Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"The leaders of the G-20 countries have played a crucial role in rescuing the world from the brink of economic and financial disaster. They agreed to an impressive agenda in Washington in November 2008, and at their April 2009 London summit committed themselves to an integrated strategy to rescue the world economy from the brink of depression, to reform international financial regulation, and to transform the governance of the world's most important global financial institutions. But now the G-20's accomplishments are in danger of unraveling, because these countries have failed to implement their agreements on reform of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). These reforms would enhance the role of the emerging market and developing countries, and help to cement the commitment of those countries to the global system. A failure now would produce multiple black eyes for the G-20 and represent a setback for the still-precarious world economy. The challenge for the G-20 is to live up to its subsequent pledge in Seoul in November 2010 to implement a two-step reform of the IMF's governance. The first step would double IMF quota subscriptions, which are the core financial resources the IMF uses to lend to other members. Although this step would not significantly increase the overall financial resources of the IMF due to offsetting reductions elsewhere, it would modestly redistribute voting power away from the advanced countries and toward fast-growing emerging market and developing countries. In addition, the Seoul agreement included the adoption of an amendment to the IMF charter that would redistribute seats on the IMF's executive board away from Europe. The G-20 leaders promised that this combined first step would be implemented by mid-October of this year, when the IMF's annual meeting will be held in Tokyo. The second step agreed to in Seoul called for a revision of the formula used to adjust IMF quota shares by January 2013. This revision would be followed by a substantial increase in IMF quota subscriptions and overall financial resources by January 2014. This also promises to further increase the IMF voting power of emerging and developing countries, which was a key to winning their agreement to the overall reform package." (ForeignPolicy)

"Vanity Fair held a spirited memorial service for Christopher Hitchens on Friday afternoon, in the Great Hall of Cooper Union. Graydon Carter welcomed attendees — who included colleagues Anna Wintour and David Remnick, as well as Tina Brown, Stephen Fry, Steve Kroft of '60 Minutes' and Jason Sudeikis — with a description of Hitchens as a wit, a charmer and a bit of a scalawag. 'He was the beau ideal of the public intellectual,' Carter said. 'He was an editor’s dream, and he was a reader’s dream.' Those who participated in the program — including Tom Stoppard, Christopher Buckley, Salman Rushdie, Ian McEwan, Sean Penn and Olivia Wilde — chose to largely rely upon Hitchens’ words instead of their own, reading from the late journalist’s books and articles published over four decades. Penn read from a Vanity Fair piece published in 2006 on the poisonous aftermath of Agent Orange on civilians in Vietnam. Buckley chose the memoir 'Hitch-22,' while Stoppard drew laughter while reading Hitchens’ description of a Prague policeman as a man 'with eyes so close together he could comfortably get by with a monocle.' Fry said, 'One of the great pleasures of knowing Christopher was having him disagree with you.' He shared Hitchens’ opinion that 'the four most overrated things in life are Champagne, lobster, anal sex and picnics,” to which Fry, who is gay, responded, 'Three out of four isn’t bad.' During his eulogy, Martin Amis explained how their shared idea of happiness involved taking a bottle of whiskey into a film like 'Dirty Beast.'" (WWD)

"Mitt Romney faces a huge likability gap against President Obama — and that means he must turn the presidential election into a contest of policies, not personality. Polls show Obama beating Romney by a 3-1 margin when voters are asked who is more likable, a devastating disadvantage given that U.S. presidential elections have often become personality contests. Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton both parlayed affability and other appealing personal qualities into political success, while George W. Bush’s capacity to exude a 'regular guy' charm helped him win narrow victories against Al Gore and John Kerry, both of whom were viewed by some as stiff and patrician. Those precedents give some Republicans pause for thought when it comes to Romney’s prospects. But they argue that if Romney can ensure the 2012 race comes down to a decision about picking the most competent leader for a country facing tough economic times, he can still prevail. Romney 'may never be able to close that gap [on likability],' according to GOP strategist Matt Mackowiak. 'But if you asked me whether I would rather be trailing on the economy or trailing on likability — well, it’s not even a close choice,' he said. 'And that’s where Romney is right now.' 'Let’s face it, the question is not Mitt versus Barack,' said Rep. Frank Lucas (R-Okla.), who predicted voters would throw Obama out of office because of his policies.He defended Romney as 'pleasant and bright' but also suggested that likability would be far from the be-all and end-all. 'The question is: Do you want four more years of Barack Obama’s policies and philosophies?' he said." (TheHill)

"The Spicy Love Doctor was running late. A well-heeled crowd one recent Sunday afternoon had packed into the second-floor lounge of Beijing's Trends Building -- home to the publishing offices of several glossy magazines, including the Chinese editions of Cosmopolitan, Esquire, and Harper's Bazaar -- to hear Wu Di, a contributor to China's Cosmopolitan and author of an alluring new book, I Know Why You're Left. The poised, professional crowd, outfitted in black blazers, leather boots, and trendy thick-framed glasses, was composed mostly of women in their mid-20s to mid-30s -- prime Cosmo readers and all there waiting patiently to hear Wu, who typically charges $160 an hour for "private romance counseling,' explain their surprising plight: being single women in a country with a startling excess of men. When at last she sauntered to the front of the room, microphone in hand, Wu, a pert, married 43-year-old who resembles a brunette Suze Orman (and whose chief advertised credential, it turns out, is an MBA from the University of Houston), surveyed her audience. Then she broke out into a practiced grin and, in the relentlessly chipper staccato common to Chinese public speakers, launched into her talk: a mix of sisterly homily, lovemaking tips, and economics lecture. It's unrealistic to expect that you will be madly in love with one person forever, she warned, or even that passion can be the right guide to marriage. Her authority? No less than the wandering eye of Bill Clinton, which, she told her solemnly attentive audience, "proves that there is no method to sustain feverish lust between long-married couples.; The majority of her talk was devoted not to such timeless aphorisms, but to describing a new conundrum in China: the plight of its sheng nu, or 'leftover ladies.' In popular parlance, sheng nu refers to women above a certain age -- some say 27, others 30 -- who are unmarried and presumably 'left over,' too old to be desirable. Increasingly, sheng nu are a topic of alternating humor and alarm for Chinese newspaper columnists, TV sitcoms, reality dating shows, and studies by government bodies like the All-China Women's Federation; according to its 2010 survey, more than 90 percent of male respondents agreed that women should marry before age 27 or risk being forever undesired." (ForeignPolicy)

"Yesterday’s New York Times carried an article about a man, a social gadfly named Alan Feuer. The article was written by a man of the same name who is a reporter for the Times. Mr. Feuer (pronounced Foy-er), the reporter asked me if I regarded Mr. Feuer (social gent) a member of “Society” in New York. That is a Frequently Asked Question at this desk and not always comfortable to answer because times have changed, of course; and what was Society in New York a century ago or two centuries ago, differs almost beyond recognition from today’s social groups which often differ greatly from each other as well, despite all having a certain prominence among its members. It was probably the Liberation Movements of the 1960s that completed the transition of the 'old' society to the 'new.' That also included the Presidency of John F. Kennedy as well as the enormous influence of his wife Jacqueline on the public consciousness of power and social prominence.  I told Mr. Feuer of the Times that Mr. Feuer, the social, whom I was not aware of, was an habitué of social events that were very social but not exactly Society today. It’s hairsplitting but it retains focus on the 'center' of what could still be called 'Society' – far different from the world of the Astors and the Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age, as well as the WASPdom of the Boston-Philadelphia social axis of that age, not to mention the earlier Knickerbockers who regarded themselves as Way Above the hoi-polloi and the 'arrivistes' of the Gilded Age." (NYSocialDiary)

"SOME months after Jeremy Bernard became the first man and openly gay person to be the White House social secretary, he visited an assisted living center in suburban Maryland. There, he and Letitia Baldrige, the 86-year-old legendary social secretary of the Kennedy administration, spent what Mrs. Baldrige fondly remembers as a convivial hour and a half over a French white wine chatting about guest lists and other secrets of the job.  Mrs. Baldrige said she also offered Mr. Bernard an important piece of advice: 'Keep your mouth shut.' And so he has. Now more than a year into what has become a massive event-planning job for the most famous couple in the world, Mr. Bernard, 50, has played a crucial but largely silent role managing some of the biggest, showiest parties in the history of the White House." (NYTimes)

"Walt Disney Studios film chief Rich Ross' abrupt departure Friday comes at a difficult time for one of the largest, oldest and most successful of Hollywood's historic entertainment companies.
It has also called into question Walt Disney Co. Chairman and Chief Executive Robert A. Iger's ambitious attempt to modernize the 89-year-old studio by placing a TV executive in charge of his film division and accelerates uncertainty at a time when all entertainment companies are struggling to come to terms with a dying DVD business and long-term declines in movie ticket sales. Dismissed after less than three years in the top movie job, Ross leaves a legacy of costly box-office flops, including last year's 'Mars Needs Moms' and the recent Martian adventure film 'John Carter,' for which Disney plans to take a $200-million write-down — one of the largest losses in movie history. Iger's loss of confidence in his handpicked film chairman suggests that he may have overreached in his attempt to set a new course for Disney's movie division and miscalculated Ross' ability to make the transition from television to film. Industry observers said that Ross, a former Disney Channel executive, never effectively adapted to the world of film. He all but conceded as much in his resignation email to staff Friday, acknowledging that the chairman's job was not 'the right professional fit.'" (LATimes)

"'I thought Jeff was going to limit us in terms of the designs we got to work with, but he said, 'My world is yours,' Lisa Perry reported at her Upper East Side boutique last night. 'I mean, wow.' The Jeff in question is Jeff Koons, the latest artist to lend his work to Perry's designs, following Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. And unlike the late Pop artists, Koons was able to come appreciate the results. "This cocktail dress with the whipped cream and a cherry on it,' he said of one frock that replicated one of his whipped cream paintings, "the bottom looks like it could be coconut.' After cocktails, the group decamped to Perry's art-filled Sutton Place penthouse (the former home of C.Z. Guest) for a dinner with Tory Burch, Yvonne Force Villareal, and David Maupin. 'I would like to propose a toast to Jeff,' Perry said before the appetizers were served, "whose heart is as big as the diamond on the terrace.' That would be the five-foot-tall Koons Diamond sculpture just outside." (Style)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Leaving the bustling arrivals gate, a dump truck joins a fleet of airport taxis full of deep-pocketed safari goers, business travelers, and missionaries departing from the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport, the largest hub in east and central Africa and a proud symbol of Nairobi's growing economy and global presence. Carrying food waste from the day's flights, the truck eventually turns toward the city slums, while the cabs continue to the capital's affluent business district. Their routes expose two very different, yet interwoven, narratives to the rise of east Africa's most populous city. At roughly the same time every day, the unfinished salads, sandwiches, bread, yogurt cups, and refuse from Nairobi's incoming flights are transported to the Dandora Municipal Dumpsite -- the capital city's only dumping location.  Far from the expressways and skyscrapers of downtown, the truck meets a landscape of smoke-filled horizons and metallic, waste-born mountains. Smoke from burning piles of trash scratches the inside of the throat and obscures the bent backs of human and animal scavengers scattered across the smoldering lot. When the sun is overhead, the smell of four decades of waste is overwhelming." (ForeignPolicy)

"The leading congressional contenders to be Mitt Romney’s running mate have significantly different legislative track records that accentuate their pros and cons.  On Capitol Hill, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) top the vice presidential shortlists of many handicappers.  Further down on those lists are Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) and Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.).  Each of the vice presidential contenders has strengths that the Romney campaign could tout. And each has weaknesses that Democrats would sink their teeth into." (TheHill)

"Those are the famous lyrics from Joni Mitchell’s 1969 classic, 'Both Sides Now.' (The meaning of the song, with its ice cream castles, flows of angel hair, moons, Junes and Ferris wheels, has been endlessly analyzed.) Miss Mitchell, held up as the high priestess of folk/pop music by millions, has been out of sight in recent years. She has concentrated on her painting. Less pleasantly she suffers from something called “Morgellons Syndrome” which she has described as 'a slow, unpredictable killer.' However, we might have some good news for fans of this great artist. Joni’s old friend David Geffen is reportedly 'wooing' her to perform a series of shows at his Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. Those in the know and/or of a certain age, recall that Joni’s celebrated 'Free Man in Paris' song was written with Geffen in mind. Another old pal of Joni’s Herbie Hancock, is also supposedly encouraging this venture, which could include some of the musicians who worked with Joni back in the day. If all that is planned and hoped for comes about, there will be a concert highlight sure to send Mitchell’s fans into delirium — a track by track recreation of the legendary Court and Spark album, which spawned such hits as 'Help Me (I Think I’m Falling') and 'Raised on Robbery.'" (NYSocialDiary)

"Seeing Manhattan rising from the distance is always a treat. I am not sure it’s possible for anyone brought up around these parts to appreciate entirely what New York—the idea of New York—meant to us who came from the Old Continent. I was eleven years old and had seen only war and devastation: dead, stinking bodies in the city parks, bullet-scarred buildings, and people starving on the sidewalks, too weak to die in the privacy of their hovels. Then I was suddenly whisked from home and into a TWA first-class Stratocruiser stopping in Rome, Paris, London, Shannon, Gander, Boston, and finally New York. I had fallen madly in love with the stewardess but quickly forgot all about her upon seeing Manhattan: the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, Grand Central Station, Fifth and Madison Avenue, high fashion on Park, money on Wall Street—this was no mere city but a romantic notion, a dream come true. To this day, when seeing the place from afar, the frisson is there. Unlike Paris, New York has not fully emerged on canvas. Edward Hopper is the only man to capture the city’s moods and shadows, its loneliness and loveliness, its red-brick housing lined up like soldiers on parade, the fire escapes standing out like rifles. Paintings of the city are depictions of the real place, and no one except for Hopper has come close. That’s because New York is a novel and a movie, not a painting. New York is Henry James and Edith Wharton and F. Scott Fitzgerald, an imaginary mystical place rather than the Impressionist painting called Paris." (Taki)

"Over the past couple of months, Gawker Media founder Nick Denton has made it clear that he doesn’t like blog comments very much, and that includes the ones on his own sites such as Gizmodo and Jezebel. He said so during an interview at South by Southwest, where he called the long-held idea that comments could somehow capture the intelligence of a site’s readership 'a joke.' So Gawker is remaking comments from the ground up, Denton told GigaOM in an interview in his SoHo office on Wednesday — and the vision behind the changes that will be rolling out soon is nothing less than a reinvention of what the company is about, and also an attempt to literally flip the world of online content on its head. This isn’t the first time Gawker has tried to fix commenting: the site got a lot of attention several years ago for launching an ambitious new commenting system that was supposed to offer readers an incentive system to encourage good behavior — a little like the membership model that other sites, including the New York Times, have adopted, which awards readers benefits for posting good comments. But Denton says now that this system actually turned out to be a massive mistake, and that all it did was encourage social-media gurus and professional commenters to game the system in order to get rewards .." (GigaOm)

"If Champagne is the diesel fuel of the party circuit, Dom Pérignon would like to suggest it's got applications for the art world, too. The house threw a dinner last night for two polymaths, artist Rita Ackermann and composer Koudlam, at Acme's basement lounge. Chloë Sevigny, Michael Stipe, and Terence Koh gathered to watch a loop of Ackermann's videos play on a wall, and after dinner, Koudlam took to the mike to perform. Did bubbles make it all possible? You suspected they were at least responsible for some of the attendee high jinks, like the arm-wrestling match Michelle Harper had with Jenny Shimizu, refereed by Johan Lindeberg. Who won? 'Jenny, are you kidding?' said Harper, laughing." (Style)

The Christopher Hitchens Memorial, April 20
From thisislondon:

"The long-awaited Christopher Hitchens memorial service is to take place in New York on April 20, a week after what would have been his 63rd birthday. Hitchens, who died in December, had no funeral, instead donating his body to medical science. The service is being organised by Vanity Fair magazine at the Cooper Building in Lower Manhattan. It is invitation-only  — those who wish to attend should contact Vanity Fair."

Media Whore D'Oeuvres

"Finally, about Qaddafi's Viagra. This came up in our discussion about the competing claims on Saif al-Islam Gaddafi by the ICC and the Libyan interim government, and whether Libyan courts could possibly be 'capable and willing' to try him and other top regime officials. 'Absolutely not' at the current time, ( Arab international law expert Cherif Bassiouni) answered, though it would not be impossible to create an effective body with 5-10 good judges and some training, capacity building, and international support. Such a trial would be conducted according to local law, however, which would not necessarily accord with the statutes of the ICC. But Saif personally posed another problem for prosecutors: establishing his role in his father's demonstrably paranoid and capricious decision-making. And here Bassiouni did, indeed, begin to speak about Qaddafi's sex addiction. (I started coughing right about then, as you'll see in the video). Qaddafi, he argued, had serious psychiatric problems for which he had long been self-medicating. He was extremely secretive and paranoid. On top of that, well, let's go to the tape: 'Most people don't know, he was almost addicted, he had sexual addiction, consumed enormous amounts of viagra and other similar pills, which had a very serious negative effect when combined with his other medication'  How did Bassiouni know this? Sometimes, it's perhaps better not to ask." ((ForeignPolicy)


"THE buzz from Zimbabwe’s whirring rumour mill had Robert Mugabe, the country’s 88-year-old president, fighting for his life in a Singapore hospital. His hardline defence minister, Emmerson Mnangagwa, known as “the crocodile”, was said to be hatching a deathbed succession deal. A coup by the defence chief, said fearmongers, could mean renewed chaos. Hogwash, retorted loyalists. The president had flown to Singapore on a private holiday, and would soon be back. In fact, Mr Mugabe did rush home to quash the rumours. Yet everyone knows that the president visited Singapore no fewer than eight times last year. This was said to be for check-ups following an eye operation. But according to WikiLeaks, a top Mugabe confidant told American diplomats in 2008 that the president was suffering from prostate cancer and was not expected to live for more than three to five years. Despite all the hair-dye, Botox and revitalising drugs pumped into him by his doctors, Africa’s oldest leader has appeared increasingly doddery of late. While he continues to play his public role reasonably well, everyone knows he could pop off at any time. The sudden death of nearby Malawi’s president, Bingu wa Mutharika, from a heart attack on April 5th, has helped to focus concern." (Economist)

"Wednesday/the Michael’s lunch. Mob scene. Bonnie Fuller was at her regular Wednesday Table One with a whole gang, beginning with Gerry Byrne, plus Marc Carver, Carlos Lamadrid, Judge Jeanine Pirro, Elizabeth Park, Norma Kamali (whose got a great boutique around the corner on 56th between Fifth and Sixth); Luanne Zurlo of the World Fund, Lynn Tersoro, Marcy Fisher, James Meigs ... Around the room: Diane Dimond, Judy Twesky, Jennifer Bristol, Brian Balthazar; next door: William Lauder with Steve Rubenstein; then Charles Grodin and John Gabriel. Stan Shuman was with James Murdoch, the Murdoch son who stepped down from his post at BSkyB two weeks ago in a haze of the British phone hacking scandal. Mr. Murdoch, who is the youngest son of Rupert, in this restaurant jammed with media people, is a very conscientious, studious looking young man (he’s forty but he looks younger), ironically innocuous considering his high public profile and the current state of things. He went largely unnoticed by the crowd, which no doubt was fine with him." (NYSocialDiary)

"Howard (Stern) started the show talking about how he was listening to Ted Nugent. He said that guy is a lunatic. He said he's just nuts ... Howard said Ted made some statements and he had the audio of what he said. Howard played the clip and Ted was talking about why President Obama and Hillary Clinton are criminals in his mind. Ted wouldn't say what crimes they committed but he said everyone knows what they are. Ted also said we have to get involved and engaged. He said we let the enemy in and bent over for them. Howard said he's not sure what he's talking about. Robin said she doesn't care. She said he's a rock and roller and that's all he is. Howard said he should be playing Cat Scratch Fever and that's it. Howard said maybe that's the problem ... Howard said he would like to see President Bush put on trial. He thinks that he actually did some things wrong. Howard said they really do have to get Ted back in there to talk about this stuff. Howard played more of Ted talking about the President. Howard said Ted was talking about ''chopping their heads off'' at the voting booth and he doesn't think he was literal. Howard said the Secret Service is keeping an eye on him now after some of the comments he made. Howard played more of Ted's rant and how this country became what it was because they defied the King. He said we're Braveheart. Howard said that this guy really isn't brave just because he shoots animals with a gun. Ted was talking about chopping their heads off in the clip so Howard pointed out that a lot of guys who have guns are just a bunch of pussies." (Marksfriggin)

"When we ran into Judd Apatow at Vanity Fair's party for the Tribeca Film Festival, the filmmaker fretted that he was far too underdressed. 'I thought this was like a film festival, where you don't dress up!' he said to us. 'I gotta go in there and talk to Graydon Carter in jeans?' It turns out, Apatow's fears were justified, as we discovered later at the party while chatting up Vanity Fair head honcho Carter. 'Did you see Judd Apatow?' the impeccably styled Carter asked us. 'He's here. Underdressed, as usual.' What would Carter do about the situation? 'Tolerate it. What else?' We tried to explain on Apatow's behalf that he didn't realize there was a dress code, but Carter wasn't having it. 'Yeah, that's what he said,' sniffed Carter. 'That's formal wear in Southern California, you know. He does have a suit. I've seen him in a tuxedo. He is capable of looking better. I mean, if this was in California, that would be acceptable, dressing like an eight year old.'" (NYMag)

"Media Power Mazel Tovs: Also from inside The Daily, we hear Media Power Couple (Class of ’11) Mike Nizza and Claire Howorth are engaged! Matrimony fever appears to be spreading: Another Media Power Couple (Class of ’11) from The Daily—their Fearless Leader/Murdoch Dream-to-Reality Manifester Jesse Angelo and Rebecca Dana of The Daily Beast are also, we hear, now engaged and set to marry in the coming months. Boy, to be a fly on a caterer’s tray at that wedding. Also, we had something about destination weddings being the norm here vis-a-vis the whole 'you can only read it on an iPad' mandate but it didn’t make it through the subway ride this morning ... Adios, Nomigos: Here’s a not-at-all-fond adieu to the absurdity that are entitled commenters, who Gawker Media killed en masse at 6AM yesterday morning. Somehow, the simple point of 'THEY ARE COMMENTERS' escapes most high-falutin’ discussions about their nature. To briefly editorialize, it is this writer’s opinion that comment sections should be treated like cow dung: disregarded and overlooked as a rule, except when in search of psychoactive fungi growth. This is the first time comments have been offline on all Gawker posts since September of 2005, when they first introduced them. Silence is golden." (Observer)

Gawker HQ Rooftop Party: Ryan Tate's 20% Doctrine

image via Neal Ungerleider

Last night the weather was perfect for a rooftop party celebrating the launch of Ryan Tate's new book The 20% Doctrine at Gawker headquarters downtown. The collaboration of the good weather and the endless supply of booze kept the downtown digerati well lubricated for the evening. At some point, apparently, some neighbors -- the wackness! -- allegedly egged the party, fouling the lovely Jennifer Wright of TheGloss ("Seriously! It's all over my sweater. I feel so terribly, terribly alive!")-- but we had by then made our escape, headed uptown via Taxi, and were on to that Macbeth thing on 27th street. As it happened, as this humble blogger was walking out, the DJ -- who was quite eccectic -- played the Mad men inspired Zou Bisou Bisou. A lasting impression, to be sure, DJ.

Mingling amongst the crowd: Nick Denton, filmmaker Chloe Smolarski, tech journalist Neal Ungerleider, Rachel Sklar, Caroline McCarty, Rex Sorgatz, artist Hideki Takahashi, creative editor of Art is Talking David Barish and Jezebel's Jenna Sauers.

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Well, there are two types of decline. The first is relative economic decline, and I think this should be uncontroversial. Funnily enough, it isn't yet fully uncontroversial, but it should be: namely, that America's share of the global economy is diluting. In 2000, America had about 31 percent of the global economy, so just under a third. And by 2010 it was down to 23.5 percent, just under a quarter. That is a remarkable shift. So relative economic decline shouldn't be something we debate too much because it's happening and it's going to continue to happen. And I think the U.S. share would be likely to fall to a little more than a sixth in the next decade or so, unless there are dramatic changes in the pattern and distribution of global growth. One of the reasons why I emphasize this is because there's one very accomplished author whom I generally admire, Bob Kagan. His book, The Myth of American Decline, makes the point that America's share has been unchanged for 40 years and unchanged between the turn of the century and now. The facts are wrong. And I picked that up because the president picked it up and essentially cited the core pieces of Kagan's argument in the State of the Union [address]. While it's understandable President Obama wants to refute the idea that he's America's declinist-in-chief -- and it is a line of attack from Mitt Romney -- I do think it means that we're going to have a 2012 election where on both sides, both candidates will start on a false premise: that relative economic decline is simply to be ignored or dismissed. And I'd describe that as a kind of intellectual ostrich position." (ED Luce)

"For one thing, the Republican party has been desperate to break the hammerlock the Democrats maintain on Jewish voters. For another, he can only shore up support among those evangelicals who believe a whole Israel is necessary to complete the dispensationalist fantasia of rapture, murder and Churchill Downs raining from the skies. But most importantly, it's not certain whether those two conditions matter, because Romney couldn't even one-up Eric Cantor. In November, 2010, Cantor, the House GOP Whip, spoke to Netanyahu before his meeting with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He pledged that the GOP-controlled U.S. House of Representatives could be relied upon to serve as a check against the Obama presidency. Cantor told Bibi that congress would protect the interests of a foreign power and act as a block against the branch of government actually intended to handle diplomacy. In Eric Cantor's high school civics class, evidently government was divided into executive, judicial, and Israel. And even then, God knows if that matters, since Bibi has basically been campaigning against Obama since 2009 anyway. In April, 2009, former intifada prison MP and current Atlantic writer Jeffrey Goldberg sock-puppeted Bibi's pronouncement that either the U.S. or Israel would eliminate Iran's nuclear development. It was a clear ultimatum that admitted neither discussion of Iran's ambitions vis-a-vis nuclear energy nor the means of response. Three years later, nothing has changed. This story never changes. In case you're feeling any more exercised by the above, ask, too, if it matters. Because one of the strongest thrusts of Netanyahu's three-year public relations campaign against the Obama administration has been against the latter's predictably polite, impotent tutting about illegal Israeli settlements. (For all the whining about Democrats, the last American president to tell Israel to go stuff it was George H.W. Bush." (Gawker)

"Mitt Romney has solidified support within his party for the presidential nomination after Rick Santorum’s exit from the race, but is locked in a tight race with President Obama as attention turns to the general election phase of the campaign, the latest New York Times/CBS News poll finds.Registered voters are evenly split between Mr. Romney and Mr. Obama. The poll finds 46 percent support Mr. Obama, while as many prefer Mr. Romney. Last month’s Times/CBS News poll also showed a close race, with 47 percent supporting Mr. Obama and 44 percent Mr. Romney.A majority of Republican primary voters – 54 percent – now say they would like to see Mr. Romney nominated, including a plurality of evangelical Christians, a group that had formed Mr. Santorum’s base of support. Newt Gingrich is backed by 20 percent of Republican voters, while Ron Paul draws 12 percent support. But the poll continues to show a lack of strong enthusiasm among many Republican voters for Mr. Romney’s candidacy. One in three say they would enthusiastically support him in November. That’s hardly a resounding endorsement from the party faithful. Perhaps reflecting the prolonged nature of the Republican nominating contest, more Republican primary voters, 4 in 10, say they will support him but with reservations, while another 18 percent say they will support him only because he is the Republican nominee, and 8 percent say they will not support him. Evangelical Christians are far more likely than others to say they have reservations about him. But at the same time, a broad majority of Republican primary voters – 63 percent – say Mr. Santorum did the right thing in suspending his campaign last week, including most evangelical Christians. Still, about 4 in 10 evangelical Christians say he should have stayed in the race, compared with just over 2 in 10 among others." (NYTimes)

"(Hugette) Clark died a year ago this coming May 24th. She was two weeks from her 105th birthday. She was very rich and until a reporter uncovered her long forgotten identity, she was totally unknown to the world, including her neighbors. She wasn’t totally unknown and forgotten in the end because of the money. Many many millions, undetermined at the time, but riches in real estate, jewels, cash and securities all the legacy of her father William A. Clark, one time Senator from Montana and a multimillionaire whose fortune originated with copper mining stocks and claims. Senator Clark died in 1925. In his lifetime he had had two wives and two families. Huguette was a member of the second family and the youngest of his children ... Alas poor Huguette. Her jewels were sold at auction yesterday at Christie’s. The original estimate for the 17 items in the sale was $6 to $12 million. However, a large, rare pink 9 carat diamond alone brought $15 million. It had been acquired from Dreicer & Company of Paris in 1910, probably for Anna Clark, as had most of the other items which were in turn inherited by Huguette. The total sale was more than $20 million with commissions, the second largest estate jewelry sale this year (after Elizabeth Taylor’s estate auction). Most of the jewels had been kept in a vault since the 1940s when Huguette was still a young woman in her 30s. It may be that she rarely saw and just as rarely wore them, if at all. Like so many other worldly goods she possessed, Huguette had no interest in or use for them." (NYSocialDiary)

"How much money do you make a month selling weed? Drug Dealer: There’s weeks I make $600 profit. But I’d say, on average, it’s about $1200 a month. $1200 is a good, rough figure. And that’s after expenses? That’s profit? Drug Dealer: That’s profit. But you also have a job. You work for tips. Drug Dealer: Yeah, I work for tips. So how much do you make on tips? Drug Dealer: I’d say about $600, $700 a week. That’s more than you make selling drugs! Drug Dealer:Well, I’m working a hell of a lot more than I am I’m when I’m selling. I’m spending far more time working than I am selling weed. I mean I spend probably about a quarter of the time selling weed. [Giggling] A quarter of the time …Drug Dealer: [Pause. An weary groan] A quarter of the time … Why not just sell more drugs? Drug Dealer: Because there has to be a demand for it and part of my philosophy in selling drugs is that I’m not going to actively seek it out. By actively seeking it out, you expose yourself to a greater risk of getting caught. If there’s ever a point I get enough business that I don’t have to work a [makes air-quotes] legitimate job, I will absolutely take that opportunity. The second I’m making $1000 a week just selling weed and not doing anything else but selling weed, I’m going to take that up. How long have you been selling? Drug Dealer: I started in 2006 and, like most other dealers, started by being a heavy user of the product. I realized that if I bought in bulk and sold some of it, then I could essentially smoke for free. I wasn’t making any money at first. It actually took up to this past year for me to begin seeing any kind of profit off of it. And it wasn’t until I curbed my own habit that I started to see that. Drug Dealer: Is this like those rules you mentioned the other day? Drug Dealer: That’s the Ten Crack Commandments, by Notorious BIG — 'Don’t get high on your own supply.'" (TheBillfold)

"For the city’s Democratic donor class, it can be a dreary procession. Night after night, candidates for high office from around the country make their way to Manhattan to rattle the tip cup. The same hors d’oeuvres, the same bromides, the same canned answers to the same audience of well-heeled party types who can cough up the couple-grand entrance fee. But this year, local Democrats say, a new figure has emerged on the scene, someone who has sparked interest and enthusiasm in the city not seen since Barack Obama’s presidential run, or perhaps even Hillary Clinton’s first Senate run, a slight woman from the Oklahoma Plains, by way of Harvard Yard, named Elizabeth Warren. Her fund-raising appearances here seem part revival meeting, part think-tank policy session. At an appearance at the Rockefeller Center-area law firm Dewey & LeBoeuf, Ms. Warren surprised the overflow crowd of 50 or so by going around the room and asking each person who they were and what brought them there, lending the proceedings the air of summer camp reunion, a feeling only enhanced when a dozen or so of the people in attendance said that they were in fact students of Ms. Warren’s from her two decades on the faculty of Harvard Law School. 'That was personally to me, very, I don’t want to say moving—that is a little bit of an exaggeration—but it was telling,' said Marc Weiss, the president of Digital Innovations Group, a nonprofit think thank that supports innovation on the web and a regular contributor to Democratic candidates. 'Former students standing up and saying how she had impacted the decisions they made about what kind of law they practice. How many college professors can you say that about?'" (Observer)

"'I have ridden a lot of bulls in my day,' said filmmaker Casey Neistat as he arrived at the Art Production Fund's annual hoedown last night. But at the event, honoring artist Kiki Smith, art dealer and adviser Mark Fletcher, and Sotheby's auctioneer Tobias Meyer, the bull was mechanical—a no-go for Neistat. 'If it's not going to put me in danger,' he said, adjusting the brim of his cowboy hat, 'I don't want to ride it.' Though it was lacking live animals, Yvonne Force Villareal and Doreen Remen's bash had all the other makings of a genuine country hoedown, with hay on the ground, a family-style BBQ spread for dinner, and a room full of cowboys and -girls (Steven Klein, Tara Subkoff, Erin Wasson, Michael Stipe, and Lake Bell among them). Not everyone received the chaps-and-boots memo. While Michelle Harper admired Giovanna Battaglia and Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld's all-in getups, she said, 'I am party-hopping tonight, so I had to go more classic. Personally, I am over wearing themed outfits—I feel like chic always wins. Can you imagine if I tried to ride the bull in this?]'" (Style)

"The congressional candidates former President Clinton is supporting in 2012 have something in common: They all backed his wife’s presidential bid four years ago. Sources close to Clinton said he wants to help those who put themselves on the line to support the former first lady’s campaign for the White House. But with Hillary Clinton serving in the Obama administration and Chelsea Clinton working for NBC News, Bill Clinton is the only member of the family in a position to hit the campaign trail. Clinton announced on Tuesday that he will travel to Texas in April to endorse Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-Texas), who faces serious primary opposition. Reyes not only endorsed Hillary Clinton in 2008, he served as her campaign co-chairman in charge of the Southwest region. Earlier this month Clinton picked sides in an intraparty fight when he backed Rep. Mark Critz (D-Pa.) over Rep. Jason Altmire (D-Pa.). Altmire didn’t endorse in the 2008 primary, but Critz was a top staffer for former Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a stalwart Clinton ally. Critz, who is squaring off with Altmire in a redistricting-induced primary on April 24, has aired television ads in Pennsylvania promoting the endorsement from the popular former president. Clinton’s move to endorse in the Altmire-Critz race prompted speculation about what he might do in another Democratic primary — this one in New Jersey, where Democratic Reps. Bill Pascrell and Steve Rothman are battling it out ahead of a June primary. The loyalties from 2008 were clear: Pascrell backed Hillary Clinton; Rothman backed then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.)." (TheHill)

Enough About Coachella and the Tupac Hologram

M

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”Turkey is re-emerging as a significant regional power. In some sense, it is in the process of returning to its position prior to World War I when it was the seat of the Ottoman Empire. But while the Ottoman parallel has superficial value in understanding the situation, it fails to take into account changes in how the global system and the region work. Therefore, to understand Turkish strategy, we need to understand the circumstances it finds itself in today. The end of World War I brought with it the end of the Ottoman Empire and the contraction of Turkish sovereignty to Asia Minor and a strip of land on the European side of the Bosporus. That contraction relieved Turkey of the overextended position it had tried to maintain as an empire stretching from the Arabian Peninsula to the Balkans .. a single thread connected both periods: the fear of Russia .. During the Cold War, Turkey was a strategic imperative of the United States. It faced the Soviets to the north and two Soviet clients, Syria and Iraq, to the south. Israel drew Syria away from Turkey. But this strategic logic dissolved in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union. By then, the union had fragmented. Russian power withdrew from the southern Caucasus and Balkans and uprisings in the northern Caucasus tied the Russian military down. Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan gained independence. Ukraine also became independent, making the status of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea unclear. For the first time since the early years of the Soviet Union, Turkey was freed from its fear of Russia. The defining element of Turkish foreign policy was gone, and with it, Turkish dependence on the United States. It took a while for the Turks and Americans to recognize the shift." (STRATFOR)

"In his classic essay Shooting an Elephant, George Orwell describes an experience he had as a colonial police officer in Burma. Under public pressure from a crowd of townspeople, he puts down an out-of-control elephant against his own wishes, describing it as the moment he 'first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East.' As the people of the town debate the merits and legality of his actions, he wonders 'whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.' It's tempting to wonder if any similarly penetrating insights or self-reflections have come to Spanish King Juan Carlos as he lies in the hospital, having injured his hip on an elephant shooting trip in Botswana that has ignited a firestorm of controversy. In addition to being about the least politically correct way to spend your vacation (was the baby seal-clubbing junket all booked up?) the optics of this were pretty terrible at a time when more than half of young Spaniards are out of work and Spanish banks are facing yet another downgrade. Plus, it turns out that the king -- who is Spain's official head of state -- didn't inform the government that he was leaving the country and might have used public funds in the process." (ForeignPolicy)

"Just when the Blue Dogs thought it couldn’t get any worse, it did. Two years after the 2010 midterm elections decimated their ranks, the coalition of conservative Democrats is poised to get pummeled again in November — moving the Blue Dogs dangerously close to extinction. Of the 24 remaining Blue Dogs, five are not seeking reelection. More than a half-dozen others are facing treacherous contests in which their reelection hopes are in jeopardy. It’s a rough time to occupy the right wing of the Democratic Party. 'It’s a tough environment out there,' said former Alabama Rep. Bud Cramer, a longtime member of the House Blue Dog Coalition. 'Their numbers are down. Redistricting has not been kind to them.' Cramer nailed it: Redistricting is at the root of the Blue Dog problem. The once-in-a-decade line-drawing has forced some of them to compete for seats that have become even less friendly to Democrats — and those seats weren’t very friendly to begin with. Utah Rep. Jim Matheson, Georgia Rep. John Barrow and North Carolina Rep. Mike McIntyre are among those who have been thrust into deeply Republican territory after being targeted in GOP-led redistricting efforts in their home states." (Poliico)

"And then, last night I missed the great interview Liz Smith had with Bette Midler at the ***** club (it’s one of those crusty private clubs that forbids the use of its name in print, a unique bearing of false modesty known only to those among the well-fixed, or previously well-fixed). I don’t know what Liz and Bette talked about but I do know those two girls could talk up a Broadway show, let alone a storm. Just the two of them. And I know Liz would be happy to break into song and dance anytime she was asked. Plus they both have stories – miles and miles and miles of ‘em and each better than the last. wasn’t there because my friend Elizabeth Stribling (Libba to her friends, families, followers) was receiving the Legion d’Honneur over at the French Consulate at 934 Fifth Avenue from the Ambassador of France to the United States, Francois Delattre. Libba is a Francophile par excellence. So is her husband Guy Robinson, and her daughter (also Elizabeth). As Elizabeth Stribling she is one of the most successful real estate brokers of the last 30 years in New York with three offices and 350 brokers and staff. As Libba, with Mr. Robinson, she has been very active in French restoration both here and there, and in promoting French/US relations, among other civic and charitable interests. The evening began with a (French) champagne reception at the Consulate, a great mansion built in the manner of a Roman palazzo, in 1926 by National City Bank (now Citi) president Charles Mitchell. It was acquired by the French in 1942. Libba and Guy Robinson have a lot of friends including many of whom share their love of France and all things French. Many were there last night to toast Libba." (NYSocialDiary)

”Art world It couple Julian Schnabel and Rula Jebreal have split again — and the famed artist has already moved on with a new partner half his age. After dating for five tempestuous years, Schnabel and Jebreal are over for good, friends say. Artist and filmmaker Schnabel, 60, who won a best director Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for ‘The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,’ is now seeing 29-year-old Danish supermodel May Andersen, a former Victoria’s Secret and Sports Illustrated model. The new couple were photographed at the recent Urs Fischer opening at Gagosian Gallery. And on Friday night, Schnabel was seen leaving new Bowery hot spot Bantam hand-in-hand with the leggy blonde. Schnabel left his second wife after meeting beautiful journalist, screenwriter and ‘Miral’ author Jebreal, 38, in 2007. Friends say Schnabel and Jebreal had an intense and fiery relationship. They fell in love after meeting in Rome, where she was working as a journalist, and decided to make her book into a film directed by Schnabel. Their romance led to a divorce from his second wife Spanish actress, Olatz López Garmendia. We reported in March 2011 how Schnabel and Jebreal got into a heated exchange in front of MSNBC ‘Morning Joe’ staff at 30 Rock, where Schnabel was heard shouting in the makeup room at Jebreal that he didn’t like how the stylists had curled her hair. The couple denied ’any physical altercation’‘ but said, ’We had an argument in a public setting as couples sometimes do.‘“ （P6）

“Even in cine-mad Manhattan, where the admonitory ghost of Susan Sontag haunts theaters by night, the new movie that everybody’s talking about is being talked about by a shrinking number of everybodies. It’s seldom the presiding topic of cocktail chat and intellectual quarrel, as it was when critic Pauline Kael led the wagon train. (Her successors at The New Yorker, David Denby and Anthony Lane, might as well be tinkling the piano in the hotel lobby for all the commotion they create.) Movies divide and stratify; television, like sports, is the democratic includer. Mention Breaking Bad, Madonna’s Super Bowl halftime Cleopatra-a-go-­go procession, Abby Lee Miller’s latest volcanic diatribe on Dance Moms, or Downton Abbey and all the birdies start to pipe up, except for the one pill pres­ent (there’s always at least one), who takes pride in declaiming that he or she never watches television—they only listen to NPR. Pity these poor castaways. They must stand there with glassy, uncomprehending eyes while the rest of us tongue-flap about the latest installment of a favorite series down to the last crumb, like Proust scholars. A sophisticated sensation such as public television’s creamy soap Downton Abbey (Upstairs Downstairs with fancier airs and more elbow room) corrals an audience and achieves a critical mass that explodes and expands beyond its actual viewership, the series’s cast, costumes, and signature strokes (most of them executed from on high by Maggie Smith, as if she were a pithy Lady Bracknell Pez dispenser) inspiring tributaries of parodies, homages, fan fiction, fashion shoots, and tweedy commentary. Like Twin Peaks, 24, Mad Men, and The Sopranos before it, Downton Abbey enriches the iconography and collective lore of pop culture. It replenishes the stream. (It also provides the perfect layup for PBS’s next prestige import, starting in April: the BBC adaptation of Sebastian Faulks’s best-selling novel Birdsong, which will once again elegantly chuck us into the W.W. I trenches.) By contrast: for those of us who have fallen out of romance with movies, its franchise blockbusters seem to be leeching off the legacy of pop culture and cinema history, squandering the inheritance with endless superhero sequels and video-game emulations that digitize action stars into avatars and motion-capture figures, a mutant species with an emotive range running strictly in shades of bold.” （VF）

"There is a very simple reason why some of Africa's bloodiest, most brutal wars never seem to end: They are not really wars. Not in the traditional sense, at least. The combatants don't have much of an ideology; they don't have clear goals. They couldn't care less about taking over capitals or major cities -- in fact, they prefer the deep bush, where it is far easier to commit crimes. Today's rebels seem especially uninterested in winning converts, content instead to steal other people's children, stick Kalashnikovs or axes in their hands, and make them do the killing. Look closely at some of the continent's most intractable conflicts, from the rebel-laden creeks of the Niger Delta to the inferno in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and this is what you will find. What we are seeing is the decline of the classic African liberation movement and the proliferation of something else -- something wilder, messier, more violent, and harder to wrap our heads around. If you'd like to call this war, fine. But what is spreading across Africa like a viral pandemic is actually just opportunistic, heavily armed banditry. My job as the New York Times' East Africa bureau chief is to cover news and feature stories in 12 countries. But most of my time is spent immersed in these un-wars. I've witnessed up close -- often way too close -- how combat has morphed from soldier vs. soldier (now a rarity in Africa) to soldier vs. civilian. Most of today's African fighters are not rebels with a cause; they're predators." (Jeff Gettleman)

Texts From Hillary

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"It has been extremely gratifying to watch the swift reaction to the coup perpetrated last month against President Amadou Toumani Touré of Mali, a democratically elected figure who had planned to step down after an upcoming election. After barely more than a week, Ecowas, the West African regional organization, closed all borders with Mali, froze the flow of currency, and imposed travel bans on the junior officers who had led the coup. The United States, France, and other Western nations issued sanctions of their own. Angry crowds protested the coup in the streets of Bamako, Mali's capital. And after less than three weeks in power, the junta agreed to disband in favor of an interim civilian government. Hooray for democracy! I have a soft spot for Mali. When I spent time there in 2007, I was struck by the peaceable atmosphere of Bamako, at least compared to other African capitals I knew. People spoke of cousinage, a sense of consanguinity which promoted an easy familiarity across ethnic lines. Malians seemed disinclined to fight one another; the traffic circles featured statues of animals rather than soldiers. And, for what it's worth, Mali makes beautiful music and lovely textiles. At the time, the country was hosting the biannual meeting of the Community of Democracies; poor as it is, Mali had been holding free and more or less fair elections since 1991. Mali was then, and suddenly has become once again, a reassuring symbol of Africa's commitment to democracy. But then why the coup?" (James Traub)

"The class of freshman Republicans that swept into the House of Representatives at the start of 2011 followed a decisive shift of voter sentiment over Barack Obama’s seeming failure to master the economic crisis he inherited. Ever since, it has typically been portrayed as a disciplined force of Tea Party ideologues sworn to resist any compromise acceptable to the tax-and-spend liberal, or leftist, or socialist—the epithets tended to escalate—illegitimately occupying the White House. Now, as the eighty-seven freshmen Republicans—who account for more than one third of their party’s 242 seats in the House—prepare to face the voters in November, bearing both the advantages and burdens of incumbency, the picture of intransigence they’ve drawn of themselves will present no problem for those in right-leaning districts; in other words, most of them. But in a campaign that still has seven months to run, just enough seats will be up for grabs to make the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s rosy claim that the party is edging into a position to take back the House appear wishful, dubious, but not altogether outside the realm of the possible.^{*" (NYRB)}

"Audiences made The Hunger Games the first film since Avatar to hold the number one spot for four consecutive frames as the runaway smash hit fended off competition from a trio of new releases. The Lionsgate pic held up incredibly well dropping only 35% to an estimated $21.5M which was enough to lead the box office field. The decline was its smallest yet and especially impressive since it was coming off of the Easter holiday session. Hunger Games has now amassed a stunning $337.1M in only 24 days of release shooting it up to number 22 on the list of all-time domestic blockbusters just ahead of the $336.5M of 2007's Spider Man 3. The Katniss sensation is now on course to outgross every Harry Potter and Twilight film in North America, even the final Hogwarts pic which was helped by 3D surcharges. Overseas, the blockbuster continued to fade away dropping around 40% to an estimated $15M from 60 territories upping the overseas total to $194M and the worldwide haul to $531.1M. At its current pace, Hunger Games may reach $390M or more from North America and over $650M worldwide, not bad for a film that cost $75M to produce. All eyes now shift to Zac Efron who aims to topple the four-time champ next weekend with his romance The Lucky One which has been gaining traction." (BoxOfficeGuru)

image via NYSD via Target Press/Barcroft Media

"Spain is rife these days with economic and labor problems. This is not easy for anyone; and there are massive demonstrations across the country. The pressure on both the government and the people is very great. For King Juan Carlos it must have seemed like a perfect time for a little getaway to Botswana. For? Hunting elephant. On a very expensive safari. Said to be one of the most intelligent creatures in the animal kingdom, already an endangered specie, the elephant remain a challenge for this royal hunter. Besides, kings are, come to think of it, endangered too. 200 years ago the world was loaded with them. Today there are maybe a dozen ... Is it karma or is it the moon? As you may have read here a couple of weeks ago, things have not been going well for the Spanish Royal Family. The source of their problems are, admittedly, the source of everybody’s problems — the economy of the world. There are also financial scandals of the king’s son-in-law which have even touched the Crown Princess. Someone with a title could maybe end up in jail. And then, as if that weren’t enough, last week the king’s 13-year-old grandson (son of the Crown Prince Felipe of Asturias) shot himself. In the foot. Not in Botswana hunting elephant, thank God.Guns and King Juan Carlos are historically an uneasy combination." (NYSocialDiary)

"Monaco’s royal family is clearly not enjoying the coverage of the 'Battle Royal' brawl that landed Pierre Casiraghi (Grace Kelly’s princely grandson) in the hospital with a broken jaw. We’re told that lawyers for the royals are firing off legal letters to media in France and Germany who picked up The Post’s exclusive story on the Feb 12 brawl at Meatpacking club Double Seven. Amazingly, they claim the fight is a 'private matter' despite businessman Adam Hock’s arrest and court proceedings. Hock has rejected a plea deal, with lawyer Joseph Tacopina insisting his client was the victim and alleging Casiraghi and crew including Stavros Niarchos were 'habitual bar brawlers.' They’re back in court May 23." (PageSix)

"You would never take a second glance at 716 Jackson Place if you were strolling through the neighborhood around the White House and Lafayette Park in Washington, D.C. But the unmarked, four-story, white-painted townhouse with brown sandstone steps is easily the most exclusive club on the planet. You have to call the White House for reservations — and at the moment, only four men are eligible to use it. This is the home of the Presidents club, a building that the government acquired in the late 1950s but Richard Nixon reassigned in 1969 for the sole use of former Presidents when they came back to town. At the time, Nixon was concerned mainly with keeping his restless predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, happy; Johnson left office knowing a great many secrets about Nixon, which Nixon naturally preferred remain classified. But in the end, Johnson never had occasion to stay there. Gerald Ford first used the clubhouse, and since then it has served as a discreet Washington hideaway when former Leaders of the Free World come to town. George Herbert Walker Bush used to stay there when Bill Clinton was in the White House; but his wife Barbara didn't love the place. At the time, the quarters were decidedly spartan: a couple of bedrooms, a parlor, some pictures on the wall. But under President George W. Bush, the townhouse was extensively renovated using private funds, and it's now an elegant sanctuary less than a minute's walk from the White House gate. Everything inside is new, polished, freshly painted, done up in tastefully muted greens, browns and creams. On the floor near the entrance is a modest blue rug, bearing the presidential seal. On the walls of the first floor parlor are framed prints from 150-year old-magazines, ancient maps of the federal city — along with framed pictures of the last four Presidents — and the current commander in chief. The rooms are immaculate; the spaces are quiet; and the building feels secure." (Time)

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"This is the mood: those at the top were irresponsible and greedy. Those at the bottom had nothing to lose, because the mortgages being peddled required no down-payments. Those in the middle – who’d worked and saved and invested their money in their houses – got hit. But who exactly did the dire deed? With so many harmed, why isn’t someone in jail? That’s what my driver would like to know. He’d like to know why he should trust the financial system any more, since its minions inspired false confidence, made fast and loose with the public’s hard-earned savings, and then scampered away with the money bags. But should anyone care whether he trusts it or not? He’s just a small player. There are, however, millions like him. When distrust in a system becomes widespread among small players, it throws up something like Occupy Wall Street, or like the Tea Party. Or like, for instance, the French revolution. Before that game-changing event, a privileged class that made the rules – rules favouring itself – overspent on a foreign war and then tried to stabilise the nation by overtaxing the already ruinously taxed populace. Confronted with protest, the aristocrats responded with inflexibility and prevarication, and dedicated themselves to preserving their own advantages at the expense of everyone else. If this sounds in any way familiar, it may be bracing to recall that before long, heads were being sliced from necks, blood was running in the streets, and France, riddled with internal dissension, lost its position as the most powerful country in Europe." (Margaret Atwood)

"IT WOULD look like the trading floor of a bank, were it not for the casual clothes and dorm-room atmosphere. The cavernous open-plan headquarters of Barack Obama’s re-election campaign houses over 300 workers seated in serried rows, jabbering into phones and tapping purposefully at computer keyboards. Haphazard decorations—a Justin Bieber poster, a team flag for the Montana Grizzlies, a picture of a beaming staffer with the president himself—mark out each worker’s territory. Half-eaten muffins, crumpled sandwich wrappers and small cairns of orange peel speak of deskbound dedication. A ping-pong table sits unused in a corner; the various televisions tuned to news networks have been muted. One corner of this football field of desks is given over to 'regional pods', which oversee the campaign in different parts of the country. Nearby sit teams that focus on particular slices of the electorate, including the young, the old, women, religious groups, racial minorities and gay voters. The IT department occupies a whole bank of desks, as does the one charged with drumming up support via Facebook, Twitter and the like. There is a training division, a scheduling unit, a travel desk and an in-house printing shop. There are media monitors, spokesmen, speechwriters, video editors and graphic designers, not to mention fund-raising co-ordinators, accountants, lawyers and a knot of workers devoted solely to typing up the various reports and disclosures required by the Federal Election Commission. Plenty of empty desk-space remains, in anticipation of further hiring before November.Yet this hive of electioneering is only the most visible manifestation of a campaign that has been gathering steam for over a year now, as a spokesman explains. Obama 2012 has over 100 offices spread across nearly every state (they seem particularly proud of their outpost in fiercely Republican Wyoming). In Florida, a perennial swing state, it has 18. Some 700 staffers and thousands of volunteers are already at work for the campaign. Fully 12,000 people applied for the 1,200 internships the campaign offered this spring." (Economist)

"I order sparkling water and (British Vogue's Alexandra) Shulman has a Virgin Mary. She mixes it vigorously with the stick of celery, spilling tomato juice on the table, declaring it 'a really good one. It makes you feel like you are having a Bloody Mary even if you aren’t. It’s very good for hangovers.' One might think that hangovers have been airbrushed out of the aspirational world of Vogue, with its upbeat, beautiful frivolity – but Shulman, 54, has not cultivated an image of perfection around herself during 20 years at the helm. Nor has she subscribed to the extreme mythology of the Vogue editor, from the grandeur of Diana Vreeland at US Vogue in the 1960s to its current editor, fiercely groomed industry power broker Anna Wintour. Unlike, say, Emmanuelle Alt of French Vogue, who could make a whippet look hefty, Shulman is curvy. And the result of the subtle make-up, laissez-faire hair and lack of cosmetic work is that Shulman looks younger, and prettier, than a lot of her fashion contemporaries. 'I’ve got to the point where I don’t judge myself [on my appearance] because that way madness lies,' she says, convincingly. 'I know so many people who are upset about not looking as good as they used to but you’ve got to realise that’s what happens and find something else to be interested in.' I ask if she’s ever been tempted to cultivate a grander image: “No, I think it sometimes disappoints people that I don’t have that,” she says, 'but I knew the only way I would be able to do this job was if I didn’t try to create some kind of carapace around myself. Up to a point, I guess, the Miss Down to Earth thing is its own persona ... Sometimes I would like to make people quake more.' Does anyone quake? 'I’ve never seen anyone quake, no,' she replies, laughing at the prospect. Her outfit of black knee-length Marc Jacobs dress with a sketchy pattern, capacious leather handbag perched on the banquette beside her and an armful of assorted bangles (gifts from assorted former boyfriends) is undeniably chic but it doesn’t have the kind of studied glamour that announces to the uninitiated that she is a big deal in the fashion world." (FT)

"But government suppression of dissent is only making the people involved more determined, and also wins them public sympathy. Clearly, it is the issues that lure people to join demonstrations that need to be addressed: Until the people see government commitment to improving basic services and infrastructure, disgruntlement will continue to grow. In a country where the gap between the rich and the poor is growing, there are more and more angry young people. Uganda's Daily Monitor ran an articleon the number of unemployed in the country, arguing that they are a ticking time bomb for the establishment. There is also a great discrepancy in wealth between those who fought in the liberation war and those who did not.  While the government is investing more in the security forces (reports showthat Uganda has, for the first time, exceeded Kenya in military spending), it is doing very little when it comes to providing services for the people and improving infrastructure. (The current state of public infrastructure in this country is appalling)." (ForeignPolicy)

"THE first thing you need to know about the Red Book is that when Harvard graduates talk about it (which they do a lot), they’re not talking about Mao Zedong’s pamphlet of axioms. That is, they’re not talking about 'The Little Red Book' but about The Big One, the one that lands at five-year intervals with the thud of a Manhattan phone directory on the doorstep of everyone who has ever graduated from the college, and keeps on arriving for as long as they live, whether they want it or not, a gift from the tireless alumni association. This trance-inducing volume, a facebook that came before Facebook, consists of dispatches from graduates who have chosen to file and have evaded the terse message 'last known address,' 'address unknown' or (it doesn’t get terser) 'died.' ...'No data exists concerning the percentage of red books that are cracked open the minute their recipients arrive home from work, the playground, an adulterous tryst, what have you,' (Deborah Copaken Kogan writes in her new novel), 'but the author will go out on a limb here and guess 100.'   It’s all there. The deaths of parents, spouses, classmates; the births of children; prostate cancer, depression, money made and money lost, triumphs and tailspins; oceans crossed (or swum) and mountains hiked; dodging mortar in Afghanistan; and, in a few terrible instances, the kind of family tragedies we screen from our conscious minds to get through the day. 'Those are some of the great things and the sorrowful things of 62 earth rotations,' writes Philip Aaberg on the very first page of the 1971 Fortieth Anniversary Report, the most recent edition." (NYTimes)  

  

"Papa Hemingway’s recently published letter to an Italian male friend purportedly revealed the 'human side' of which his admirers were already well aware. (Like Bogie, he was tough on the outside, jelly on the inside.) Until lately, Papa’s haters had a good long run. Soon after Carlos Baker’s matchless biography appeared in 1972, 11 years after Hemingway’s suicide, the naysayers started to gnaw away at Papa. The rats were led by modernists, feminists, and other such rubbish, the kind of non-talented, self-aggrandizing phonies that have turned literature into the unreadable garbage that’s around today. Papa’s straight, short, no-nonsense style didn’t suit them. Magic realism did. It hid their lack of talent. He wrote about tough guys doing the honorable thing, something the sandal-wearing sissies who came after him couldn’t imagine doing.I’ve just finished a 544-pager called Hemingway’s Boat by Paul Hendrickson, in which that old story of Papa versus Scott Fitzgerald comes up, both sides generously treated by the author. In 1933, seven years before his death, poor old Scott was broke, potted, and praying that Tender is the Night would resuscitate his fading reputation. Zelda was institutionalized after a breakdown and her affair with a French aviator which had just about finished Scott. Tender is my favorite book of all time. I read it at 15, immediately after my first visit to the French Riviera. In late-night bull sessions, when fellow students would talk about their future plans, I only had one—go to the Riviera and find Dick Diver and live like him. After that it was Paris, looking for Jake Barnes and Lady Brett. Screw banking and screw shipowning; such trifles were for dullards and bores." (Taki Theodoracopulos)  

"Last night at the landmark Cartier Mansion on Fifth Avenue, the French jewelry powerhouse unveiled a new exhibition, 'New York City in the 70s,' that celebrates the company's iconic designs from the era and the dynamic city that served as inspiration. The exhibit, which will be open to the public from April 13th - May 8th, also highlighted the relaunch of jeweler Aldo Cipullo's nail bracelet -- known as Juste Un Clou -- that he originally designed for the house in 1971 and which has come to symbolize the raw energy of New York in that infamous decade. After a preview of the show uptown, the party moved downtown to Skylight SoHo where guests like Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Olivier Theyskens, and Chanel Iman were treated to DJ sets provided by the Misshapes and James Murphy as well as a surprise performance by 2012 Beautiful Person Rita Ora. " (Papermag)  

"It was the usual intersection of art and fashion at the New Museum's 35th anniversary gala last night, staged in the vast Cipriani downtown space. With Narciso Rodriguez, the Proenza Schouler boys, Leelee Sobieski, and Chloë Sevigny circulating, it was easy to forget it wasn't always this way. 'Twenty years ago, I used to get crap for being into fashion,' Anh Duong told Style.com. 'But nowadays, the art world practically expects its female artists to run around in heels.' Nearby, leading by example, a dressed-up Hope Atherton bantered with friends, and Marilyn Minter chatted with Francisco Costa, the designer of her Calvin Klein cocktail dress. 'Anh's the most stylish artist around," Minter declared. "I'm just trying to age gracefully.' Her trick? 'Wearing lipstick always helps.' The museum gave the evening's special honor to L.A. artist Paul McCarthy for (speaking of aging gracefully) his genre-busting 40-plus-year career." (Style)