"Tabloid headlines. Personal dramas. Organizational disarray. Score-settling between rival factions documented in news accounts like a soap opera. Does this have a familiar ring? No one — or mostly no one — truly believes the swirl of headlines surrounding Bill and Hillary Clinton in the summer of 2013 should lead to a grand conclusion about whether another iteration of a Clinton campaign can be run effectively, free of the internecine warfare and incessant drama that marked her 2008 bid.
But if Clinton and her supporters were hoping to allay those doubts well ahead of a possible 2016 run, the past few months have not been helpful. Clinton supporters would point out, fairly, that much of what has happened to them this summer — the steady stream of unseemly stories about Anthony Weiner’s continued virtual liaisons, his wife and Clinton confidante Huma Abedin’s very public decision to stand by him, and reports of mismanagement at the Clinton Foundation — has been beyond their control. But it has all still renewed the question that hangs over Hillary Clinton: Has she learned from the mistakes of the past, and can she finally break some recurring cycles in her public life? Can she manage a functional, and focused, national campaign? That probably can’t be fully answered unless and until Hillary Clinton clarifies whether she plans to run for president. Only then, when she assembles a new team and makes clear whether she is bringing on new blood amid the old Clinton hands, will it become clear what the latest iteration of a Clinton campaign looks like. Unwanted coverage of the Clinton Foundation and the years leading up to Hillary Clinton’s arrival at its office has converged with the messiness of the Weiner-Abedin story. There has also been an element to some of the details in both storylines — people taking sides in a semipublic way in media accounts — that left some recalling the airing of dirty laundry after her 2008 campaign." (Politico)
"The rich and connected of the Hamptons are finishing their summer with anxiety. No it's not because Dabney's new boyfriend goes to SUNY Stonybrook of all places and they just want their little girl to end up with the right boy. It's not because Brooks totaled yet another car and has been sniffing around yet another pool boy, when all they want him to do is finish up at Wharton and join the firm. It's not anything like that. It's also, um, not the troubles in Egypt making them anxious, or concerns about the NSA, or that they're still rattled by that Frontline about the erosion of the middle class. No, it's because Calvin Klein's glorious new Meadow Lane mansion isn't finished yet and that means he might not have a big Labor Day party. While his ex-boyfriend self-immolates, Klein is working around the clock loading furniture and other things into the glass palace while curious neighbors sneak peeks through bushes and fences and whatnot. Everyone's eager for the house to be done because, Page Six tells us, Klein had a Hamptons housewarming back in 2004 that people still talk about. The party of the decade! And they'd like to do that again. Let Dabney run around with whoever she wants, she's still young. Brooks will straighten up just like his father did, this recklessness, and these... incidents... with local boys, it's all just a phase. And Egypt will sort itself out, they always seem to, don't they? The government isn't looking in on them, so who really cares. The middle class is still going strong, why, just look at Joe Biden. No, all of that will be fine. But this house, this wonderful almost-there house. Will it be finished in time? The lords and ladies of the Hamptons sit on sun-coddled porches, the blue sea twinkling sadly, and they sip their iced tea or white wine and they wonder, and they worry, and they watch birds flit over the bay, set aloft by hope, propelled forward by the wishes." (TheAtlantic)
"Michael Musto: When Calvin (Klein) threw that Indochine party for your birthday in 2011 and you were surrounded by all sorts of fawning fashion types and paparazzi (who normally would never be seen within a mile of an ex-porn star), what did you think? Nick Gruber: It was the best party I ever had in my life—an experience I can never forget, no matter how old I am. I’m thankful to Calvin for throwing the party for me. Michael Musto: You didn’t feel like you were being shown off like an object? Not at all, because we had true love. We still care for one another. He’d never use me like that." (Gawker)
"Summertime is reading time for me. That’s the luxury. The calendar lightens up to the point where I have nothing to report, to write about. Over this past weekend, I finished the book, which I’ve already written about, 'Serving Victoria.' It wasn’t compelling. You don’t wonder what’s going to happen next. Her actual day-to-day life was a deadly dull to be around. Yet I couldn’t put it down. She was a strange figure to behold — so remote, so somber in her frivolousness, yet likeable. Despite her congenital selfishness and self-centeredness, she genuinely liked people. Because of that she could listen — if you could get her ear, and that was the hard part because she was barricaded by protocol. There were many times when she was wise and admirable, including times when she was forced to submit to those who would’t go along. But she could be easily self-deluding when it came to those (men) she favored. Complaints of her Highlands servant’s drunkenness was excused as 'bashful' or 'tired.' She loved to eat, and had terrible indigestion, not surprisingly. She loved Tea (the tradition) — although despite her intake, it did not spoil her dinner. When she was at Balmoral, four times a week her confectionary at Windsor would send an order of: one fox of biscuits, one box of drop tablets, one box of pralines, sixteen chocolate sponges, twelve plain sponges, sixteen fondant biscuits, one box of wafer, one and a half dozen flat finger biscuits, one sponge cake, one Princess cake and one rice cake. Times four — all in a seven day period. She had help of course, in consuming this vast sugar quarry, but Victoria was generous with herself, by habit. She was then in her mid-70s and not getting any thinner.This was a rather plain, basically uneducated woman who lived all her life in castles and palaces, surrounded and waited on by hundreds. She was held in highest esteem and recognized for great political power by millions. But she was really just a woman living in a peculiar atmosphere of the Self at the center of world power. For any single individual — man or woman, it’s a bizarre reality. It points up again and again how strange Royalness is, and how unreal. Even today. She was not prepared for anything but the privilege. She deferred to her husband early on and had several children by him. When he died suddenly in his forties, she mourned him for the rest of her long life. And she owned her power, something that was clear to anyone and everyone who came in contact with her." (NYSocialDiary)
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