Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Hillary had been one of the first in the administration to privately raise the issue of a no-fly zone. But she retreated when her main ally in the Cabinet, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, loudly and publicly said a no-fly zone would mean attacking ground positions, and it was a bad idea to get involved in Libya. The White House was searching for a way to arm the rebels—a strategy Hillary found problematic—but also resisted a no-fly zone. 'Lots of people throw around phrases like no-fly zone. They talk about it as though it’s just a video game,' White House chief of staff Bill Daley said dismissively. Hillary decided to push her case on March 12, after the Arab League voted to request action from the U.N. Security Council—an extraordinary decision to break Arab ranks and ask the nations they had for so long denounced as colonialists to help. 'Their statement moved her,' said a close aide, adding that two meanings of 'moved' applied. A myth quickly arose that the women in the administration—Clinton, U.N. ambassador Susan Rice, and national-security aide Samantha Power, whose Pulitzer Prize–winning book on genocide was influential in Obama’s thinking—drove the debate. “The idea that the girls pushed the boys into war is ludicrous,' says Anne-Marie Slaughter, who until recently served as director of policy planning at State. “We were dismissed for months as soft liberals concerned about ‘peripheral’ development issues like women and girls, and now we’re Amazonian Valkyrie warmongers. Please.” In truth, the president, as usual, was not persuaded by anyone to change his mind. He was always a reluctant warrior and decided to intervene only when imminent atrocities in Benghazi made sitting on his hands even riskier." (VanityFair)

"Appointing Gen. David Petraeus to be Director of the Central Intelligence Agency might make good politics for Obama -- bottling Petraeus up in a strictly non-partisan position -- and may or may not be a good move for Petraeus, depending on his future ambitions. My interest is more prosaic: would the move be good for the CIA? Possibly. Petraeus is not just smart: he is capable of challenging groupthink, which is exactly what the CIA needs. If Petraeus is ready to rewrite the book on intelligence the way he did, not just for counterinsurgency doctrine, but for the Army's culture as a whole, he could do wonders for the CIA. But if Petraeus lets himself go native or surrounds himself by the intelligence establishment, he'll just keep the chair warm for the next Director. Let me say right off that I do not think the intelligence community is hopelessly broken, it does provide an irreplaceable service to policymakers and I have the highest respect for the folks I worked with during seven years at the CIA. But I do not think the taxpayers are getting the most bang for their buck. Here are a few things Petraeus should tackle." (ForeignPolicy)

"On a weekend night about a month ago, the paparazzi stand in front of Milk ­Studios in ­Chelsea, hoping to catch a glimpse of some of their favorite prey in New York. This is the Kabbalah Centre’s annual ­Purim party, to commemorate the thwarting of a Persian plot to kill Jews, and Madonna is due to arrive at seven, swishing through the wet streets in her blacked-out Town Car with her children Rocco and Lourdes, and fashion photographer Steven Klein in a black-latex mask. When Madonna is at Shabbat services and celebrating the Jewish High Holidays, she presents a confusing tableau: Still a Catholic, she often appears with a gigantic cross hanging from her neck, the size of the one in her Desperately Seeking Susan days, and carries her adopted ­Malawian son, on whom she’s usually placed a yarmulke. But like most synagogues, the Kabbalah Centre celebrates Purim with a party befitting Halloween night, so tonight, with her flair for a shocking costume, Madonna has no trouble fitting in. At past Purim parties, she’s dressed as a nun (Guy Ritchie was the pope), a flapper (Guy was a cop), and a goth schoolgirl (she was single at that one), but this year, she’s decided to conceal herself as Charlie Chaplin, with her hair in a bun, a round black hat perched on her head, and a white rose clenched between her teeth. Even as a man—a being that, according to the teachings of both the Kabbalah and Madonna, is far less enlightened and perceptive than a woman—she’s unmistakable, and the paparazzi shoot her as she goes up to the party, though they miss Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher, who dash into the elevator in matching pig costumes with big fuzzy heads." (Vanessa Grigoriadis)

"The main problem with last night’s GOP debate is that most of the diehard political junkies in Washington—yours truly among them—had to be reminded that it was even taking place. The many, many voters who missed this clash of 'Governor Tim Pawlenty and the also-rans' can continue their lives without a care. The real loser of tonight’s South Carolina encounter is Fox News Channel. What on earth possessed the network to host this asterisk-in-the making? Fox wasted airfare, production costs, and the time of some of their marquee names—Chris Wallace, Juan Williams, and Bret Baier—who asked questions of a bunch of also-rans without even pretending to listen to their answers. The first clue this debate was a disaster was when the moderators began to ask the placeholders on stage about candidates who weren’t even there: Mitt Rom-bot, Trump, Daniels, Huckabee, Bachmann, Gingrich, and Trump, again. Ironically for a network accused of right-wing bias, Fox may have done the Republican Party a monumental disservice. In the midst of one of the Obama administration’s greatest achievements—the killing of Osama bin Laden—the network made the Republican presidential primary look like a low-budget Star Trek convention, where only the guy who played Dr. McCoy and a bunch of extras bothered to show up. And the network’s overuse of a loud, annoying Price Is Right bell to cut candidates off in mid-sentence only added to the aura that this affair was a tawdry game show waiting for someone to mercifully hit a gong." (TheDailyBeast)

"Yesterday brought us the the news that Judy McGrath, Chairman and CEO of MTV Networks, had resigned. I've known Judy for a little over 11 years and admired her for many more. We met in 2000 when I sold my company Mischief New Media to MTV Networks. We've been friends ever since. Yes, I was friends with my boss. That sometimes made it more difficult to have debates and disagreements... and we had many as I was a big pain in the ass back then. I actually thought all those television channels were there to promote our websites and mobile products. But that was the culture that Tom Freston, Judy and the rest of the management team fostered. What many don't realize about the history of success of MTV Networks is that culture is the key ingredient. It's a different kind of place. It's not something you see in a spreadsheet or budget. It's a respect and admiration for creativity. A non-elitist management style at all levels. It's a love for pop in the best sense of the word. It's easy to devolve into gossip about other explanations for her departure, who will leave next or any kind of intrigue. But what gets lost in that nonsense is the kind of person Judy is and the mark she had on the company, pop culture and really anyone who crossed paths with her. So when I think of Judy I think lots of things: •She started as a copywriter 30 years ago when she moved from Scranton, PA. •30 years later she leaves a company that may be valued at $30 Billion dollars, MTV Networks is the large share of Viacom." (Jason Hirschorn)

"The navy SEALs Team Six is so elite and secretive that its very existence has never been acknowledged by the military—even after its members led the successful assault on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. In this exclusive book excerpt, former Team Six member Howard E. Wasdin describes his progress through SEAL training and its notorious Hell Week, an unthinkably brutal training gauntlet designed to separate the born warriors from the merely mortal." (Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin)

 

 
"[NYSocialDiary House] Oooh la la! We’re going to talk about Madeira! [Lesley] Did you get sent there? When you’re British you get sent to boarding school. Amanda Nisbet I went of my own volition because I was a rider. NYSD House: Sounds very posh. Amanda Nisbet: It’s not posh. It’s a ladies’ school … you know the headmistress was Jean Harris and she murdered her lover. He was the first big diet doctor. He wrote the Scarsdale Diet. So that was the scandal at the time. She was there in my sophomore year … it was right out of a novel. [laughs] NYSD House: Did you think she was a murderess? Amanda Nisbet: I’m going to get into so much trouble. She was very proper and she would get very upset with us if we were heavy or fat. She would get mad at us. It was all about appearances." (NYSocialDiary House)
 

 
"Pay TV is alive and well, and now has more subscribers than ever. There was some consternation in the second and third quarters of last year, when the industry reported its first ever declines in the number of pay TV subscribers. But as BTIG analyst Richard Greenfield points out (subscription required), now that all the major public pay TV providers have reported their earnings, the overall state of the industry is looking up ... We’ve been skeptics of TV Everywhere and the value it offers to subscribers, but it seems to actually be working. Now that cable subscribers have more options for being able to access cable content they pay for — including on their PCs and mobile devices like the iPad — they might actually stick around rather than using other services. Not just that, but the second generation of TV Everywhere services is much better than the initial services launched about 18 months ago." (GigaOm)
 

 
"Ever since Mel Gibson's abusive meltdown coincided with his filming of the Jodie Foster-directed The Beaver, his friend of 15 years has been defending the hot-headed star. On tonight's Late Show, however, Foster's narrative seemed to change from 'God, I love that man,' to a more canned, publicist-friendly, 'He's wonderful in the movie, he's extraordinary in the film' one. What gives? Not only did Foster appear to back off of her blind praise of Gibson tonight—aside from a soft 'He's a very good friend' at the end of her discussion with Letterman—she also put some distance between Gibson's troubles and the shooting of her film when she remarked that his misbehavior happened 'mostly after we wrapped.' Then, after being asked by Letterman if she was willing to defend Gibson's behavior, Foster shot back—before he'd even finished the question—with an emphatic 'No.'" (Gawker)

Review: The Social Climber's Handbook

In The Social Climber's Handbook by Molly Jong-Fast the first words spoken by the central character are "I love you." Daisy Greenbaum, a super-rich Upper East Side mom with charming twins named Easton and Avery, a Master-of-the-Universe husband named Dick, a Polish maid named Nina, and a glorious apartment at 740 Park seems to have it all. This being a black comedy, however, Daisy Greenbaum has a secret. On the down low she is -- how else does one say this? -- a highly efficient serial killer, bloodily dispatching any and all who impede her family's social advancement. She also volunteers at several soup kitchens. But at what cost? "The sheer facts of her life, the murders, the constant status anxiety, all of it had made her a sliver of the person she had once been," Jong-Fast writes.

The romantic balance between the principal characters is slightly off kilter in this Park Avenue tale, as you might imagine. While the first words spoken by Daisy are "I love you," her Master-of-the-Universe husband, Dick, significantly fails to reciprocate the sentiment. You see: the king of the prop desk at The Bank has to wake up in a little over seven hours and deal with the unfolding '08 crash that he and his brethren, one cannot fail to note, hath wrought in the first place.

Besides, Dick has a wandering eye. His mistresses, one year apart, are Lady Smith Kingsley and one self indulgent, one dimensional blogger named Candy Rose Ross ("she knew she would one day be famous. It wasn't a question; it was her inner truth"). He communicates with them through his BlackBerry, to the great annoyance of the long-suffering Daisy. Somerset Maugham once said that in any relationship "there's always one who loves, and one who lets himself be loved." It is clearly Daisy who loves more in this relationship. She also deeply loves the life that they have made for each other on Park Avenue. In the state of nature, murder among apex predators -- and what else are we to call them? -- is not at all unusual. Blame Darwin.

Propelling this story is the economy. The decline of the American economy is driving Daisy and Dick and even poor Lady Smith Kingsley and her amoral husband to do drastic, desperate things. Their reptile brains develop increasingly erratic strategies to hold onto the glitzy trappings -- the G5's, the expensive bags, the $40,000 curtains. In many ways the characters are mere reflections of the soulless economic system that they inhabit, where debt is simply written off to future generations. On Wall Street they have a saying: IBGYBG -- "I'll Be Gone, You'll Be Gone." And the working and middle classes will handle the bailouts.

Molly Jong-Fast, a cool Upper East Side mom of three with a financier husband, knows the terrain and is gifted with an eye for acute social observation as well as being possessed of a razor-sharp wit. The title of the book, The Social Climber's Handbook, is a play on the relentless social mountaineering, the keeping up of appearances that goes on in the 10021 zip code. Throughout this entertaining book there are sly, delicious references and representations of the New York scene at the turn of the millennium. Each chapter, for example, is headed with the date and where the Dow and S & P closed on that day in history. The financial history roughly coincides with the slapstick narrative of this black comedy as it comes barreling towards its conclusion. All chapters are bound by financial time except for the epilogue, where all secrets are at once revealed.

The sharp social observations don't stop there. Daisy's first murder involves a frenemy in the high-stress Mean Girls environment that is fat camp decades ago. There is an Upper East Side star-fucker shrink in a supporting role. There are familiar echoes of Bernie Madoff in the person of Sir Smith Kingley, whose Ponzi scheme is about to come undone, but would probably turn himself in to the Feds for a fried egg sandwich. There are ambitious bloggers -- Trip, financial; Candy, sex -- who live in Brooklyn who do the scene ("It had been the usual new-media scene: bloggers, urban hipsters, MFA students, a few old weirdos, some advertising guys in suits, a couple of die-hard alcoholics, and painters looking for free drinks and loose underage girls") looking to climb the social ladder on the backs of the corruptions of the Masters and Mistresses of the universe. Ouch!

Finally, the Social Climber's Handbook is deliciously funny, but also quite smart. The razor-sharp social observations alone make this better than probably any other book you will be taking to the beach this summer. The real private cruelties -- those between a husband and wife, those between a husband and his mistress, those between friends at camp and between lovers in the quiet of their bedroom -- are infinitely more brutal than any of Daisy's murders. So what's a few dead bodies if we can arrive together at that sound conclusion?

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"George W. Bush’s decision not to join President Obama at Ground Zero might have had more to do with an evolving game over credit for Osama bin Laden’s death than simply a desire to stay out of the spotlight. The New York Daily News reports that Bush viewed Obama’s Thursday trip to lower Manhattan 'as an Obama victory lap,' according to 'a highly-placed' anonymous person. 'He doesn't feel personally snubbed and appreciates the invitation, but Obama's claiming all the credit and a lot of other people deserve some of it,' the person told the paper. 'Obama gave no credit whatsoever to the intelligence infrastructure the Bush administration set up that is being hailed from the left and right as setting in motion the operation that got Bin Laden. It rubbed Bush the wrong way.'  Bush’s official explanation for turning down the White House’s invitation was that he wanted to keep his post-presidency private ... But a person the Daily News said is familiar with Bush’s thinking argued that a joint appearance would be 'for the benefit of Obama, and Obama withheld credit from people Bush believes deserved it.' Carney said Obama officials 'completely understand that he’s not able to come.'" (Politico)

"The world's demographers this week increased their estimates of the world's population through the coming century. We are now on track to hit 10 billion people by 2100. Today, humanity produces enough food to feed everyone but, because of the way we distribute it, there are still a billion hungry. One doesn't need to be a frothing Malthusian to worry about how we'll all get to eat tomorrow. Current predictions place most of the world's people in Asia, the highest levels of consumption in Europe and North America, and the highest population growth rates in Africa -- where the population could triple over the next 90 years." (ForeignPolicy)

"There are more serious reasons for restraint. There may be force in the president’s argument that such a graphic photo could be a propaganda tool, an incitement to additional violence. Alternatively, it could deter would-be jihadists, who would have to think a little harder when they see the bloodied bodies of Osama's men killed in the firefight in his hideaway, photos obtained by Reuters from a Pakistani security officer and rightly released on Wednesday. The gruesome photographs of Saddam Hussein's dead sons are in the same category. Those calculations apart, I’d find the exultation of exhibiting the vanquished bin Laden to be obscene, ethically not much different from the Tudors, who liked sticking heads and dismembered torsos around London, or the barbarians of al Qaeda. Obama said it well: 'That’s not who we are. We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.' It's the jihadists who enjoy celebrating death; we prefer to celebrate life." (Harry Evans)

"Yesterday was the famous Hat Luncheon given by the Women’s Committee of the Central Park Conservancy in the Conservatory Garden in the Park at 104th Street and Fifth Avenue. Their 29th. Its official name is the Frederick Law Olmsted Awards Luncheon. I’ve always referred to it as the hat luncheon because the hats are the hook ... Rain or no rain, they had the biggest attendance ever. Somewhere over 1200. Someone told me recently the first luncheon, the first year, they had a couple dozen stalwarts. Today it’s the hottest ticket of the Spring season in New York. They raised more than $3 million, and because the luncheon was totally underwritten by the Benefit Committee, all of the funds go right into the Park and its maintenance. The luncheon was called to order after the main course by the Women’s Committee President, Gillian Miniter, who gave us the good news. There was an awards presentation to Judith-Ann Corrente. Bob Diamond, Chief Executive of Barclays was the Corporate Chair. Anne Harrison, Julia Koch, Lizzie Tisch, and Virginia Apple were co-chairs. Centerpieces by Andrew, menu by Abigail Kirsch." (NYSocialDiary)

"The News of the World had been running a series about Prince William and Prince Harry—stories containing so much verbatim detail that Palace officials realized that someone had been listening to the princes’ voice mails. A brief investigation by Scotland Yard was conducted, and a version of the truth came out. Yes, the newspaper conceded, one of its reporters, with the help of a private investigator, had been responsible. No one in authority had known a thing. The reporter and the investigator served brief prison terms. The editor of the newspaper, Andy Coulson, resigned. 'If you’re talking about illegal tapping by a private investigator,' Murdoch himself maintained, 'that is not part of our culture anywhere in the world, least of all in Britain.' End of story. But it wasn’t the end of the story. In time, politicians, business leaders, actors and actresses, prominent athletes, and society figures began to think again about curious incidents involving their own voice-mail messages. The deeper they looked, the more suspicious they became. Lawsuits were filed, which yielded further information. The police, it turned out, had known from the start that phone hacking by the News of the World was much more prevalent than they had let on. Indeed, notes seized from the private investigator had revealed that upwards of 4,000 people may have been victimized by the newspaper. Rather than the work of a rogue reporter, phone hacking seemed to have been endemic at the paper, abetted by editors all the way up the chain of command." (Graydon Carter/ Vanity Fair)

"It's showtime for broadcast pilots as screenings at the networks are kicking off. Today was Day 1 of screenings at ABC, Fox and the CW and Day 4 for CBS, which started on Friday. NBC starts its viewing tomorrow. There were a couple of standouts today. At ABC, it seems to be the Mark Gordon-produced procedural IDENTITY starring Angela Bassett as the head of a unit fighting identity-related crime, which got rave reviews. While not getting the same level of enthusiastic response, several other ABC pilots had solid showings: dramas CHARLIE'S ANGELS, which is considered a lock, POE, said to be a favorite of ABC chief Paul Lee (though some are concerned that it is essentially a 1840s Castle with a supernatural twist), and comedy SMOTHERED, while reaction to Chris Moynihan's comedy MAN UP was mixed. It was a ho-hum first screening day at Fox, with comedy I HATE MY TEENAGE DAUGHTER doing OK, drama ALCATRAZ getting mixed reaction, mostly because of its sci-fi content, and comedy TAGGED not faring well. At the CW, the rise of HART OF DIXIE continued with a great screening as the small town medical drama starring Rachel Bilson looks like a sure thing for the fall schedule along with Kevin Williamson's The Secret Circle, which is yet to be screened." (Deadline)

"Talk about corruption. (The Gaddafi family) ... have stolen billions, have used Libyan oil wealth for their hookers, yachts, private jets, and palaces around the globe, yet until recently Western bankers genuflected in front of this scumbag and our leaders permitted the arch-thief and murderer to pitch his tent anywhere he felt like in Europe and America. Such are the joys of our fear and greed. Conceived by hookers with a dose of syphilis, the brood of eight has had it their way for far too long. One’s a rapist and woman-beater, the other bought 7% of Juventus Football Club thinking he could get on the team—he’s Central Park Sunday-afternoon caliber—yet another is a torturer and killer, while the so-called civilized one is a braggart, a consummate coke-sniffer, the Goebbels of his father’s regime without the German’s charm ... Let’s blow up the Gaddafis and be done with it" (Taki)

"I’ve been seeing more and more of Mistress Dee, mainly joining in on her sessions with clients, working as her sidekick, or an assistant of sorts. A couple days ago she invited me to work a 'double Domme' session with her, for a new client--some guy flying in from Austin on business. She said she was meeting him for dinner uptown, but that I would join them later on, at his hotel. 'I’ll text you with specific instructions later,' she said down the phone, 'but keep the whole evening free. Look hot but respectable. No leather.' OK, whatever you say. I got a text from the Mistress at 7pm, saying to meet her in the bathroom of X restaurant in one hour. I was sort of confused about why I needed to meet her in the bathroom, but agreed. I never really question what Dee tells me to do or why. I just figure she knows best, and there’s no use in pretending I’m not still totally naive to these types of situations. Also, as I’ve previously mentioned, Dee possesses this weird, God-like power that makes it hard not to trust and fear her simultaneously. It’s hard to put your finger on..." (Karley)

"Fortune has released its annual Fortune 500 list today, and for the second year in a row, the Wal-Mart empire tops the list, earning profits of over $16 billion last year. So yes, people really do like shopping for tubs of vaseline, tires, frozen pizzas, band-aids and beer all in one place..." (FishbowlNY)

Could Cable Companies End Up As Apps?

There is a lot of talk nowadays about the slight but significant drop in television buying and whether or not that augurs badly for the future of television and, ancillary to that, the cable industry as a whole. Add to the mix that beyond this recent 2.2 percentage point drop in the number of American households owning TV sets, Cinemax and HBO shed 1.6 million subscribers last year. While it is hard to imagine that the ultimate destiny of a purveyor of quality content like HBO -- a premium cable network with 28.6 million subscribers in the second quarter of 2010 -- is to become an app, that's exactly what Reed Hastings would have us believe. From Technology Review:

"Today the CEO of Netflix said something kind of crazy and probably true. On the smart TVs and set-top boxes of the future, he said 'Your cable provider will be an app.'

Here's why that matters: History has taught us that at the moment at which the means of distribution are separated from the content they distribute, old monopolies break down, assumptions are thrown out the window, revenues tank, giant companies crash and burn and from their ashes are born entirely new ones.

We all know what happened when the internet replaced the newspaper as the primary source for written news -- and just as importantly, the many forms of advertising that used to accompany it. Now news-gathering outlets realize that the fourth estate had always been subsidized, and the failure to find an alternate source of subsidy means that the contraction in that industry has been profound.

The same thing is about to happen to cable networks. "

NetFlix, we cannot fail to note, recently announced that it has 23 million U.S. subscribers. But Hastings asserts that he is not competing against cable TV. That having been said, it is not so much of an insult as it might have been in the recent past to be viewed wholly as an app, considering that mobile app stores will bring in $3.8 billion in revenues and shows no signs of slowing. "Combined revenue for the four stores in 2011 will rise from $2.1 billion in 2010 and from $830.6 million in 2009," says a new report by IHS iSuppli. "Application store revenues were first tracked in 2008 in a market worth just $206.01 million, with the Apple App Store the only viable presence at that time. Total download revenue from games and other applications are projected to continue rising in the next few years, jumping to $5.6 billion in 2012, $6.9 billion in 2013 and $8.3 billion in 2014."

Further, the available data somewhat appears to support the argument that cable, at least for now, is moving in a thoroughly app-y direction. Of late, HBO has been pushing their Go app, which allows subscribers access to over 1,400 movies on demand as well as the channel's original content through the App Store and Android Market. And last week's Time Warner earnings call revealed that its app was downloaded an amazing 360,000 times during its first month of its availability. The reviews thus far have been good, so much so that CNet's Scott Stein actually posted a "Dear HBO" letter, asking the cable network to make it so that he could use their iOS app without going through that whole lame cable thing:

I actually want to pay for HBO shows. Unfortunately, I'm essentially locked out unless I go back to the whole tiered system of pay cable. iTunes sells episodes of HBO shows, but not of currently running seasons. So, I don't watch at all. You're trying to be an incentive to make me come back to the cable fold, but I'm not biting.

At some point, if the monthly subscription were high enough, and you got me to sign up, maybe someday down the road I'd realize I'd be better off signing up for cable again, much like David Katzmaier realized when he experimented with cutting the cable cord. I just ask that you at least give me the opportunity to pay you and find out for myself. Let me pay for an expensive a la carte hamburger and realize I should have ordered the complete prix fixe lunch instead. See, I'm not going back to cable. And I can't buy current seasons per episode anywhere. Which means you've lost my money completely. I don't want to be a TV snob, but you leave me no choice.

Which brings us round about back to the decline-of-TV numbers. Still, if Time Warner were to do actually something along the lines suggested above, it might arguably speed up the demise of television and cable boxes.

And it is not just Time Warner, which has 70 channels available, among the pay TV players going app-y. Subscribers -- at least for now -- appear to quite like streaming cable. As GigaOm noted last week, Cablevision's Optimum app passed 50,000 downloads in less than a week from the App Store, while Comcast's XFinity app, which has been out for only about six months, has been downloaded 1.5 million times.

Will cable companies end up as apps? It is way to early in the game to tell, but a strong argument could be made that it is in fact happening now.

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"First, consider the image of American troops posted in remote and often barren outposts in the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan, working under fiercely difficult conditions to protect villagers and fight the Taliban. In the aftermath of Osama bin Laden's death a former paratrooper with the U.S. Army Special Operations Command wrote of his deployment: 'Our job was to build a sustainable nation in a Mad Max wasteland, and we did our duty.' The crazy lawlessness of Mad Max similarly permeates the Oscar-nominated documentary Restrepo, as well as the descriptions of other outposts in the Korengal Valley in Bing West's 2011 book The Wrong War." (ForeignPolicy)

"Men in kilts marched down the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to begin the Costume Institute Gala's procession of celebrities. The kilts-like the exhibit the gala was to fete, and the clothes many attendees wore-were intended as tribute to the late Alexander McQueen, though early arrival Anna Wintour, in glittering purple striped Chanel, made her own choice. The arrival of the queen of fashion signals the beginning of the party; unspoken rules indicate that no guest should arrive before the co-host's tiny form glides through. Ms. Wintour's entrance raised audible cheers from a crowd of photographers and journalists already beginning to cramp up from standing-and a long night lay ahead. Ms. Wintour's co-chair Colin Firth rushed past waiting shutterbugs and writers, pleading regally, 'Sorry-it's my duty!' ... Kanye West stood guard at the door, though he was not a co-host, greeting all of the guests and reserving special excitement for Christopher Bailey, creative director of Burberry. Dakota and Elle Fanning stood nearby, the elder Ms. Fanning looking nervous, the younger looking utterly in her element ... Of course, a fashion crowd is a bit of an echo chamber: Barbara Walters, in luminous green Oscar de la Renta on the arm of Charlie Rose, told The Observer, 'I don't think I'll discuss Osama bin Laden tonight. This is a celebration of a different sort.'" (TheObserver)

"Congress expressed fury at Pakistan Tuesday for its role in housing Osama bin Laden for the past several years, as a wide range of powerful lawmakers are raising new questions about the billions in foreign aid the United States has spent propping up what many believe is an unreliable ally. Lawmakers from both parties are weighing whether to put limitations on Pakistani aid, either through new accountability measures, tougher oversight – or even withholding portions of the funding if Pakistan fails to divulge how bin Laden was able to live in a huge compound just outside the country’s capital of Islamabad. And while a complete cut off of funding seems highly unlikely, it’s clear that Pakistan is losing support on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers expressed disbelief at the Pakistani government’s contention that officials were unaware of bin Laden’s presence." (Politico)

"Early in the evening there was a booksigning party for Molly Jong-Fast and her new novel Social Climbers Handbook. Molly is a young woman, 30-something. She is married, has three children (including twins) and lives the prototypical Upper East Side environment, the land of fresh, new money, and young families. Daughter of Erica Jong and Jonathan Fast, Molly’s point of view is infused with ironic detail of the surreal in contemporary life among the rich kids. You laugh and believe it at the same time. The party was at Isaac Mizrahi’s store at 23 East 67th Street (between Fifth and Madison), hosted by Molly’s pal Sharon Hurowitz, who also provided the candies and cookies including those chocolate dollar signs that, it turned out, were homemade in the hostess’ kitchen yesterday afternoon. I had to leave the store to get away from them." (NYSocialDiary)

"'Don’t ever play poker with him,' says (Charlie) Sheen’s manager, Mark Burg, recalling how, in 2010, he made Sheen’s $100 million deal with CBS between the national anthem and the start of a Lakers game. 'Warner Bros. was like, We’re offering a million dollars [per episode] for two years, and nobody walks away from $48 million. I said, Guys, he’s going to walk. I’m not bluffing.’ Burg tells Seal that CBS chairman Les Moonves 'had two different schedules—one if Charlie didn’t come back,' before he gave in and made Sheen the highest paid actor in television history. 'It wasn’t until the day before the up-fronts that I picked up my son at school, and we were driving to a Laker playoff game, and I had Charlie and his attorney Jake Bloom on speakerphone the entire drive down. At the time they were up to $72 million, a million and a half an episode. Jake gave Charlie a 25-minute speech about how this will set your grandchildren up and you could do whatever you want. This is more than Kelsey Grammer made on Frasier. I parked the car, I’m now on my cell phone, walking into the stadium, and Charlie goes, ‘Pass. Mark, it’s a hundred million or I’m not doing it.’ Charlie hangs up, and Jake called up Bruce Rosenblum [president of Warner Bros. Television Group] and Les Moonves and passed during the national anthem. I’m like, 'Wow, I hope he knows what he’s doing.’ Before the game began 'they said yes [to $100 million],' Burg tells (Vanity Fair contributing editor Mark) Seal." (Vanity Fair)

"It is 9am on a rainy Saturday morning at the beginning of London Fashion Week in February. Select Model agency's glamorous new offices in central London are surprisingly sleepy still, although the team were working late into the night confirming options for their girls, and planning schedules for Milan Fashion Week, which follows straight after. I am here to meet Liu Wen, the 24-year-old from Yongzhou, a city in Hunan province in central southern China, and the country's biggest fashion star. In September 2009 Liu broke with the stereotype and became the first Chinese girl to model for the raunchy Victoria's Secret show in New York. Last April she became the first Chinese face - or global ambassador as they like to call them - of Estée Lauder. The company is estimated to sell $300 million worth of face creams and cosmetics a year in China, the company's fastest growing market and the largest outside the US. Liu's latest ad campaign is for Estée Lauder's Every Woman Can Be Beautiful, which focuses on different skin tones." (TheTelegraph)

"In the weeks before President Obama ordered Navy SEALs into Pakistan in pursuit of Osama bin Laden, administration officials weighed using American warplanes to obliterate the terror mastermind's fortified compound from the sky or sending commandos on a high-risk mission to assault the structure from the ground. But there's one option the administration appears to have never seriously considered: taking bin Laden alive. In an important new detail about Sunday's raid, the White House disclosed on Tuesday that bin Laden was unarmed when the SEALs shot him in the head and chest, killing him instantly. The administration said that bin Laden resisted capture, but hasn't suggested in any of its public comments that the SEALs were in any immediate danger when they opened fire on him during their assault on his compound in an affluent Islamabad suburb of Abbottabad. The SEALs' decision to fatally shoot bin Laden -- even though he didn't have a weapon - wasn't an accident. The administration had made clear to the military's clandestine Joint Special Operations Command that it wanted bin Laden dead, according to a senior U.S. official with knowledge of the discussions. A high-ranking military officer briefed on the assault said the SEALs knew their mission was not to take him alive. Publicly, the White House insists it was prepared to capture bin Laden if he tried to surrender, a possibility senior officials described as remote." (TheAtlantic)

"This morning the top Comcast execs in an earnings conference call admitted to Wall Street that NBCUniversal which the company just purchased is a fixer-upper and, in the short term, a money pit. NBCU chief Steve Burke says the company plans to spend $200 million more this year on NBC’s primetime schedule than General Electric did last year when it owned the network. (Burke is looking at 21 pilots, about the same number NBC ordered in 2010.) Comcast considers the turn-around to be a long-term project, but Burke says that simply lifting NBC to 3rd place from 4th would mean 'hundreds of millions' in improvement in the company’s cash flow. Meanwhile, Burke also says he plans to spend $100 million more this year on programming NBCU’s cable networks. He expects a 'very strong' upfront ad sales season. As for Universal’s film business, where 1Q revenues and operating cash flow declined, Burke says that 'we have to make better films' ..."  (Deadline)

"Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.) on Wednesday said the discovery of Osama bin Laden so close to a top Pakistani military academy indicates that some high-ranking Pakistani officials undoubtedly knew his whereabouts. The Democratic lawmaker, a key voice on anti-terrorism issues, said repeatedly that this is evidence that Pakistan is a 'schizophrenic nuclear power. Pakistan is not a singular entity, it's a schizophrenic superpower, a schizophrenic nuclear power,' Sherman said in a C-SPAN interview. 'The fact is, there were elements of Pakistan that I'm sure knew [bin Laden's location], and there were elements that did not.' Sherman, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Terrorism, was briefed Tuesday on the raid that ended in the killing of bin Laden early Monday morning in Pakistan. He said on C-SPAN that he believes there is 'some real anger toward Pakistan in the upper reaches of the American government.' Sherman noted that bin Laden for some reason felt comfortable building his compound 'down the street' from what he called Pakistan's West Point. 'He must have thought, he must have been told, that this was a safe place to be cocooned with the Pakistani military,' he said." (TheHill)

"Later at the official Vogue/Stella McCartney after-party at new restaurant Crown, The Material Girl held court in a private room with Rihanna, Marc Jacobs, Paul McCartney and girlfriend Nancy Shevell. DJ Cassidy spun an after-hours set that got the former Beatle dancing to various Michael Jackson tunes. Also at the Crown, Beyoncé and Jay-Z -- earlier booed on the red carpet at the Met when they didn't stop for interviews -- hung out in a booth with Lyor Cohen and Tory Burch. 'Glee' buddies Matthew Morrison and Gwyneth Paltrow were spotted having an intimate chat during which Paltrow's hand rested on Morrison's chest. Billy Joel's ex Katie Lee was held up at the door of the bash, and was seen arguing with staff. Lee then headed to the Top of The Standard hotel, where new couple Amar'e Stoudemire and Ciara hung close while a well-heeled crowd -- including Salma Hayek, Kanye West, Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys -- partied until 4 am. When a guest asked Mickey Rourke if he was wearing McQueen -- who was honored that night -- he replied: 'I'm not quite skinny enough to wear McQueen.' Rourke was later spotted holding up a wobbly Jason Statham as the Transporter star looked for his girlfriend, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, who was upset when she lost an earring, sending Statham and Rourke crawling around the floor to find it." (PageSix)

A Little of the Old In And Out

In: Twitter. Is it possible to calibrate the exact percentage that a particular form of social media is faster than, say, CNN on the occasion of breaking global news? That would be a useful metric, to be sure. The first thing that this blogger reached for upon hearing of the death of Osama bin laden was Twitter on the cell. CNN, by contrast, was simply background noise until the President went on live. The Corsair's Twitterfeed on Sunday night was a rich personally curated carousel of commentary from friends, media types and news organizations. This is, of course, a far more engaging alternative to just watching CNN, which humorlessly reported the same three or four facts over and over until the President finally took command of the platform.

On Twitter I was able to ferret out additional facts about the use of the intelligence community and the actual military operation, things that might take a while to be vetted on the fly by a cable network of the calibre of CNN. Such is the mystery of how a media pioneer eventually becomes a lumbering dinosaur.

I also was able to interact with friends and gleen the humorous Tweets of Paula Froelich and Paper magazine's Mr.Mickey. How can a cable network compete against my pals? From the New York Times:

"Thanks to Twitter and Facebook, some CNN watchers had already heard the news. Unconfirmed reports — that turned out to be true — of Osama bin Laden’s demise circulated widely on social media for about 20 minutes before the anchors of the major broadcast and cable networks reported news of the raid at 10:45 p.m., about an hour before Mr. Obama’s address from the White House.

It was another example of how social media and traditional media deal with the same news in different ways and at different speeds. Just as CNN once challenged newspapers and evening newscasts with a constant stream of images from the Persian Gulf war, Twitter and Facebook have become early warning systems for breaking news — albeit not always reliable ones.
Twitter saw the highest sustained rate of posts ever, with an average of 3,440 per second from 10:45 p.m. to 12:30 a.m. Eastern time."

The reference to CNN, which seems to be getting lost in the social media universe is particularly acute. It was an amazing social media whirlwind of a weekend, beginning with the Royal wedding and ending at the reports of bin Laden's death. And no social media platform benefitted more from these international events more than Twitter.

Out: TV. Television viewership is dropping -- not by much, but it is still eye catching. In a recession -- or, as the experts tell us, a recovery (wink-wink) -- one would think that television viewership (as opposed to, say, moviegoing) would be up. Why do less people have TVs when movie tickets are almost $20 a pop?

This kind of dovetails into my current media obsession/argument that television -- particularly cable and broadcast news shows -- need to become more like social media (for further reference see "In: Twitter" above), incorporating its methodology into their increasingly irrelevant format.

Peter Kafka on AllThingsD lays out the situation thusly:

Americans watch more TV than ever. Except for the Americans who don’t have TVs at all any more: Nielsen says the percentage of American homes with TV sets has declined to 96.7 percent, from 98.9 percent last year.

The numbers will kick off another round of debate about cord-cutting, cord-shaving, and cord-nevers–young ‘uns who grew up watching Google’s YouTube, Hulu, Netflix, etc., and have never found a reason to get a TV.

Indeed it will. The drop is small enough to be almost negligible if media navel gazing wasn't such an exact science in places like a blog such as this. Then again it is not inconceivable that this drop is made up largely of young people that have decided to opt out of making a television purchase altogether. Then it would be a very significant drop, a possible beginning of a downward trend. And such a trend would be enough to turn even the steeliest television executive's blood frigid.

In: New Jersey, Blue State. The President is visiting New York City's Ground Zero on Thursday to give comfort -- symbolic and literal -- to the families of the victims of September 11, and, ancillary to that, psychic comfort to the entire tri-state area which also suffered psychologically from those attacks.

One of the outcomes of Thursday's victory lap will be a securing the tri-state area for the 2012 election. New York and Connecticut are firmly in the President's camp. David Plouffe, the President's '12 strategist knows this. New Jersey, however, elected the popular Governor Chris Chrystie, dislodging Jim Corzine, and a strong argument could be made that New Jersey is trending purple, a possible battleground state. This would cause Plouffe sleepless nights because he knows -- as does everybody else -- that the President cannot win a second term if he doesn't win a due-or-die state like New Jersey.

All questions hereafter regarding the President's viability in the Garden State after Obama gives his speech at Ground Zero will evaporate.

Out: Pakistan. To paraphrase Norman Mailer: Why are we in Afghanistan? Called the graveyard of Empires because of its peculiar geographical location, its unusually brutal topography and a history of destroying hubistic nations, Pakistan is draining America of its treasure at an astonishing clip at a period in which we are the most vulnerable economically. Two reasons stand out sharply as to why we are in that godforsaken place: One, Osama bin ladin and two, the Taliban might -- or so they tell us -- overtake Pakistan, a nation with nuclear weapons that America cannot allow to go rogue. Since Osama bin Laden is no longer a factor, all eyes are on that quixotic US-Pakistan relationship.

How does one explain such a strange, toxic but perhaps necessary bilateral relationship? Lara Logan on CBS has been very strong in covering the growing criticism of America's relationship with Pakistan for the last two days. This blog has always argued that instead of shoving American dollars down the gullets of the paranoid generals of their security apparatus, we should be empowering lawyers and judges, who are well-liked and trusted by the majority of people in Pakistan. It is not inconceivable that Pakistan's ISI views America as wholly allied with India -- the world's largest Democracy and their mortal enemy -- and could be hellbent on misleading us in the War on Terror while simultaneously draining us of as much cash as possible.

This blogger cannot think of a more perfect excuse to get-the-fuck-out-of-dodge and declare victory. We may never get another chance at exiting. As argued by George Friedman of STRATFOR:

"The U.S. mission in Afghanistan, as stated by Obama, is the destruction of al Qaeda—in particular, of the apex leadership that once proved capable of carrying out transnational, high-casualty attacks. Although al Qaeda had already been severely weakened in Afghanistan and has recently focused more on surviving inside Pakistan than executing meaningful operations, the inability to capture or kill bin Laden meant that the U.S. mission itself had not been completed. With the death of bin Laden, a plausible, if not altogether accurate, political narrative in the United States can develop, claiming that the mission in Afghanistan has been accomplished." 

If we were to leave Afghanistan it would put a tremendous burden on Iran, India, China, Pakistan and Russia to deal with that problem. And with the exception of India, which really doesn't deserve the headache, this blogger cannot think of a better constellation of troublesome nations worthy of the distraction of dealing with with the problem of the graveyard of Empires.

Better Them -- India excepted -- than Us.

Page One Trailer: Inside the New York Times

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"For years, the agonizing search for Osama bin Laden kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the Central Intelligence Agency drove up behind a white Suzuki navigating the bustling streets near Peshawar, Pakistan, and wrote down the car’s license plate. The man in the car was Bin Laden’s most trusted courier, and over the next month C.I.A. operatives would track him throughout central Pakistan. Ultimately, administration officials said, he led them to a sprawling compound at the end of a long dirt road and surrounded by tall security fences in a wealthy hamlet 35 miles from the Pakistani capital. On a moonless night eight months later, 79 American commandos in four helicopters descended on the compound, the officials said. Shots rang out. A helicopter stalled and would not take off. Pakistani authorities, kept in the dark by their allies in Washington, scrambled forces as the American commandos rushed to finish their mission and leave before a confrontation. Of the five dead, one was a tall, bearded man with a bloodied face and a bullet in his head. A member of the Navy Seals snapped his picture with a camera and uploaded it to analysts who fed it into a facial recognition program." (NYTimes)

"In recent years, the Metropolitan Museum's Costume Institute Gala has embraced accessible themes that are easy to get pumped up about: superheroes, supermodels, American style. But this year, the fashion world's biggest party took a bittersweet, more deeply felt turn inward, organizing itself around the work and memory of the late Alexander McQueen. Last night's unveiling of Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty, an exhibition devoted to the British designer, set his often incendiary oeuvre against a lyrical, emotionally charged backdrop, including a replica of a 30-foot oak tree in the Great Hall, reminiscent of those on McQueen's property in Sussex, England; a time-lapse video of roses blossoming by his collaborator Nick Knight; and an after-dinner set by Florence + the Machine. Outside earlier, McQueen dresses added an extra-theatrical flourish to the star-packed red carpet. Daphne Guinness sported head-to-toe feathers with her trademark aplomb, and the spilling train of Gisele Bündchen's scarlet McQueen gown, alongside that of Fergie's Marchesa, combined to create a sort of no-go zone for anyone walking in. For those who'd known McQueen, memories poked their way through the evening's glamour. 'Certain pieces were almost torturous in a way. I saw so many girls almost faint backstage,' Natalia Vodianova recalled." (Style) 

"Osama Bin Laden is dead. You feel better? Is America any safer now that one of the billions of people on the planet is gone? You think any terrorists anywhere are hanging up their spikes and leaving the track with tears in their eyes? What, you think they’re all scared now? Is the mission accomplished? The death of Osama Bin Laden means very little. It will be something that right-wing news outlets will either downplay or credit to the last president. It could be a useful tool for the Obama 2012 campaign, especially if they don’t mention it. One thing I have been thinking about is how buoyant the president seemed at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. He must have known that American forces had O.B.L. in their sights. That may even explain the release of the president’s birth certificate a few days earlier—the warm-up before the pitch. If the death of Osama Bin Laden brings any peace to those who lost loved ones on that awful day in September 2001, that is a great thing. It is more likely, however, just a painful reminder of what was lost." (Henry Rollins)

"I left Sotheby’s about 7:30 and went over to the Fifth Avenue apartment of Tom and Diahn McGrath who were having a dinner for Richard Leakey, the African paleoanthropologist and conservationist. Mr. Leakey grew up in Kenya, as did his father and his father’s father. It was a rare kind of family life although not unusual for those Anglos who settled in Africa because they love the land and its peoples. Mr. Leakey’s parents were both archeologists and brought up their children sharing their professional interests. I first heard of him in the early 1970s when he had already gained renown for his discoveries, through excavation, of earlier hominid fossils. He was a guest on the Dick Cavett Show, a gem of a talk show that competed with Carson in the early 70s and inevitably lost the race in some programming executive’s office, to the great misfortune of its viewers. Cavett often had guests who were brilliant or charming or eccentric or all the above. The famous Katharine Hepburn remark about the secret of the success of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film team: 'she gave him sex and he gave her class' was first uttered by her on Cavett’s show." (NYSocialDiary)

"Howard (Stern) started the show talking about his morning and how great it's been so far. He was reading about the mission to get Osama bin Laden and it was very impressive. He said it could make the best movie of all time. Robin said it was about 12 guys that did it. Howard said it's a remarkable story. He said it's like something you'd see in 'The Bourne Identity' or something ... Howard said the team went in and one of the Navy SEALS put a bullet into his brain and then one into his chest. He said this was a kill mission. They're not even sure if Osama's gun ever even fired. None of his bullets ever hit an American. Howard said he's glad that they shot him with an American bullet. Howard said this can't bring back the people who died in 9/11 but at least there was some justice. Howard said the President handled this perfectly. Robin (Quivers) said people are now talking about how cool our president is. Robin said he knew all of this was going on while he was doing the correspondents dinner and stuff like that." (Marksfriggin)

"The 2011 Cannes Film Festival doesn't get underway until next week, but the market is already getting busy. Sierra/Affinity, which will be handling such titles as the Gavin Hood-directed adaptation of Ender's Game, has bolstered its sales force by hiring Jonathan Kier as exec veep of sales. Kier was senior veep of international sales and distribution for The Weinstein Company. Sierra/Affinity principals Nick Meyer and Marc Schaberg will be handling product for Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, OddLot, Bold Films and Incentive Filmed Entertainment. Paul WS Anderson is re-teaming with his Three Musketeers collaborators Constantin and Summit on Pompeii, a period pic which builds drama around the 79 A.D. eruption of Mount Vesuvius. That was a devastating explosion estimated to have been more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The subject matter, and its impact on Rome, is something James Cameron has long wanted to cover in grand detail, after his Lightstorm optioned the Charles Pellegrino book Ghosts of Vesuvius, with plans to do the same kind of thorough forensic recreation as he gave to Titanic. Anderson, who raced and beat a rival Musketeers movie, will certainly get underway first, as Summit will sell the movie in Cannes..." (Deadline)

"Gisele Bundchen let her hair down at Saturday night's Spring Fling party. The supermodel took to the floor and was 'dancing energetically, she was really going for it,' a source said. Another witness at the party hosted by Harry Josh and Nur Khan -- dubbed the 'unofficial pre-party' for last night's Costume Institute Gala -- told us, 'Fergie danced a few feet away from Gisele, and the two greeted each other before the real dancing started. Fergie was having a blast, surrounded by a group of guys who were Beyoncé 's dancers. The guys started having a dance-off, competing to impress Fergie. Her bodyguard pushed away a few overzealous dancers.'" (PageSix)

"To understand the impact of bin Laden’s death on the global jihadist movement, we must first remember that the phenomenon of jihadism is far wider than just the al Qaeda core leadership of bin Laden and his closest followers. Rather than a monolithic entity based on the al Qaeda group, jihadism has devolved into a far more diffuse network composed of many different parts. These parts include the core al Qaeda group formerly headed by bin Laden; a network of various regional franchise groups such as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP); and last, a broad array of grassroots operatives who are adherents to the jihadist ideology but who are not formally affiliated with the al Qaeda core or one of the regional franchises. The al Qaeda core always has been a fairly small and elite vanguard. Since 9/11, intense pressure has been placed upon this core organization by the U.S. government and its allies. This pressure has resulted in the death or capture of many al Qaeda cadres and has served to keep the group small due to overriding operational security concerns. This insular group has laid low in Pakistan, and this isolation has significantly degraded its ability to conduct attacks. All of this has caused the al Qaeda core to become primarily an organization that produces propaganda and provides guidance and inspiration to the other jihadist elements rather than an organization focused on conducting operations. While bin Laden and the al Qaeda core have received a great deal of media attention, the core group comprises only a very small portion of the larger jihadist movement. As STRATFOR has analyzed the war between the jihadist movement and the rest of the world, we have come to view the battlefield as being divided into two distinct parts, the physical battlefield and the ideological battlefield." (STRATFOR)

"General Electric CEO Jeffrey Immelt has done 'a very good job' as CEO of General Electric, says the former head of NBC Universal, Jeffrey Zucker. Mr. Zucker made his comment in response to a question I asked at the annual alumni luncheon of the Harvard Crimson, which was Saturday at the Harvard Faculty Club. Mr. Zucker had said that because of Saturday Night Live and the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, NBC had a well-developed tradition of 'making fun of management.' Speaking of making fun of management, I asked, what about GE CEO Immelt? ... Asked by another questioner about his own failures and what he learned from them, Mr. Zucker said, 'I was not able to get NBC Entertainment, our prime-time schedule, turned around.' He said of the network prime-time shows, 'It was 5% of our bottom line, but it was 105% of our perception. I put two people into those jobs, and they both failed,' he said. 'I screwed that one up twice.'" (TheFutureofCapitalism)

"Which hot fashion designer -- perhaps upset that he didn't get the call to design that dress -- was spotted stumbling out of the Boom Boom Room, yelling, 'Kate Middleton is a vanilla whore!' on the eve of the royal wedding while his equally inebriated posse cackled? . . . WHICH supposedly straight star kept talking up 'hot women' at the Vanity Fair/Bloomberg party in DC Saturday night, while his rumored boyfriend remained close by his side? . . . WHICH high-ranking Republican was heard saying, 'Donald Trump is a jackass,' to his table at the White House Correspondents Dinner?" (PageSix)

"Sean Avery, the professional hockey player and former Vogue intern, is adding another job title to his resume: restaurateur. His new Tribeca restaurant Tiny’s had a grand opening this weekend when Avery organized a birthday party for our very own Derek Blasberg. (His other partners in the new eatery are fellow hockey players Hendrik Lundquist and Aaron Voros, and Matt Abramyck of deceased hotspot Beatrice Inn.) Riccardo Tisci, Alexander Wang, Dasha Zhukova, Vladimir and Julia Restoin-Roitfeld, Giovanna Battaglia, Hilary Rhoda and Catherine Keener were some of the revelers who came for dinner and then dancing in the second floor dining room. Just before midnight a mariachi band came in to serenade the birthday boy when he blew out his birthday candles, and when the party started wrapping up, new Nolita pizza restaurant Rubirosa delivered some much needed cheesy carbohydrates." (VMagazine)

Trump, Interrupted

This blogger isn't implying anything. Just saying. But it is more than a little curious that for the second time less than a week the President of the United States interrupted that short-fingered vulgarian. First, he stepped on The Trumper's long winded New Hampshire presser on Wednesday morning with the power of the office of the President. "Mr. Obama’s appearance on television — even as Mr. Trump was holding forth in New Hampshire — offered a sharp contrast for the White House, which is eager to portray the president as focused on the serious issues facing the country," said The Caucus Blog.

Then, yesterday, "Celebrity Apprentice" was -- and there is no ther way to put it -- "Trumped" by the announcement from POTUS that Obama was dead. Talk about a pre-emptive attack.

And we will not even entertain the double-barrelled beating Trump took at the hands of the President and Seth Meyers at the Washington Correspondents Dinner.

Ah, well: Prez up, Trump down and all that.

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Contrary to the intelligence community’s long-held belief that bin Laden was in a lawless 'no man’s land' on the Pakistani border, bin Laden had been hiding in a three-story house in a one-acre compound in Abbottabad, about 35 miles north of Islamabad, the Pakistani capital. Officials describe it as a relatively affluent community, with lots of residents who are retired military.  'Bin Laden was living in a relatively comfortable place: a compound valued at about $1 million,' a senior U.S. official told POLITICO. 'Many of his foot soldiers are located in some of the remotest regions of Pakistan and live in austere conditions. You’ve got to wonder if they’re rethinking their respect for their dead leader. He obviously wasn’t living as one of them.' Officials described the raid as the culmination of years of highly advanced intelligence work that included the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which specializes in imagery and maps, and the National Security Agency (NSA), the 'codemakers and codebreakers' who can covertly watch and listen to conversations around the world. On June 2, 2009, just over four months into his presidency, Obama had signed a memo to CIA Director Leon Panetta stating 'in order to ensure that we have expanded every effort, I direct you to provide me within 30 days a detailed operation plan for locating and bringing to justice' bin Laden." (Politico)

"Al Qaeda will have a difficult time finding a successor. Ayman al-Zawahiri, bin Laden’s chief lieutenant, has few of the qualities that would make for a successful leader. He’s anti-charismatic. He ran his own Egyptian terror organization, al-Jihad, into the ground. Anwar al-Awlaki, the Yemeni-American cleric now underground in Yemen, will continue to cause trouble, but it is unlikely that he will ever gain the standing of his Saudi predecessor. The fact that bin Laden was found in a compound in a wealthy retirement community populated in large part by former Pakistani military officers raises dire questions about the relationship of the Pakistani army and its intelligence community to radical Islamic terrorists. For the past decade, as America has poured billions into a country where about one in a hundred citizens pays income taxes, the Pakistani military/intelligence complex has gone into the looking-for-bin-Laden business. Now, they are out of business. If it is true that Pakistani intelligence was helpful in locating bin Laden, and kept that matter secret, then we can begin to sort out our fraught relationship with that troubled country on a more equitable, trusting basis. If that turns out not to be the case, then there will be a dreadful reckoning to come." (Lawrence Wright)

"This just isn't Donald Trump's weekend. First on Saturday he was skewered by President Barack Obama at the White House Correspondents Dinner because of Trump's relentless attacks relating to Obama's birth certificate. Then tonight, the news that Osama bin Laden had been killed by an Obama-ordered U.S. Navy Seals mission broke in the middle of Trump's Celebrity Apprentice boardroom scene on the East Coast. The broadcast networks all interrupted their regular programming around 10:45 PM ET. Quipped one Twitter user: 'Donald Trump demands Osama Bin Laden's death certificate.'" (Deadline)

"Everyone in our family knows that our Grandfather bin Laden had two main passions: work and women. He was extremely successful in both arenas. His ethic for hard work and total sincerity won him the complete trust of the King. With hard work came financial rewards, which enabled my grandfather to satisfy his second passion: women.  In my culture, it is not uncommon for men, particularly the very wealthy and the very poor, to have four wives simultaneously. My grandfather was soon so rich that he not only married four women but continually emptied several of the four marriage positions so that he could fill the vacated slots with new wives. With so many wives and ex-wives, my grandfather had so many children that it was difficult for him to maintain a relationship with each child. As was the custom, he did give extra attention to the eldest sons, but most of his children were seen only on important occasions. This did not mean he did not follow the progress of his children; he would take time out of his busy schedule to make cursory checks to ensure that his sons were advancing in school or that his daughters married well. Since my father was not one of the eldest sons, he was not in a position to see his father regularly." (Omar bin Laden, son of Osama)

"They say Washington, DC, is 'Hollywood for ugly people,' but the Beltway got a major infusion of good looks Saturday night at the annual White House Correspondents Association dinner. Staid Washingtonians also got a dose of Hollywood-style drama. Sean Penn caused a stir right off the bat when he wouldn't follow everyone else in putting his hand over his heart as the room stood and sang 'The Star-Spangled Banner' at the Hilton International Ballroom. The surly star then spent dinner all over new flame Scarlett Johansson. 'She plopped down in his lap, and they were kissing,' described a shocked witness. The two left the room for 'an hour,' sources said, and Penn came back to the table with his tie askew." (PageSix)

"Four days before the fall of Kabul in November 2001, Osama bin Laden was still in town. The Al Qaeda leader’s movements before and after September 11 are difficult to trace precisely, but, just prior to the attacks, we know that he appeared in Kandahar and urged his followers to evacuate to safer locations in anticipation of U.S. retaliation. Then, on November 8, he was in Kabul, despite the fact that U.S. forces and their Afghan allies were closing in on the city. That morning, while eating a meal of meat and olives, he gave an interview to Hamid Mir, a Pakistani journalist who was writing his biography. He defended the attacks on New York and Washington, saying, 'America and its allies are massacring us in Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, and Iraq. The Muslims have the right to attack America in reprisal.' Six months later, when I met Mir in Pakistan, he told me that the Al Qaeda leader had, on that day, appeared to be in remarkably good spirits. Kabul fell on November 12, and bin Laden, along with other Al Qaeda leaders, fled to Jalalabad, a compact city in eastern Afghanistan surrounded by lush fruit groves." (TNR)

"Howard (Stern) said Obama made a great speech and got right into it. He said it was very inspiring. Howard said he watched the President and Seth Meyers at the Washington Correspondents Dinner. He said Trump was in the audience and it was kind of a fun event. Howard said the President went off on Trump and then Seth Meyers went off on him too. Howard said he likes Trump but he doesn't agree with the whole birther thing. He said he doesn't believe the guy is actually running for President. He said he feels that he's harming his brand going out and saying all of the stuff he's saying. He's turning off a lot of people doing this stuff. Howard said he has some radical views and he's coming off as a tough guy. Robin said he's catering to a lot of people who aren't so smart. Howard said they're a bunch of dummies. Robin said that's one way to put it. Howard said he doesn't think Trump needs this. He said the guy is a builder and not that many people have gotten famous doing that. He said it's an amazing thing to become famous for that. He said he probably takes no advice as far as public relations. He said he has gotten famous on his own but now he's becoming hated by a lot of people. He said they embarrassed him at that event and he could tell the guy was embarrassed. Howard said the guy doesn't need this and he's not coming off well." (Marksfriggin)

"While at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library on 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue, hundreds more New Yorkers gathered for the Municipal Art Society of New York’s annual dinner and presentation of the 2011 Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal to Diane Von Furstenberg. The Municipal Art Society was founded in 1893 by some far-seeing New Yorkers who were concerned about the burgeoning growth of the city which in less than four decades had moved from a center south of Fourteenth Street to what we now call midtown and north today. They’d broken ground in the development of Central Park in that time period and the population of the city had the Civil War. Fortunately for us New Yorkers, 'vision' abounded among the city civic and cultural leaders. Tim Gunn, Caroline Kennedy, and Chair of The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission, Robert B. Tierney, were Thursday evening’s honorary chairs in honoring Ms. Von Furstenberg/Mrs. Barry Diller for her work as an urban pioneer, civic activist and preservationist." (NYSocialDiary)