Media-Whore D'Oeuvres



"Obama's long deliberation over the war in Afghanistan is a case study in presidential schizophrenia: After 94 days of internal discussion and debate, he ended up splitting the difference -- rushing in more troops as his generals wanted, while calling for their departure to begin in July 2011 as his liberal base demanded. It was a sober compromise that suggests a man struggling to reconcile his worldview with the weight of inherited problems. Like many of his predecessors, Obama is not only buffeted by strong political headwinds, but also pulled in opposing directions by two of the major schools of thought that have guided American foreign-policy debates since colonial times. In general, U.S. presidents see the world through the eyes of four giants: Alexander Hamilton, Woodrow Wilson, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson. Hamiltonians share the first Treasury secretary's belief that a strong national government and a strong military should pursue a realist global policy and that the government can and should promote economic development and the interests of American business at home and abroad. Wilsonians agree with Hamiltonians on the need for a global foreign policy, but see the promotion of democracy and human rights as the core elements of American grand strategy. Jeffersonians dissent from this globalist consensus; they want the United States to minimize its commitments and, as much as possible, dismantle the national-security state. Jacksonians are today's Fox News watchers. They are populists suspicious of Hamiltonian business links, Wilsonian do-gooding, and Jeffersonian weakness." (ForeignPolicy)



"It was a rather well-kept secret that deep in the belly of the Hudson Hotel there was once a YMCA, complete with a basketball court and a track. But as of Interview's 40th anniversary party last night, the story is out. Good Units, as the club is called, is now open for business, and with its subterranean allure, it will no doubt become one of New York fashion week's hot spots. Despite Topper Mortimer likening it to the now defunct raver club the Tunnel, the reviews were good. 'I can remember when this hotel opened, but I've never been down here,' said Naomi Campbell, who has some pretty extensive club research under her Alaïa belt. 'I love it, though. I love the dancing—it reminds me of the eighties.'" (Style)



"Vivid Entertainment has postponed the planned movie shoot with star Janine. A Vivid spokeswoman told XBIZ it was due to a technical issue surrounding the location of the filming. A judge had given Janine, whose full name is Janine Lindemulder, permission to shoot the movie, but now Vivid plans to reschedule the shoot until after Janine has finished serving her four month sentence in an Oregon halfway house for a parole violation." (XBizNewswire)



"It's been less than four years since Viacom chief Sumner Redstone famously called Tom Cruise 'embarrassing,' labeled him as a turn-off for all women and accused him of costing Paramount 'a lot of money.' He also refused to renew the star's contract. What a difference a little career upswing makes. Paramount announced Tuesday that the 'Risky Business' actor, whose precipitous fall from the pinnacle of the A-list got him rudely cast off the studio's lot in 2006, would appear in a fourth 'Mission Impossible' installment. For the 47-year-old, the return doesn't just mark his return to the studio that gestated some of his biggest hits over the last two decades -- it's also his best shot at recapturing the Hollywood glory that once surrounded him. In other words, it's now or never for Cruise, who made enough career baby steps to get back in Redstone's good graces. But to finish the job, 'Mission: Impossible 4' -- which Cruise is also co-producing -- will have to deliver." (TheWrap)



"The Olympics have done their part in replacing war with sport as the way nations earn respect. Modern nations compete by branding their identities, and hosting the Olympic Games is the biggest branding opportunity a nation ever gets. The Beijing Games unveiled China as a global power. The Rio Games in 2016 will do the same for Brazil. The Sochi Winter Games in 2014 will showcase the raw power of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. If you’re not trying to demonstrate raw power or announce your arrival on the global stage, however, hosting the Games presents a challenge. We Canadians are immensely proud of our country, but we try to be soft-spoken about it, so we aren’t looking for the Vancouver Games to be a grandiose exercise in self-promotion. Instead, we want to demonstrate that we’re a people the world can count on. We’re proud that we brought in the Games on time and on budget. The venues are ready. Apart from some nail-biting about whether there will be enough real snow for the low-altitude venues, there have been no last-minute panics. The Olympics let us tell the world: Ask us to do a job, and we get it done right." (MICHAEL IGNATIEFF/NYTimesMagazine)



(image via JH/NYSD)

"Dinner ended about ten-thirty. I got a ride over to East End Avenue with some neighbors who were at the dinner and whom I hadn’t met before, who lived three blocks south of me. And then after taking the dogs for their late night constitutional, snow having stopped, I changed into something more casual and went over to Elaine’s where the lady herself was celebrating her 81st birthday. Elaine’s was packed, the tables full, the bar full, of old friends, new friends, regulars and the scribe set, in out of the storm. As I’ve written before, it’s like a club in that people come to Elaine’s for the fare, the drinks and the talk; and they settled in for hours with people coming and going, tables taking on new guests, to fill in for the early-risers who’ve left by 11. And in the middle of it all was the lady herself – unimpressed by the day – enjoying the company of her guests." (NYSocialDiary)



"LAST NIGHT Yves Carcelle, the chairman and ceo of Louis Vuitton, was honoured at the annual amfAR Gala in New York for the brand's support of the charity. amfAR, which aims to eradicate HIV and Aids through pioneering research programmes, also honoured other supporters including Sir Elton John at the event. Key fashion figures, including US Vogue editor Anna Wintour, attended the event alongside actresses Zoë Saldana and Chloe Sevigny, who both wore Louis Vuitton." (Vogue)



(Rag & Bone designers David Neville, Marcis Wainwright via Vogue)

"Rag and Bone creative director David Neville was so immersed in Fashion Week, he forgot to attend a lunch held in his honor. Neville was feted along with celebrity photographer Patrick McMullan at a lunch Tuesday organized by Euan Rellie at the East Side Social Club. The 40-plus guests in cluded Lucy Sykes Rellie, CNN's Alina Cho, Village Voice columnist Michael Musto, Vogue style director Alexandra Kotur and writer Bettina Zilkha -- who all ate even though Neville didn't show up. He later sent an apologetic e- mail saying, 'I am so sorry . . . I am up to my neck in Fashion Week preparations. I hope you can forgive me.'" (PageSix)



"On a recent drizzly Sunday afternoon, a 29-year-old New York banker was sitting in a West Village cafe, eating biscotti with a mocha cappuccino and a glass of grapefruit juice. 'I want to retire early and maybe do something else,' he sighed. 'My premium years were spent working very, very hard because of the crisis, and not getting paid for it,' he said later. 'I don’t feel like I’m rich.' To keep him from leaving last year, his bank said it would grant him a $650,000 bonus, though he was just told this month that whatever he gets will be given mostly as deferred stock that can’t be sold for ages. The great parquet decades of investment banking are over—Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns are long gone, and Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have settled down as humdrum commercial banks. However the next era of Wall Street looks, whether it’s unbowed or humbled or distrusted or distrustful, Manhattan’s bankers are going to be something that they haven’t been in a very long time: conflicted." (Observer)



"Let's be honest: If you had two gorgeous kids at home and Johnny Depp for a live-in lover, it'd be hard to get you to schlep from your villa in France to a fête on New York's Upper East Side for a lipstick, wouldn't it? 'I typically prefer to have dinner at home with my family,' Vanessa Paradis told us last night at a party Chanel threw at the restaurant in the recently refurbished Mark Hotel ... Paradis' lucky seatmates were Patti Smith, Heidi Mount, and Chanel CEO Maureen Chiquet, but this being a fashion party, there was plenty of table-hopping. Daphne Guinness asked Olivier Zahm about all the naked ladies on his Web site, and the downtown icon Sophia Lamar, who came as Leigh Lezark's date, told Terry Richardson that he was her idol." (Style)



"What we in the western world are about to learn is that there is no such thing as a Keynesian free lunch. Deficits did not 'save' us half so much as monetary policy – zero interest rates plus quantitative easing – did. First, the impact of government spending (the hallowed 'multiplier') has been much less than the proponents of stimulus hoped. Second, there is a good deal of 'leakage' from open economies in a globalised world. Last, crucially, explosions of public debt incur bills that fall due much sooner than we expect. For the world’s biggest economy, the US, the day of reckoning still seems reassuringly remote. The worse things get in the eurozone, the more the US dollar rallies as nervous investors park their cash in the 'safe haven' of American government debt. This effect may persist for some months, just as the dollar and Treasuries rallied in the depths of the banking panic in late 2008. Yet even a casual look at the fiscal position of the federal government (not to mention the states) makes a nonsense of the phrase 'safe haven'. US government debt is a safe haven the way Pearl Harbor was a safe haven in 1941." (FT)



"Barbara Walters was among the guests the other night at New York's Kouros Gallery for Mika Brzezinski's new book 'All Things At Once.' Brzezinski's book is dedicated to her mother, the sculptor Emilie Brzezinski. The event was co-hosted by Miles Nadal, Chairman of MDC Partners and The Daily Beast's Tina Brown." (TVNewser)



"New York Fashion Week kicks off tomorrow, which means for the next eight days, some of the world’s biggest designers will stage the quintessential sartorial extravaganza: a runway show ... As a general rule, the hierarchy of where editors sit specifically within each section comes down to two factors: how supportive that person has been to the brand—meaning just how often he or she includes Ports 1961 in a story—and the publication’s circulation. 'The bigger the circulation, the better your seat,' (Atelier Creative Services president Louis Michael Iacovelli) says. Regulars who can be expected at the show, or 'Port-o-Files,' as the brand refers to its fans, are socialites Ivanka Trump and Olivia Palermo. Palermo will be seated in the front row’s section B next to Elle creative director Joe Zee and Palermo’s reality-TV co-star Whitney Port, since they will be filming an episode of The City." (VanityFair)