"James Baker, who served in the administrations of presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, called Republicans the losers in the debate that shut down the U.S. government for 16 days.
'My party, the Republican Party, I think, was a loser,' Baker said. 'But I also think that the president and the Democratic Party was a loser because the world saw us in disarray. It really saw a failure of governance.' Baker, Treasury secretary under Reagan and secretary of state under Bush, said on CNN’s 'Fareed Zakaria GPS' that Senator Ted Cruz, the Texas Republican who was a leader of the fight to defund Obamacare in the debate over the fiscal 2014 budget and raising the amount the U.S. can borrow, hurt the Republican party. 'Was he wrong on this most recent episode, in my view? Yes,' Baker said on the program, scheduled for broadcast tomorrow. 'It hurt us. It didn’t gain us anything. We kicked the can just three months down the road. We didn’t accomplish anything.' Democrats and Republicans reached a deal Oct. 16 to open the government. The agreement funds the government through Jan. 15, 2014, and suspends the debt limit through Feb. 7." (Bloomberg)
"Kenan Thompson’s claim that 'Saturday Night Live' has no black female cast members because qualified black female comedians just aren’t out there has prompted a lot of much-needed discussion — it’s also an opportunity to look back at the show’s history. While 'SNL' has had only four black women cast members in the 38-year history of the show, the success of 'SNL' alums like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Kristin Wiig and Maya Rudolph make it easy to forget that, once upon a time, 'SNL' used to have issues with women overall. In her memoir 'Bossypants,' Tina Fey recounts an incident that happened during her first week as an 'SNL' writer. Sylvester Stallone was the guest host, and the writers had planned a Rocky-themed monologue. According to Fey’s account, instead of casting Cheri Oteri to play the part of Rocky’s wife Adrian, someone decided it would be funnier to put Chris Kattan in a dress. Fey refers to that decision as 'kind of bullshit.' ... Fey’s assertion that 'nobody' would have thought 'a dude in drag' was funnier than any of 'SNL’s' female cast is odd, considering that, for years, the job of playing black women on 'SNL' fell to its black male cast members like Thompson and Tracy Morgan. While Maya Rudolph did impersonations of glamorous black celebrities like Whitney Houston and (as guest host) Beyoncé, Thompson has portrayed a host of recurring black female characters like Virginiaca Hastings, all hewing to the overweight, loud-mouthed, sassy Sapphire stereotype. Thompson’s black female celebrity impersonations include Aretha Franklin, Serena Williams, Mo’Nique, Chaka Khan and Patti LaBelle. Fey’s statement about putting an end to dudes in a dress on 'SNL' is true only if Thompson didn’t count as a dude in drag, or if the black female characters he played didn’t count as women." (Salon)
"He came from a wealthy background but was always in trouble. His parents were not particularly religious, but nevertheless they insisted that little Jimmy (Toback) read the Torah scroll and grow up to be a good Jewish boy. You can imagine their horror when they found naked pictures of Hedy Lamarr and Brigitte Bardot among the holy pages—the former in Ecstasy, the latter in Contempt. He was given a hiding and taken to all sorts of rabbis to have his evil side exhorted, but soon after young Jimmy did it again, this time with a real disgusting picture of two girls together billing and cooing like there was no tomorrow. 'What are we going to do with him?' wailed his mother while holding him with his pants down and swinging as hard as she could. And it got worse. All Jimmy thought about was sports and girls—not in that order—and there was nothing his parents could do about it but pray and cry a bit every evening. Not his grandfather, however. He was a schmatte business king, with clothing chain stores around the Noo Yawk area and an eye for the ladies. He used to take young Jimmy Toback to Longchamps on Madison Avenue, and when the bill would come he would take out a roll Frank Costello would have envied and slowly peel away twenty-dollar bills and pay. He lived at 50 E. 79th St.—in the penthouse, naturally. One day the grandfather took young Jimmy into a vaulted room that was filled to the brim with dollar bills of all denominations. There were hundreds, fifties, twenties, tens, and fives, even small ones with George Washington’s pictures on them. Jim had never seen such naked wealth, and he stood there taking it all in for quite a while until his grandfather patted him in the head and told him that one day all that would be his. 'Yippee!' cried the little boy and ran out, probably to go buy more dirty pictures. But it was not to be. A couple of years later, his grandfather died suddenly and his father and uncle went immediately to the vault room. Jimmy heard the screams and rushed there. The room was totally empty. Both his father and his uncle—the General—had tears in their eyes. 'Who could have taken it?' asked his uncle to no one in particular. 'You’re the only one who had a key,' yelled Jimmy as his uncle turned and began to beat him rather hard." (Taki)
"This week was the annual Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, held at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C. Among the participants: Disney-ABC Television Group president Anne Sweeney; Judy Woodruff of PBS; Norah O’Donnell and Lesley Stahl of CBS News; Mika Brzezinski of MSNBC; Chelsea Clinton and Dr. Nancy Snyderman of NBC News; Becky Quick of CNBC; Fox News panelist Nina Easton and CNN political consultant Hilary Rosen." (TVNewser)
"I had lunch at Michael’s with Ginny Mancini, speaking of Southern California. Ginny is a native Los Angeleno and in her days of sun drenched youth, she worked as a singer -- in radio, recordings and with the bands. It was only natural that she’d meet a musician, fall in love and marry him. That’s what happened when she met Henry. The Mancinis were a very popular couple on the Hollywood scene when I lived out there. Straddling the film establishment with the hip and the music industry and everybody in between. They were very friendly welcoming people. When I met them they were living in a house they built in Holmby Hills on the corner of Delfern and Baroda that Ginny built. I think Kelsey Grammer is the current resident (Ginny sold it in the mid-'90s after Henry died). Their style of entertaining was definitely Hollywood glamorous, yet comfortable. And all movieland came to call from the legends to the newer stars as well as the moguls and the directors, etc. " (NYSocialDiary)
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