuit. I can’t remember anything else about him – partly because I was concentrating on not being sick but also because, back then, he wasn’t an archbishop at all but a random oil executive. As group treasurer of Enterprise Oil, Justin Welby was taking a party of journalists to visit an oilfield. That was in 1987 and he was two years away from quitting Mammon and starting on what was going to be a dazzling career with God, that would propel him from being a humble curate in Nuneaton to spiritual leader of 77m Anglicans worldwide.The 57-year-old who now enters the crypt of St Mary-le-Bow in the City of London is in work uniform of a different sort: round his neck is a cardboard dog collar and a plain crucifix. None of the handful of diners who have swapped the glorious sunshine outside for the gloom of a church basement takes any notice of the slight, bespectacled figure as he moves across the stone floor to meet me. 'So sorry to have kept you waiting,' Welby says, glancing at his cheap watch to see that it is three minutes past one." (FT)
Thursday, May 09, 2013
Wednesday, May 08, 2013
Media-Whore D'Oeuvres
"Despite denials from Beijing, there seems little doubt that China’s computer hackers are engaged in an aggressive and increasingly threatening campaign of cyberespionage directed at a range of government and private systems in the United States, including the power grid and telecommunications networks. The Obama administration had carefully avoided naming a specific culprit. Now it has. In the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on China, the Chinese government and, in particular, the Chinese military are explicitly accused of mounting attacks on United States government computer systems and defense contractors in a systematic effort to steal intellectual property and gain strategic advantage. The report adds urgency to talks expected to begin in July with the Chinese about cyberissues. It does not discuss America’s own considerable investment in disruptive computer capabilities. These, too, must be on the agenda. China’s ambitions have been discussed on a background basis by senior officials and were the subject of an earlier report by the computer security firm Mandiant that was disclosed by The Times in February. The new report to Congress adds depth and detail. Its clear purpose is to increase pressure on China to rein in its hackers, who Mandiant has said, are largely run by Chinese Army officers or are contractors working for military commands. But for anyone broadly interested in the possibility of a global disruption caused by government-directed hackers, the report suffers from one conspicuous omission: It does not address America’s own role in the expanding world of cyberwarfare nor that of other countries with active programs, like Russia, Britain and Israel. The report said that the primary goal of China’s cyberattacks on the United States was to steal industrial technology but that many intrusions were designed to obtain insights into American policy makers’ thinking. The report also warned that information gathered on American defense networks, logistics and military capabilities could be exploited during a crisis. The United States has spent billions of dollars defending its computer networks, as it should. But, increasingly, it is also investing billions more in offensive capabilities, including malware that can disrupt an adversary’s networks like the American-Israel Stuxnet virus did to Iran’s nuclear program in 2010. Cyber is one of the few growth areas in the military budget; Congress and the Obama administration will need to take care that the Pentagon is not exploiting the China threat to boost the budget even more to make up for other reductions." (NYTimes)
"A strange thing happened to Mark Sanford on the way to his comeback victory over Elizabeth Colbert Busch in South Carolina’s special Congressional election: He became a media darling. Once the butt of Appalachian Trail and stalker jokes, a different portrait of Sanford emerged in the final days of the race, as the national reporters who flocked to South Carolina encountered a candidate who not only answered all their questions, but put them on the phone with one of his sons and even personally chauffeured them to his campaign stops. As Slate’s Dave Weigel put it after tagging along with Sanford this past weekend, 'This got lost in the winds of scandal, but Sanford has an incredibly easy charm and — maybe by necessity, now — a welcoming, humble campaign style.' It was that campaign style that ultimately sent Sanford back to Washington. Sure, the race never should have been close. In a Congressional district where Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama by 18 points, any Republican should have been a shoe-in. But after his nasty split from his ex-wife Jenny reared its ugly head again a few weeks ago in the form of trespassing charges — Sanford heads to court on Thursday — it looked like he was toast. National Republicans pulled their support and Colbert Busch soon took a nine-point lead in the polls." (NYMag)
"If a typical break-up calls for vats of Ben & Jerry’s and repeated viewings of The Notebook, then we suppose a highly publicized divorce from a top Hollywood actor and devout Scientologist calls for a cross-country move and a gorgeous new apartment. That’s pretty much what Katie Holmes got last summer when she took up residence at the Chelsea Mercantile—the spectacular, star-infused, 21-story building at 252 Seventh Avenue. The actress reportedly signed the lease just a few days after announcing her split from husband Tom Cruise in June 2012. As you might expect from Ms. Holmes, who has also transmitted her fashion sense to daughter Suri, these are some stylish digs. The actress has been settling into her New York lifestyle pretty well since then. Last winter, Ms. Holmes took the stage as Lorna in Theresa Rebeck’s Dead Accounts, which ran from late November to early January at the Music Box Theatre. Though the show received mixed reviews, Ms. Holmes’s performance stood out, at least to The New York Times. Ms. Holmes 'appears much more at ease playing a worn-down country mouse to the hyped-up city mouse of [Norbert Leo Butz],' Ben Brantley wrote. 'Ms. Holmes and Mr. Butz summon an appealingly natural family rapport … You may even forget that Ms. Holmes is Katie Holmes for a moment.' It’s no problem that Dead Accounts closed earlier than expected—Ms. Holmes is already at work acting in another project, a Spike Lee production called Mania Days." (Observer)
"Last Thursday night at 583 Park Avenue, Lighthouse International held its annual 'POSH Affair' honoring Lorry Newhouse and Alex Hitz. The evening, which was preceded by a preview of the Annual POSH sale, was emceed by Robert Verdi." (NYSocialDiary)
"Is former 'Love Gov' Eliot Spitzer getting any big ideas from Anthony Weiner’s comeback attempt? At The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute’s New York Ideas dinner at Del Posto on Monday night, Spitzer was overheard telling a guest, 'If I do run for something, it would have to be something that would show I’m willing to work my way back up.' The former Client 9 wasn’t the only pol talking about potential races. Newark Mayor Cory Booker — who’s all but officially declared he’s running for the Senate — told Norah O’Donnell during a Q&A, 'Unofficially, I’m running.' A spy said Booker also explained to a guest, 'I can’t announce now because of the [New Jersey] governor’s race, but as soon as it’s over, I’ll announce.'” (PageSix)
"Despite denials from Beijing, there seems little doubt that China’s computer hackers are engaged in an aggressive and increasingly threatening campaign of cyberespionage directed at a range of government and private systems in the United States, including the power grid and telecommunications networks. The Obama administration had carefully avoided naming a specific culprit. Now it has. In the Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on China, the Chinese government and, in particular, the Chinese military are explicitly accused of mounting attacks on United States government computer systems and defense contractors in a systematic effort to steal intellectual property and gain strategic advantage. The report adds urgency to talks expected to begin in July with the Chinese about cyberissues. It does not discuss America’s own considerable investment in disruptive computer capabilities. These, too, must be on the agenda. China’s ambitions have been discussed on a background basis by senior officials and were the subject of an earlier report by the computer security firm Mandiant that was disclosed by The Times in February. The new report to Congress adds depth and detail. Its clear purpose is to increase pressure on China to rein in its hackers, who Mandiant has said, are largely run by Chinese Army officers or are contractors working for military commands. But for anyone broadly interested in the possibility of a global disruption caused by government-directed hackers, the report suffers from one conspicuous omission: It does not address America’s own role in the expanding world of cyberwarfare nor that of other countries with active programs, like Russia, Britain and Israel. The report said that the primary goal of China’s cyberattacks on the United States was to steal industrial technology but that many intrusions were designed to obtain insights into American policy makers’ thinking. The report also warned that information gathered on American defense networks, logistics and military capabilities could be exploited during a crisis. The United States has spent billions of dollars defending its computer networks, as it should. But, increasingly, it is also investing billions more in offensive capabilities, including malware that can disrupt an adversary’s networks like the American-Israel Stuxnet virus did to Iran’s nuclear program in 2010. Cyber is one of the few growth areas in the military budget; Congress and the Obama administration will need to take care that the Pentagon is not exploiting the China threat to boost the budget even more to make up for other reductions." (NYTimes)
"A strange thing happened to Mark Sanford on the way to his comeback victory over Elizabeth Colbert Busch in South Carolina’s special Congressional election: He became a media darling. Once the butt of Appalachian Trail and stalker jokes, a different portrait of Sanford emerged in the final days of the race, as the national reporters who flocked to South Carolina encountered a candidate who not only answered all their questions, but put them on the phone with one of his sons and even personally chauffeured them to his campaign stops. As Slate’s Dave Weigel put it after tagging along with Sanford this past weekend, 'This got lost in the winds of scandal, but Sanford has an incredibly easy charm and — maybe by necessity, now — a welcoming, humble campaign style.' It was that campaign style that ultimately sent Sanford back to Washington. Sure, the race never should have been close. In a Congressional district where Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama by 18 points, any Republican should have been a shoe-in. But after his nasty split from his ex-wife Jenny reared its ugly head again a few weeks ago in the form of trespassing charges — Sanford heads to court on Thursday — it looked like he was toast. National Republicans pulled their support and Colbert Busch soon took a nine-point lead in the polls." (NYMag)
"If a typical break-up calls for vats of Ben & Jerry’s and repeated viewings of The Notebook, then we suppose a highly publicized divorce from a top Hollywood actor and devout Scientologist calls for a cross-country move and a gorgeous new apartment. That’s pretty much what Katie Holmes got last summer when she took up residence at the Chelsea Mercantile—the spectacular, star-infused, 21-story building at 252 Seventh Avenue. The actress reportedly signed the lease just a few days after announcing her split from husband Tom Cruise in June 2012. As you might expect from Ms. Holmes, who has also transmitted her fashion sense to daughter Suri, these are some stylish digs. The actress has been settling into her New York lifestyle pretty well since then. Last winter, Ms. Holmes took the stage as Lorna in Theresa Rebeck’s Dead Accounts, which ran from late November to early January at the Music Box Theatre. Though the show received mixed reviews, Ms. Holmes’s performance stood out, at least to The New York Times. Ms. Holmes 'appears much more at ease playing a worn-down country mouse to the hyped-up city mouse of [Norbert Leo Butz],' Ben Brantley wrote. 'Ms. Holmes and Mr. Butz summon an appealingly natural family rapport … You may even forget that Ms. Holmes is Katie Holmes for a moment.' It’s no problem that Dead Accounts closed earlier than expected—Ms. Holmes is already at work acting in another project, a Spike Lee production called Mania Days." (Observer)
"Last Thursday night at 583 Park Avenue, Lighthouse International held its annual 'POSH Affair' honoring Lorry Newhouse and Alex Hitz. The evening, which was preceded by a preview of the Annual POSH sale, was emceed by Robert Verdi." (NYSocialDiary)
"Is former 'Love Gov' Eliot Spitzer getting any big ideas from Anthony Weiner’s comeback attempt? At The Atlantic and the Aspen Institute’s New York Ideas dinner at Del Posto on Monday night, Spitzer was overheard telling a guest, 'If I do run for something, it would have to be something that would show I’m willing to work my way back up.' The former Client 9 wasn’t the only pol talking about potential races. Newark Mayor Cory Booker — who’s all but officially declared he’s running for the Senate — told Norah O’Donnell during a Q&A, 'Unofficially, I’m running.' A spy said Booker also explained to a guest, 'I can’t announce now because of the [New Jersey] governor’s race, but as soon as it’s over, I’ll announce.'” (PageSix)
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