A Roundup of Conservative Schadenfreude over Abramson Firing

When Jill Abramson and The New York Times fight, who is the winner? Conservatives.


Conservatives hate the liberal establishments paper of record. Every Presidential election it seems has a moment -- in the primary debates, in the summer before the general election -- where candidates score points with the grassroots by publicly attacking the gray Lady. So this is like conservative Christmas.


Rush Limbaugh found the Jill Abramson firing juicy. “Here you’ve got ‘the Regime’ last week or two weeks ago on income inequality and this pay gap between men and women and here’s the house organ, the gospel, the Bible of liberalism, the most powerful employee outside ownership of the New York Times claims that she is a victim of pay discrimination.”


Is Richard Johnson a conservative? He is certainly right-of-center. Anyway, the great Richard Johnson, who has had his share of liberal enemies in his day, writes today,"The most delicious part of Abramson working for Bloomberg is the possibility that the billionaire will buy the New York Times from the family of chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. Under Bloomberg’s ownership, Abramson could get her old job back." Clearly Richard finds the story delicious.


National Review Online did a little slideshow of some of the Twitterverse commentary. Kevin D. Williamson was firing on all cylanders. "The clash of liberal pieties over the firing of New York Times executive editor Jill Abramson is wonderfully amusing," he says, with relish. And, interoffice and in public Ramesh Ponnuru sent Jim Geraghty a thought from John Heyward of Human Events (how meta is that?), "After enjoying a frothy mug of schadenfreude over the pickle the New York Times finds itself in, we might reflect that this is really a story about cloistered liberals growing up, and learning how their ideology is a poor fit for the real world, where complex situations cannot easily be reduced to cartoons about patriarchy, sexism, and racism."





Newsbusters, of course, is having a grand old time attacking both the Gray Lady and MSNBC -- a twofer. "Although NewsBusters has documented The New York Times’s commitment to pushing a liberal agenda for years, it took a discrimination scandal inside the paper itself for the MSNBC network to air a liberal journalist admitting what everyone already knows but liberals are loath to confess: The Times has a left-of-center tilt, despite its dogged persistence in claiming to be objective."


The comments section -- 492 so far -- of Ken Auletta's New Yorker piece is rife with conservative commentary. Dave Reidel, who writes about movies for the Santa Fe Reporter noted on Twitter, "I had no idea @NewYorker had so many conservative readers. Comments are ridic."


And very conservative.


Check out my daily posts on The Corsair blog here.

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"I arrive at the Bukhara Grill in Midtown Manhattan promptly at 11.30 on a bright Friday morning. The restaurant is empty and I am shown to a table in an alcove near the entrance, where I wait for my guest, Tim Geithner, former US Treasury secretary. We have arranged this early time in order to get long enough together before he needs to leave. Geithner has chosen the restaurant. He knows Indian food well, having lived there as a child for five years. I have known him since the mid-1990s, when he was a young civil servant working for Lawrence Summers at the US Treasury department. (Summers was himself Treasury secretary, in the last year and half of the Clinton administration.) Even then, Geithner was already the person his seniors expected to solve messes. The messes Geithner came to specialise in were financial crises. In the 1990s, he worked on the Mexican and Asian crises. As president of the New York Federal Reserve (2003 to January 2009) and then as President Barack Obama’s Treasury secretary (until January 2013), he was at the centre of efforts to cope with the financial crisis that hit the US in 2007 and reached its peak a year later. My own view is that the people, including Geithner, who dealt with this crisis made big mistakes but also saved the world from another Great Depression. Almost the only thing the left and right of US politics agree upon, however, is that the actions taken during the crisis were a crime and a folly. The reason for our lunch is the publication of Geithner’s book, Stress Test: Reflections on Financial Crises . It is his case for the defence." (FT)







"I began the evening down at Doubles, the private club in the Sherry-Netherland where Toni and Jim Goodale were holding a cocktail reception to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. The Goodales have family, grandchildren and loads of good friends and acquaintances. Jim Goodale, a lawyer, was chief counsel for, and represented the New York Times  in the 'Pentagon Papers' case, among many other matters for the newspaper. He and Toni are major supporters of many literary causes and ventures including PEN/America and The Paris Review. Jim has a CV that could lead you to believe he’s four people because he’s involved in so many organizations, projects, as well as published writer himself. His 'Fighting For the Press; the Inside Story of the Pentagon Papers and Other Battles,' published last year is an eye-opening report on how far we stray from the intentions of our Founding Fathers. That is putting it mildly. 'Fighting for the Press' is not an expose but a treatise on how we fool ourselves over and over. And a lesson for all of us, although God knows there are a lot of lousy students among us.Toni Goodale, besides bringing up a family and participating actively in a number of cultural, charitable and literary matters, also for years ran a prosperous consulting business for foundations and philanthropy. Both man and wife have long been active political supporters on a local, state and national level, and over the years have established themselves as leaders – mainly unrecognized – in the community that is New York. There were about 250 guests to fete this great couple and very successful marriage, with lots of familiar faces from media and what could generally be described as the so-called Liberal Establishment in New York." (NYSD)

media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"At the annual City University Journalism School dinner, on Monday, Dean Baquet, the managing editor of the New York Times, was seated with Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., the paper’s publisher. At the time, I did not give a moment’s thought to why Jill Abramson, the paper’s executive editor, was not at their table. Then, at 2:36 P.M. on Wednesday, an announcement from the Times hit my e-mail, saying that Baquet would replace Abramson, less than three years after she was appointed the first woman in the top job. Baquet will be the first African-American to lead the Times. Fellow-journalists and others scrambled to find out what had happened. Sulzberger had fired Abramson, and he did not try to hide that. In a speech to the newsroom on Wednesday afternoon, he said, 'I chose to appoint a new leader of our newsroom because I believe that new leadership will improve some aspects …' Abramson chose not to attend the announcement, and not to pretend that she had volunteered to step down.As with any such upheaval, there’s a history behind it. Several weeks ago, I’m told, Abramson discovered that her pay and her pension benefits as both executive editor and, before that, as managing editor were considerably less than the pay and pension benefits of Bill Keller, the male editor whom she replaced in both jobs. 'She confronted the top brass,' one close associate said, and this may have fed into the management’s narrative that she was 'pushy,' a characterization that, for many, has an inescapably gendered aspect. Sulzberger is known to believe that the Times, as a financially beleaguered newspaper, needed to retreat on some of its generous pay and pension benefits; Abramson, who spent much of her career at the Wall Street Journal, had been at the Times for far fewer years than Keller, which accounted for some of the pension disparity. Eileen Murphy, a spokeswoman for the Times, said that Jill Abramson’s total compensation as executive editor 'was directly comparable to Bill Keller’s'—though it was not actually the same. I was also told by another friend of Abramson’s that the pay gap with Keller was only closed after she complained. But, to women at an institution that was once sued by its female employees for discriminatory practices, the question brings up ugly memories. Whether Abramson was right or wrong, both sides were left unhappy." (TheNewYorker)

JH couldn't help but capture Blair Sabol in all her green

"Michael’s was its Wednesday self: jammed and happening. On one side of us was documentarian Perri Peltz with Susan Mercandetti, Vice President of Business Development and Partnership for ABC News. Next to them: Diane Clehane with Carlos Falchi and his daughter Kate Falchi and luxury retail guru Mickey Ateyeh. On the other side of us was Nikki Haskell with Judy Price and Saundra Whitney. Next to them in the bay at table one was Glenn Horowitz, Rare book seller and archivist/dealer in 19th and 20th century manuscripts, correspondence. He was with artists Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe, who are represented by the Marlborough Chelsea Gallery. Mr. Lowe is the brother of the famous actor with the same last name.Moving along: Real estate broker Eva Mohr was hosting a table with Diana Feldman. In the corner were actress Vanessa Williams with agent Sam Haskell. Next to them, Herb Siegel (Blair’s uncle) and Frank Gifford, and next to them: international architect Norman, Lord Foster and Lady Foster, next door to mega-literary agent Esther Newberg and former Senator Chris Dodd; and next to them, Pat (Mrs. Gerald) Schoenfeld and two friends. More: Star Jones was lunching with EJ Johnson (son of Magic); investor Steve Ratner; Peter Price; Andrew Stein; PR consultant Jim Mitchell; Susan Duffy of Stewart Weitzman; Nick Verbitsky of United Stations; Judy Twersky celebrating Victoria Shafer’s birthday; Tom Schumacher, the Disney Executive Vice President in charge of the highly success theatrical group ('Lion King,' 'Aladdin,' etc.; PR guru Susan Magrino with Roger Myers, proprietor of Sugar Beach in St. Lucia, who is developing the Glenconner Estates on Glenconner Beach that belonged for years to the late Colin Tennant, the 3rd Baron Glenconner. For years his property on Mustique was a favorite tropical getaway for the British royals including Princess Margaret and her husband Antony Armstrong-Jones, Prince Charles, Prince Andrew, Prince William and his wife Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, and others just like ‘em. When Lord Glenconner died three years ago, he left $48 million to his valet and carer of 30 years, Kent Adonai, cutting out his wife of 55 years and family." (NYSD)





"Annabelle Bond may be crying poverty, but she could be the most pampered, high-maintenance heiress in the world, according to court papers filed on behalf of her ex-boyfriend, Warren Lichtenstein. Annabelle’s father, Sir John Bond, who built HSBC into a banking colossus, is a billionaire. Her boyfriend, Andrew Cader, co-owner of the Tampa Bay Rays, has hundreds of millions of dollars. And Lichtenstein, who runs the Steel Partners hedge fund, is also a billionaire.
Lichtenstein, repped by lawyer Stanley Arkin, is seeking in Manhattan Supreme Court to prevent the enforcement of a one-time $600,000 child-support judgment that Bond, 44, obtained in Hong Kong.
That’s where she lives with Isabella, her 6-year-old daughter with Lichtenstein — who had already been paying $180,000 a year in child support according to the papers. The court papers state, 'At the same time that she is crying poverty in this case, she nonetheless lives in the most expensive section of Hong Kong, has two full-time maids, is driven about in a chauffeur-driven Range Rover . . . and lavished herself with fur coats and horses.' The document says Bond globe-trots about 100 days a year." (Richard Johnson)





"According to The Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy, nearly 50 percent of married women and 60 percent of married men will have an extramarital affair at some point in their marriage. When you consider that these statistics are nearly double what they were a short 10 years ago, clearly this is beyond an issue; it is now commonplace. But it’s far from a surprise; it was predicted. Futurist Alvin Toffler wrote the best-seller Future Shock in 1970, and with matter-of-fact conviction he wrote of 'trial' or 'temporary marriages'—young people’s first marriages, lasting three months to three years—and of 'serial marriages' that would take place after the dissolution of the 'trial marriage' at specific turning points in people’s lives. So, does this mean marriage has 'jumped the shark' and become obsolete? Hardly. Marriage is not the issue. Commitment and loyalty or the lack thereof are at the crux of this. After all, marriage is a legal and/or spiritual binding of two people, but if commitment isn’t there and loyalty becomes a matter of subjectivity or convenience, the marriage is already nonexistent. Cheating then becomes a symptom of a secretly failed marriage. But is it really so black and white, with no grey and no room for mistakes, missteps, or moments of weakness? Do people who cheat want to leave their current marriage? Are they secretly trying to get caught so they’ll have an excuse to get out? I needed answers to these questions (and many others), so I headed where any high-tech junkie looking to cheat on his wife would go: online. The advent of the Internet has made having an illicit affair easier than ever before. Meeting Mr. or Ms. Right, The Sequel, is a mere mouse-click for anyone with a credit card. If you’re looking to hit-it-and-quit-it, there’s AdultFriendFinder.com, Craigslist’s Casual Encounters or Fling.com (among many others). But sex-only semi-anonymous hookups wasn’t where my investigation was headed, as women looking to merely have sex can meet a man anywhere—nightclubs, coffee shops, Facebook, wherever.My hypothesis was simple: women who were looking for an extramarital affair with another married man were looking to connect in some way. If both parties were married, they not only started on even ground, but they had something in common—they were missing something from their current relationship. I needed to uncover the motivations behind starting and maintaining an affair." (DailyDot)

Map 1: Crystal Ball Senate ratings

"It’s become clear over the past few months that Sen. Mark Pryor (D-AR), despite the increasing Republican lean of his state, has been holding his own, or better, against Rep. Tom Cotton (R, AR-4). Several positive polls for the incumbent, including a too-optimistic 11-point lead from NBC/Marist earlier this week, moved the HuffPost Pollster average in the race to 45.2% Pryor, 42.7% Cotton.Democrats are defending seven Senate seats in states that Mitt Romney won in 2012. In three of these races — Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia — we perceive a clear Republican edge, and have for months. Meanwhile, there are three others — Alaska, Louisiana and North Carolina — that we have seen as Toss-ups for months, and close polls in all three states confirm that view. With a Leans Republican rating, we had Arkansas lumped in with the first group, but it really belongs with the second group." (CenterforPolitics)












"Once in a great while, a heavy academic tome dominates for a time the policy debate and, despite bristling with footnotes, shows up on the best-seller list. Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is such a volume. As with Paul Kennedy’s The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, which came out at the end of the Reagan Administration and hit a nerve by arguing the case against imperial overreach through an extensive examination of European history, Piketty’s treatment of inequality is perfectly matched to its moment. Like Kennedy a generation ago, Piketty has emerged as a rock star of the policy-intellectual world. His book was for a time Amazon’s bestseller. Every pundit has expressed a view on his argument, almost always wildly favorable if the pundit is progressive and harshly critical if the pundit is conservative. Piketty’s tome seems to be drawn on a dozen times for every time it is read. This should not be surprising. At a moment when our politics seem to be defined by a surly middle class and the President has made inequality his central economic issue, how could a book documenting the pervasive and increasing concentration of wealth and income among the top 1, .1, and .01 percent of households not attract great attention? Especially when it exudes erudition from each of its nearly 700 pages, drips with literary references, and goes on to propose easily understood laws of capitalism that suggest that the trend toward greater concentration is inherent in the market system and will persist absent the adoption of radical new tax policies.  Piketty’s timing may be impeccable, and his easily understandable but slightly exotic accent perfectly suited to today’s media; but make no mistake, his work richly deserves all the attention it is receiving." (Larry Summers)










"My lunch had been canceled, which is always a kind of relief. Although I have the residual 'guilt,' if you want to call it that, of  feeling like I’m not doing my job. I think it’s part of the New York energy where you feel you should be doing something all the time. Later in the afternoon I gave a video interview to a filmmaker doing a project on a prominent New York woman who is no longer with us. I  can’t reveal the name now only because the man with the project hadn’t granted me permission. I hadn’t asked either; but it’s a great story and I’ll get it out there when the time comes (and everybody else is getting it out there too). Speaking of New York women, we got a lot of mail about the HOUSE piece with Betty Sherrill which we first published in 2003. One reader also sent along an interview Betty gave to (the late) great journalist Charles Gandee, 22 years ago in 1992 for the (also late, and great) HG (originally House & Garden). What I found most interesting about it  -- after being entertained  reading Betty’s comments about various subjects and people – was how she was the ultimate New York pro when it came to business, or rather, her business. This always to-the-manner-born perfect lady (and she was) had a real knack for out-and-out good ole marketing.  Gandee’s piece is full of her comments about people, places and things, and she didn’t disappoint by throwing in some barbs and sallies other people, places and things. She had a way of doing in in which you might thing she didn’t realize what she was saying at the time. Ah, but she did." (NYSD)

High and Wild by Angel Olsen

I fucking love this song. Song of the summer?

Media-Whore D'oeuvres

"Andrew Ross Sorkin’s profile of Tim Geithner in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, pegged to the former Treasury secretary’s just-released book, doesn’t break much news. Most of us who followed Geithner’s career already knew he wanted to bail out Lehman Brothers, opposed nationalizing Citigroup, and tried to spike the Volcker Rule. But I’ll say this for Sorkin’s piece: It includes one of the most revealing Geithner quotes I’ve ever read. It comes at the end of the piece, while Geithner  is defending his new job as president of the private equity firm Warburg Pincus. 'The private sector is what most people do for a living,' Geithner tells Sorkin. 'I thought that the possibility some people would criticize me for not staying a public servant was not a good reason not to go try and learn something new.' The line is rather preposterous on its own terms. (As if people would have responded the same way had he left Treasury to become a yoga instructor.) But it inadvertently highlights something deeper about Geithner, which is the shocking extent to which he’s accepted financialization of the economy as a benign, even admirable, development. The people who spend their days shuffling trillions of dollars around the globe are really just like you and me, except with nicer offices. They deserve the same sympathy and respect, notwithstanding their abysmal track record. That blinkered view colors pretty much every one of Geithner’s utterances as he makes the rounds hawking books. To take another revealing example from Sorkin’s piece, at one point Geithner complains about the British government’s efforts to rein in executive pay. 'It wasn’t really designed to change comp,' Geithner says. “It was designed to create the impression that they were changing comp. Did it … make them more popular for doing it? No. Was it effective? No.” Most people might look at the British experiment and conclude that the flaw was making a phony effort, as opposed to an actual effort, to rein in compensation. Geithner looks at the British experiment and concludes that the flaw was making the fake effort as opposed to no effort. Geithner’s most consequential riff has to do with TARP, of course—the $700 billion Congress approved for shoring up banks in the fall of 2008. Geithner’s view of this, which he’s expressed many times before, is that the government had no plausible alternative to backstopping the banks. As evidence of the soundness of this view, he points to the way taxpayers made money on the transaction: $32 billion so far, perhaps over $100 billion before all is said and done. The amount of nonsense contained in this statement is hard to get your head around." (TNR)














"Jeb Bush’s decision whether to run for president in 2016 is being driven by competing impulses within his own family. On one side is his eldest son, George P., who’s unabashedly and publicly supportive of his father’s potential candidacy. On the other are Jeb Bush’s mother and wife, who are clearly reluctant. In between is his older brother, George W., who is passively supportive but seems to friends to be more indifferent than enthusiastic. These viewpoints became apparent in interviews with more than a dozen of Bush’s friends and associates. The opinions of his family members are critical, as Bush has made no secret that his decision will come down to family considerations. But as with any momentous decision involving family dynamics, especially dynastic family dynamics, it’s complicated. The intentions of Jeb himself, who is 61, are hardest to read. He says he will decide by the end of this year. As one of Jeb Bush’s friends put it, he speaks with '2,000 people on a variety of subjects, but when it comes to key decisions’ — like his political future — the voices that count are people named Bush. Who knows how the conversation will go the next time the family gathers at their Kennebunkport oceanside estate, a family retreat since the late 19th century. But some patterns are unmistakable:" (Politico)









"This won’t be the first time someone suggested Apple could start its own record label. But with Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine, two music industry heavyweights that have built some of the world’s biggest record labels rumored to be getting creative roles at Apple, it’s interesting to imagine what influence Iovine and friends could have on Apple’s approach to content. If Apple is ever going to move on from simply being a music distribution hub taking its 30 percent cut to a record label of sorts fostering, promoting, and investing more in artists, Iovine is as good as it gets. Having built Interscope Records, the label behind some of the biggest artists of the last 20 years from Dr. Dre to Lady Gaga, Iovine’s real expertise is building labels, growing artists and selling music. Iovine himself admits the streaming service and even the headphone business were always a way to get control back to the labels and empower the artists, and that seems to be his main focus." (9to5Mac)

"Yesterday afternoon Betty Sherrill died. I don’t know the details except that I know she was in her 90s. Although up until recently she was still going into the office which came as a surprise to no one who knew her. I’d known Betty for almost 25 years. Betty was a force. I met her when I first came back to New York and started writing these social columns.  She was president of McMillen, the decorating firm. Sometime back then, the firm was celebrating its 75th Anniversary, and she invited me over to their offices to see all the photographs of their (rich and) famously prestigious clientele over those years. She was Old School – a term that has outlived its meaning in the land of No School. There were rules; a code of behavior. They was followed. She was a Southern girl from New Orleans or thereabouts. She came to New York like a lot of us to make her way in life. And yes she did. She still had some of that Southern drawl in her sentences all those years later, and with it she could say the most trenchant things in an offhand, almost lazy/daisy way, and you got the message." (NYSD)

Media-Whore D'oeuvres

"The call came at 2:15 a.m. on Jan. 27, 2008, awaking Rep. James Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina. He instantly recognized the voice on the other end of the line. It was Bill Clinton and he was angry. 'If you bastards want a fight, you damn well will get one,' Clyburn recalls Clinton screaming at him, a moment the congressman recounted in his new memoir, 'Blessed Experiences: Genuinely Southern, Proudly Black.' 'He was very upset,' Clyburn told 'The Fine Print' of the incident. 'His wife had just suffered a major defeat in the South Carolina primary, and I had not been involved in it, but Bill Clinton thought otherwise.' Despite Clinton’s belief to the contrary at the time, Clyburn maintains that he played no role in Obama’s sweeping victory over Clinton in the South Carolina primary, having made a promise to the Democratic National Committee that he would stay out of the 2008 nominating fight between Clinton and Obama. Since the time of their heated late-night phone call, Clyburn said his relationship with Clinton has healed somewhat. 'We got over that,' Clyburn said. 'We met by accident several weeks later… we've seen each other several times since. In fact, I had a lovely breakfast with Hillary two to three years after that. I think everything's okay.'" (ABCNews)

Vanity Fair editor in chief Graydon Carter.

"Print may be dying, and most magazine and newspaper editor in chief jobs are only memories of the power and influence they once conferred. Except for one, still commanding the obeisance of the high and mighty. That job, held now for more than two decades by among the most crafty and astute players in modern media, will likely soon be open — and, as befits the last grand job in general interest publishing, sought after by pretty much everybody in the industry. To be the editor of Vanity Fair is less a job than a role, performed for the last 22 years by Graydon Carter. As magazines have gone into dramatic decline, Carter has maintained the illusion that he is arbiter, style master, power broker, host with the most, and absolute king of his publishing domain. Carter turns 65 in July and, while without a formal announcement of his retirement after 22 years, seems to be taking valedictory bows everywhere, most recently at his induction a few weeks ago into the Magazine Editor's Hall of Fame, a career topper.I've written for Vanity Fair for many years. But, like most people in the VF court, while I have access to rumors, and practice reading tea leaves, I've no more certainty about Carter's plans than anyone else. Cosseted by a protective entourage, he has long cultivated both mystery and hauteur. (Before my first Vanity Fair party, a minion called to make sure I understood that 'at these events, Graydon doesn't like to speak to the writers.')" (Michael Wolff)

"Welcome back to Paris in 30 Days' conversation series. In today's entry, French GQ sex columnist Maïa Mazaurette teaches New York sex columnist Maureen O'Connor about the French way of sex. At age 25, Mazaurette abandoned a career in TV journalism to become Paris's answer to Carrie Bradshaw. Ten years later, she divides her time between Paris and Copenhagen.Her column is called Sex Actu ...  So tell me, how would you describe the French attitude toward sex? I can only compare it to the countries I’ve lived in — Germany, and now Denmark, and I’ve made some trips to the U.S. I’d say the main difference is that in France we’re so straightforward. We don’t have these dating rituals; we just start with sex! And then, if the sex was good enough or we feel connected somehow, then we would try to build a relationship. So you always have sex on the first date, then? Absolutely! But it’s not even an issue because there is no date. There is just first sex. You think someone is attractive, you give it a try. I think it really makes sense. (Of course I say that, because I’m French, right?) But if you don’t have sex first, you build up too much pressure. You start thinking, I have seen this guy for four or five restaurants, or however you do it in the U.S., and what if it fails? If you get sex out the way first, then you can only have good surprises. I never dated an American guy, but even with Danish and German guys, there were so many dates and it was taking so much time. At some point I just felt like, Ahhh! Stop it, are you going to kiss me? Are we going to your place? My place? Do something! I felt like I was investing a lot of time in something that might not be worth it anyway. It’s interesting to me that France is a predominantly Catholic nation, and yet the culture is so sexually free. Yes, but we don’t connect sex with ethics or morality or values in general, you know? There have been many studies about how French people don’t care about the sex life of our president, or if a person is unfaithful. It’s absolutely not a problem for me." (Maureen O'Connor)












"Yesterday was Mother’s Day in America. The restaurants were jammed between 6 and 8, and then the fair weather brought out the later crowd. Mother’s Day has been an American 'holiday' all my life although it really took hold in the 1960s. How  did that happen? I always thought it was the result of the marketing genius Joyce C. Hall, the man who created Hallmark Cards and became a tycoon. However, according to Wikipedia the first 'Mother’s Day' was celebrated in 1908 when Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her mother Ann Reeves Jarvis. Miss Jarvis began the campaign three years in 1905. Her mission was to honor her mother for work Mrs. Jarvis had begun, and to continue the work she started as a peace activist caring for wounded soldiers on both sides of the Civil War. Mrs. Jarvis was part of a movement of independent thinking women, far ahead of their time. Originally the idea was started as a protest to the carnage of that war by women who had lost their sons and husbands. Mrs. Jarvis was part of that original movement. Mr. Hall of Hallmark was on the (new) case very soon after." (NYSD)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"HE sat in the car, frozen with fear, as gunmen pointed rifles at his pregnant mother in the driver’s seat beside him. They were rushing to the king’s birthday party because they had heard there was a commotion. It was the summer of 1971, and the Moroccan Army killed over 100 party guests in its attempt to overthrow the monarchy. The gunmen spared the pregnant woman and her 7-year-old son. Later that day, the coup failed. With his monarchy preserved, King Hassan II sharply tightened his grip on his subjects, including his own family. It was a shift that the 7-year-old, Prince Moulay Hicham El Alaoui, still remembers well. The eldest son of the late King Hassan’s only brother, Moulay Abdellah, he is also the first cousin of King Mohammed VI — making him third in line to the Moroccan throne. Nicknamed 'the Red Prince,' he grew up to become a political activist whose public support for democracy has put him at odds with his family in Morocco. He exiled himself to America and was banned from the presence of the king for advocating a constitutional monarchy, like that in Britain or Spain. In a culture where princes are expected to hold their tongues and where family affairs do not leave the palace walls, Prince Moulay Hicham isn’t welcome. 'It’s been traumatizing. I have seen a father destroyed. It is a world where everything is artificial and nothing is genuine,' the prince, now 50, said during an interview at his hotel in Paris. 'I am happy to live far away. Instead of having 100 friends, you have five friends, but at least you know that they are here for you.' In April, he published a new autobiography, 'Journal d’un Prince Banni,' or Diary of a Banished Prince, that weaves together a series of vignettes and anecdotes to give readers a rare glimpse into Morocco’s royal family. But it also serves as a harsh political critique of the kingdom from an insider. The book, which will be translated into English in a few months, details how King Hassan, who died in 1999, constructed an opaque system of rule in which the elite could flout the law with impunity. Though he celebrates the late king’s undeniable grandeur, the prince describes him as an evil genius who brought Morocco onto the world stage. He also gives an intimate view of life inside the palace, growing up among the intrigues, and the mind games between him and his uncle." (NYT)

Have you bought my book yet? Photo: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

"Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century has thoroughly dominated the elite intellectual conversation during the four weeks since it was published. But it’s now also become a middlebrow phenomenon, the fourth-most popular nonfiction book in the country, according to the New York Times best-seller list and third-best seller (as I write) on Amazon, fiction or non-. That is an astonishing number of books sold to people who are mostly not social scientists. Its sales put it in the same blockbuster category as volumes in which a physician encounters God or Robin Roberts encounters cancer. Its popularity has helped turn inequality into a constant theme not just on MSNBC, but on Fox News. Given the density of the Frenchman's subject matter, spooling out over 700 pages, all of this is a pretty incredible feat, and a testament to the power and lucidity of Piketty's central idea. But it also makes you notice something else: how completely our intellectual conversation is now a conversation about economics. It isn't just that economics is the topic we are most interested in; economics, increasingly, is the only language that we're speaking. During the first five or six years of the century — the Bush years, before the financial crisis — the big books and the op-ed columns were about something else entirely: American identity (red states, blue states) and whether it was an honest expression of that identity to routinely invade other countries in order to overthrow their governments, then erect fortified Taco Bells on the Euphrates. It's no accident that the final rebuke to Bush was delivered by Barack Obama, arguing very explicitly that the Texan had misunderstood what being American was all about. Before that, in the late 1990s, the propulsive ideas were about the culture of the meritocracy, about what kinds of people got ahead in American life. That these questions have become obsolete is one reason that David Brooks and Thomas Friedman (even when they have something insightful to say) never really seem urgent anymore. But Paul Krugman always does." (NYMag)



























"'I live on a farm. I cook. I garden. I craft. I do all those things,' Martha Stewart said, as a giant, high-resolution lobster glowed behind her. 'I'm your mom.'  Martha—it's always 'Martha'—had just returned to New York after a trip to China, where the Wall Street Journal reports she is plotting a 'cupcake revolution.' She also met with the team behind e-commerce giant Alibaba, which she found to be very inspiring. 'China is the land of opportunity. If you are an entrepreneur, or interested in the growth of a new middle class, China is the place to go,' she said. 'I do hope the censorship is lifted.'Her enthusiasm for Alibaba notwithstanding, the wider Internet garners only imperious disdain from Martha. And why shouldn't it? Websites like Pinterest and Instagram harvest the content of publications like hers all the time: 'If we're the most-pinned magazine, we should get paid for that,' Martha said. There is more bridal content available to consumers than ever, she lamented, even as fewer and fewer young people are getting married. 'Shame on you!' Martha admonished the overwhelmingly female crowd of mostly journalism students. 'It's fun! It's a rite of passage.' She laughed, and so did everybody else in the room. As far as her own media consumption goes, Martha listens to NPR and reads the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and 'a tabloid, the name of which I will not mention' on her commute from Katonah, New York, where she lives. She reads these cover to cover, and is disappointed in young people for reading newspapers on their phones. 'You miss a lot,' she said. (She’s not wrong!)Martha was speaking to former editor and publisher of the Nation, Victor Navasky, for Columbia Journalism School’s weekly Delacorte Lecture on Magazine Journalism, held in the school’s Joseph Pulitzer World Room. The appearance is part of an effort in recent months to rehabilitate her image—and in turn, her company, since the two are inextricably linked, and things have not gone well of late: Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia shares 'have slid from a high of $37.40 to less than $3 for much of last year,' Bloomberg reported in January. 'Along the way, the company has shed more than $1 billion in value.' (Martha did well by the estimation of at least one audience member: 'She looks good,' admired the woman next to me.)" (TheAwl)









































"SCENES FROM a book party: Hollywood super-mogul Jerry Bruckheimer appeared at Manhattan’s Monkey Bar to promote his big, beautiful photo work, 'When Lightning Strikes: Four Decades of Filmmaking.' (It weighs about 20 pounds and would be useful as a weapon or an implement for exercise. Everybody at the party received one, along with a sturdy black canvas carrying bag. If you asked nicely, you got two!) Bruckheimer is the man behind some of Hollywood’s biggest feature film hits — 'Top Gun' ... 'Beverly Hills Cop' ... 'Armageddon' ... 'Con Air' ... the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' franchise and an omnipresent producing name on television — 'CSI' ... 'Cold Case' ... 'Without a Trace.' But why rest on your laurels when you are also a remarkably gifted photographer? His book is a splendid thing, highlighting the stars and the projects he has helped raise to the heights. Bruckheimer is slight and rather boyish. He doesn’t seem 'mogul-ish' at all and was nicely self-deprecating under the assault of compliments. ('I never imagined there would ever be a book about me' he writes in his intro.) He and his very attractive wife, Linda, didn’t make a fuss and delay their arrival for a grand entrance. When the first guests hopped into The Monkey Bar, at 6 p.m. the Bruckheimers were already there, smartly dressed, smiling, ready to go. (Linda was almost instantly attracted to the fabulous sliders, pigs-in-a-blanket and bowls of cheesy calamari and fries on all the tables. But she decided to wait until the event was over to dive in.) Peggy Siegal, who put the party together, wore a skirt that resembled one of those glittery wraps at the base of a Christmas tree. She apologized for her rather spiky hair-style ('I didn’t know what to do with it!') It looked pretty adorable, actually. Chris and Pat Riley, Blaine Trump and Steve Simon and Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones were the official hosts ... AMONG the Throng ... Cornelia Guest, looking remarkably fresh and happy ('I finally sold the house, thank goodness. Time to get something smaller.' — she meant her mother’s Long Island property 'Templeton') ." (Liz Smith)

















"Clive Davis is heartbroken he will no longer see the devoted staff at the Beverly Hills Hotel, who have been taking care of his needs since 1965. But the chief creative officer of Sony Music is boycotting the Pink Palace as long as owner Sultan of Brunei is imposing Shariah law in his home count. As of May 1, the citizens of the oil-rich sultanate on the island of Borneo face fines and imprisonment for minor crimes, such as failure to pray on Friday. The Sultan’s plan calls for whippings and amputations for more serious crimes like stealing — and death by stoning for adultery and gay sex. 'When I learned of the enactment of the penal code, I realized it would be impossible for me to stay there,' the veteran music mogul told me on Friday. Davis is distraught he won’t be seeing the 'fabulous, terrific' staff at the hotel anymore. 'They know I like coleslaw, and dark meat better than white, and oatmeal raisin cookies,' he said. Instead of his regular haunt, the New York-based Davis spent the last week ensconced at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills." (Richard Johnson)







"If the Sultan of Brunei is going to enforce Sharia law fairly, his playboy brother Prince Jefri should be stoned to death for committing adultery. Jefri, 59 — who has had five wives, three of whom he is still married to — was known for keeping as many as 40 highly paid American and European women on call to have sex with him and his friends. New Jersey-born Jillian Lauren came home after 18 months in Brunei with $300,000 and wrote a book, 'Some Girls: My Life in a Harem,' about her experience. Besides having sex with Jefri, the then-teen also hooked up with the Sultan, she revealed this week in a piece in the Daily Beast. 'As the citizens of Brunei face the erosion of their rights, I imagine the man I once knew, holed up in a posh hotel suite somewhere, maybe with another American teenager in his lap, making laws that legislate morality,' Lauren wrote. Ex-Miss USA Shannon Marketic returned from Brunei in 1997 and sued Jefri and the Sultan, claiming she was held against her will as a sex slave. Marketic lost her lawsuit after Jefri claimed diplomatic immunity.
The first round of Sharia law, imposed on May 1, calls for fines and prison sentences for those who have a child out of wedlock, fail to pray on Friday or promote religions other than Islam." (Richard Johnson)

Howard Stern Interviews Louis CK

Howard Stern interviews David Spade

Sarah Jessica Parker and Anna Wintour

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"When John and I went to Los Angeles to shoot Barbra Streisand, we were also shooting Drew Barrymore. John was going to join me for the Streisand shoot on Saturday. When we landed in L.A., the plan was for me to call Barbra’s assistant, Kim, and arrange a time to meet at Barbra’s house to discuss the details of the shoot. RoseMarie and I had been dealing with Kim all week. She was difficult, but we held our tongues. I called at four P.M. to ask about meeting with Barbra. 'She’s editing her movie and we can’t do it till later,' Kim told me. I called at six P.M. 'She’s still working,' Kim snapped, with no apology for keeping us waiting. John called my room and asked, 'Maestro, what’s going on?' I told him Barbra was editing and didn’t want us to go over yet. Finally, Kim called at seven P.M. 'She’s ready.' John and I got into our rented convertible and pulled onto the Pacific Coast Highway. I was silent as John drove. 'What’s the matter?' John shouted into the wind. 'I’m nervous,' I told him, and gave him a terrified look. 'Relax, after a few minutes she’ll be like your aunt Barbra.' We pulled up to the mammoth wooden gates of Barbra’s house. There didn’t seem to be a button for guests or an intercom box anywhere, so John got out of the car and shouted into the trees. “Hello? Anybody home?” We heard the click of a latch releasing, and the gate opened automatically.
Situated high on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, the house was huge and designed to feel like an idyllic American home, with picket fences, pointed gables, and bright-white clapboard siding. There was a meandering flagstone path leading to an arched front entrance, where I saw a tiny, pale figure in the doorway. Carolyn’s warning, 'She’ll eat you alive,' echoed in my head. As we walked down the path, John whispered, 'Remember, we have dinner plans at nine o’clock.' He wanted to be sure he didn’t get tied up all night. Funny Girl was leaning against the doorframe with her arms folded and a familiar, wry half-smile on her face. 'John, what a young staff you have,' she said in her best Dolly Levi voice. She was wearing white cotton from head to toe: a pair of stretchy pants and a sort of Flashdance-style off-the-shoulder top. She was dewy and freshly moisturized, her hair artfully mussed. She appeared so perfectly casual that it must have taken some time to achieve the look. I had the feeling she hadn’t been editing a movie all afternoon. There was no mistaking who was standing in front of us, but she seemed to be a miniature version of Barbra Streisand. Her eyes were cooler, foxlike and piercing, not those of the lovable, eye-rolling Fanny Brice I had been hoping for. She looked really good at 54 years old. John kissed her on the cheek and introduced me. After shaking hands and exchanging pleasantries, she offered us a tour of her house. She spoke in a dramatic way, emphasizing every syllable and punctuating occasionally with a Brooklyn-inflected 'You know what I mean?'" (VF)





"This map shows the 2014 Senate races in blue and red, with the states sized according to their population and colored based on their current occupant. (The gray states are those with no regular Senate election this year.) Senate Class 2, the one contested this year, is far less representative of the nation as a whole than the two other classes. Its 33 states contain slightly more than half (51.8%) of the nation’s population. Class 1 (the 2012 class) also features 33 states, but those states host three-quarters (75.2%) of the population; Class 3, coming in 2016 with 34 states, is similar to Class 1, with 72.6% of the population. One big reason the 2014 Senate class is so unrepresentative is that California, with its 38 million residents (about an eighth of the country’s population), has no Senate election this year. Neither do New York, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio, respectively the nation’s third, fourth, sixth and seventh biggest states. No Senate election is ever a national election — but this year’s least of all. Republicans, as mentioned, need to net six seats to win the Senate, and there are six Democratic-held seats on this map where President Obama got less than 45% of the vote in 2012. Let’s assume the GOP nets those six seats, but everything else remains the same, which is a perfectly plausible scenario. Those states — Alaska, Arkansas, Louisiana, Montana, South Dakota and West Virginia — represent just 3.8% of the U.S. population. Of course, the actual number of residents who are eligible to vote, who show up to vote and who cast a ballot for the GOP candidate is an even smaller share. Assuming turnout in line with the most recent midterm, control of the Senate could end up being switched by 2 million Republican voters, or less — just 0.6% of the American population. That would hardly be a national mandate, though Republicans would assuredly claim one anyway." (CenterforPolitics)





"'Thanks to the Drudge Report, I was possibly the first person whose global humiliation was driven by the Internet,' Monica Lewinsky writes in Vanity Fair. And though her affair with Bill Clinton may have kicked off our modern era of sex scandal — and set the standard for the boom-bust cycles of denial and apology, sexist fascination, and pseudo-celebrity — a lot has changed since 1998. A presidential candidate made a sex tape. Two U.S. Congressmen resigned over flirtations with women they never even met. Slut-shaming entered the lexicon, but so did cyberbullying, sexting, and reality star. Sixteen years after Interngate, technology has managed a neat trick: It’s now possible to have a sex scandal that’s simultaneously more chaste in its execution and far sleazier in its aftermath. Anthony Weiner never got laid, but the woman who sank his mayoral campaign nevertheless made and marketed a Weiner-themed porno. By comparison, the woman who had 'oral-anal contact' in the Oval Office is the portrait of ladylike restraint. Monica also enjoyed a brief period of celebrity, of course (remember when she hosted a dating show?), but as America became increasingly attention-obsessed and media-optimized, she fell into an adult life 'so silent … that the buzz in some circles has been that the Clintons must have paid me off; why else would I have refrained from speaking out?' Today whore is a pejorative that has more to do with profiteering than promiscuity; the mainstream is learning, slowly, to be sex-positive, but there is no corollary term for empathizing with unabashed attention-seekers." (Maureen O'Connor)




"Yesterday was the perfect Spring day for the annual Hat Lunch at the Conservatory Garden in Central Park. The official name is the Frederick Law Olmsted Awards Luncheon, and it was its 32nd annual event, but it’s also the post-modern successor to the Easter Parade. It was started in 1982 by a group of women who had also started the Women’s Committee of the Central Park Conservancy: Jean Clark, Norma Dana, Marguerite Purnell, and Phyllis Cerf Wagner. Mrs. Wagner died several years ago but the Mmes. Dana, Purnell and Clark are still with us. I saw Norma Dana there yesterday.  I don’t know about the other two founding members but it’s quite possible they were there too. Seeing Norma Dana, I could only wonder what she thinks of what she and her co-founders have achieved and accomplished. The effect and influence of the work of that small group of women is now visible to any and everyone who even walks by Central Park or sees the photographs of it. When I left the luncheon yesterday at about 2:15, I walked from 104th Street down Fifth, alongside the Park wall to 96th Street, just so I could look at the Park. It’s beauty is astounding. The Park right now is just glorious. It looks like a photograph of a perfect pastoral setting. I kept thinking I should be taking some photographs of it. Except. JH, the other (more circumspect) half of the NYSD and its primo photographer, had also been there to photograph the opening, and I knew he’d catch the Park in his reportage." (NYSD)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

                            


"Proudly over the top in his villainy, Abubakar Shekau told the world he has the girls. Dressed in fatigues, with a rifle slung across his chest and masked men at his sides, the head of the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram took a few weeks — allowing the horror and international outrage to build — before claiming credit for what most already assumed: He and his followers are responsible for the abduction of more than 200 young women from a school in Nigeria last month. 'I will sell them in the market, by Allah. I will marry off a woman at the age of 12. I will marry off a girl at the age of nine,' said Shekau in an hourlong video statement yesterday. Their crime was pursuing an education (boko haram translates roughly to 'Western education is a sin'). Women, he said, 'should go and marry. Stupid people. Talking about human rights and democracy. Nonsense.' The world is finally listening, in horror." (NyMag)





"The U.S. government commands few capabilities more potent than its power to declare information secret. Even when the judiciary and Congress exercise their checks-and-balances powers over the executive branch, the American secrecy machine still finds a way to shunt aside substantive discussions about a host of programs and policies.With little or no public input, the U.S. government has kidnapped suspected terrorists, established secret prisons, performed 'enhanced' interrogations, tortured prisoners, and carried out targeted killings. After the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden pilfered hundreds of thousands of documents from the NSA’s computers and released them to journalists last summer, the public learned of additional and potentially dodgy secret government programs: warrantless wiretaps, the weakening of public encryption software, the collection and warehousing of metadata from phones and e-mail accounts, and the interception of raw Internet communications. The secrecy machine was originally designed to keep the United States’ foes at bay. But in the process, it has transformed itself into an invisible state within a state. Forever discovering new frontiers to patrol, as the Snowden files indicate, the machine molts its skin each season to grow ever larger and more powerful, encountering little resistance from the courts or Congress. In his new book, Secrets and Leaks: The Dilemma of State Secrecy (Princeton University Press, 2013, 304 pp. $35), the Princeton political scientist Rahul Sagar ably documents this growth in secrecy and the problems it poses, excavating from his thorough research a concise history of concealment and revelation from the Revolutionary War to the present. Atop this scholarship, he adds legal analysis and an attempt to map a regulatory framework that will keep the country secure, make the government accountable, and still preserve Americans’ civil liberties. Yet in overestimating the damage leaks cause and underestimating how hard it will be to stop them, Sagar arrives at recommendations that are ultimately too impractical and too restrictive." (Jack Shafer)





"This thing will probably show up on your Facebook at some point today, most likely under one of those two-sentence headlines that everyone sneered at last year and then started using exclusively in let's say… January? Like this one from the Washington Post: 'Just 7 percent of journalists are Republicans. That’s far fewer than even a decade ago.' There are other headlines that would also be accurate. 'Just 28 percent of journalists identify as Democrats. That’s fewer than even a decade ago.' Or: 'Haha, so the whole libertarian journo-man thing is a 90s thing?' Or: 'Finally, a majority of journalists have realized that identifying with a political party is more trouble than it's worth.' Or: "Twenty years of screaming 'BIAS' has had a measurable effect on how journalist take voluntary surveys.' Or: 'The internet did this.' All of these would work! But none of these would work on Facebook. In any case this is possibly the least important graphic in what otherwise feels like an important document about fatigue and uncertainty. " (TheAwl)




"There was a major luncheon at the Pierre. Fountain House was hosting a symposium along with it (the subject was Dual-Diagnosis), and honoring Dr. Mitch Rosenthal, founder of Phoenix House. Mitch, who is known far and wide for his work (and his camaraderie) continues to work tirelessly behind the scenes for Phoenix House and its work. Then early yesterday evening, the Ford Foundation – Darren Walker, President – hosted an evening celebrating Jessye Norman with an interview of the great American diva, followed by a reception. At about the same hour, the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art hosted the Arthur Ross Awards at the University Club with cocktails and dinner.  While over at the New York Junior League headquarters in the old Vincent Astor mansion on East 80th Street, the French Heritage Society was hosting a lecture by David Garrard Lowe, the historian. The subject: 'Sarah Bernhardt: Actress of an Age.' The nighttime calendar for that wide array of social gatherings that make up New York today, was full and influential in the current media scheme of things. The largest focus was set on the Met Costume Ball which is the property of Anna Wintour (and therefore Conde Nast). This gets huge attention in the entertainment media. My web mailbox last night was filled with photos of attendees, and their gowns and accessories and even details about their makeup. The look from what I could see from these photos was a kind of a retro Yvonne de Carlo/Debra Paget/'50s look (although most wearing it have never heard of the girls). The day began over in that neck of the woods with Michelle Obama coming to town and cutting the ribbon on the entry to the newly named Anna Wintour Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum. It was reported to be an emotional moment for Ms. Wintour and the First Lady extended her comforting arms at that moment when tears came to the fashion editor’s eyes." (NYSD)




"More artists, more exhibitions. Last night at the new Leila Heller Gallery on 43 West 57th Street, there was a preview of a new exhibition: 'LOOK AT ME: Portraiture from Manet to the Present' curated by Beth Rudin DeWoody and Paul Morris, a founding director of the Armory Show. The show was of particular interest to me because Beth and I are old friends. We’ve known each other since she was fresh out of college. Her interest in art and collecting was already apparent, in retrospect although in the early days she was feeling her way into the process. I don’t know that it was intentional, but then she married an artist — James DeWoody, with whom she had her son Carlton and daughter Kyle — and about that time her interest began to develop into the connoisseurship that belongs to her today. In all the years that we’ve known each other well, we’ve never discussed this business of her life work, which is:  Collecting. She is now a notable collector in the art world, and not accidentally has she been compared to Peggy Guggenheim. What I always knew about her even before she became a committed collector was that she is a great and natural nurturer of talent. I have personally benefited from that nurturing as have many others.  Beth loves talented people. She is by nature in their thrall. This show that she curated with Paul Morris is a clear reflection of that thrall of hers. The subject, the subjects, the artists and the attitudes are all aspects of the lady’s vivid artistic interest. This is a new gallery for Leila Heller, who is now also an old friend and whom I met through Beth DeWoody about twenty-five years ago. Leila, who is also the mother of two growing sons, has been in the gallery business for a number of years. In the last several years she has been expanding her interest and business. The Fifty-seventh Street location, now her second in the city, is big -- eight floors. Thomas Arnold will lead the new gallery. Arnold comes from 14 years with Mary Boone Gallery where he managed 150 exhibitions." (NYSD)





"Time is a flat circle, which is why the television industry’s decades-old rite of spring is once more nearly upon us: Upfront week begins next Monday. If you’re just tuning in, the upfronts are when the broadcast networks unveil a slew of new programming for the year ahead, while conveniently ignoring the bloody carcasses of the previous season’s failed efforts. (Cable networks and digital outlets have been performing a more low-key version of the same dance for the past few weeks.) While the ad buyers of Madison Avenue are the main target for all this hype, networks have increasingly made upfront week a consumer-friendly affair, taking advantage of all the media attention to begin marketing their new wares to the masses. As we have each of the past four years, Vulture will be out in force covering TV’s marathon of self-congratulation and salesmanship. So, bookmark our handy 2014 Upfronts situation room, home to our knee-jerk reactions to the new shows and schedules, our first-look clips of all the fresh programming, and our insider coverage of the presentations and after-parties. But before the television industry’s big week begins, we’ve got our own tradition ’round these parts: our annual series of pregame reports analyzing how each of the Big Four broadcasters are looking as May Madness begins. (Nope, no CW: They’ve got a different business model that the other guys, more like a cable network. For what it’s worth, however, the C-Dub had a pretty decent year and is in much better shape than it’s been in a while.) These daily rundowns will give you the skinny on how the individual networks performed during the 2013–14 season, what factors are stressing each of them out heading into next week, and which pilots seem to have the best prospects of moving forward to series. First up: NBC, which may have finally found its groove after a decade of turmoil." (Vulture)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"It was summertime and I was 18 and just moved to NYC. With nepotism on my side I wrangled a job and a studio apartment. My privileged childhood did not prepare me for these strictures and nightly I drank microwaved ice cream and wondered what the hell had happened to my life. Midwinter I was invited to Palm Beach for a weekend and I gratefully accepted. Someone knew someone with a private plane ...and space was found for me. On a Friday afternoon we flew out of Teterboro Airport on a small but very deluxe plane with burled cherry walls and wide white leather seats. The plane owner, one polo playing tycoon, switched on a movie called Dog Day Afternoon. Before the movie was finished Mr Tycoon and his passengers began mimicking Pacino’s lines and making bang bang sounds, and soon Mr Tycoon picked up a gold receiver and commanded the pilot change course. Just like that I was hijacked and diverted to the Bahamas for one night at Mr Tycoon’s white oceanside domain. My only request was that I be allowed to use a telephone when we landed to alert those expecting me in Florida. At the Tycoon’s marble palace I was assigned a room with massive windows and stunning views, and I exhaled as if I were home. 'This is more like it!' I thought, soothed." (Christina Oxenberg)

"Last Thursday night I went down to Sotheby’s for a black tie dinner benefiting  the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation. ADDF was created in 1998 by Leonard and Ronald Lauder, sons of Estee. In the past eight years they’ve established a public profile. The Lauders are an interesting family. Mama and Papa (Joe Lauder) started the business in the mid-1940s.  Estee Lauder started with a fragrance called 'Youth Dew.' If she ran into you at Bloomingdale’s or on Fifth or Madison Avenues, she’d give you a little spritz and a sample. That initial marketing foray was highly successful; people talked about it and those old enough still recall it. It became a hit. When Leonard, the eldest son, joined the company in 1958, they had annual sales of $800,000. That was not a figure to be scoffed at (the equivalent of more than ten times that in today’s currency).I don’t know much about their father Joe, except that he was the rock of the company management. It was with him that Estee could create an organization that is now 68 years old, and one of the world’s leading manufacturers and marketers of quality skin care, makeup, fragrance and hair products with annual sales of more than $10 billion. And Mama Estee is a household name across the world. Estee Lauder was the center of the story. Ambition was personified. She had all the makings of a tycoon and indeed she became one. By the early 1960s, the company was prospering and Estee had other fields to explore and develop. Society." (NYSD)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Designer L’Wren Scott was remembered Friday evening memorial service in Manhattan filled with celebrities – including her rocker boyfriend Mick Jagger, who sang Bob Dylan’s 'Just Like a Woman' in her memory. 'The most touching moment was when Mick sang the Bob Dylan song for L’Wren. The lyrics were so beautiful and so appropriate. It was deeply moving,' a source said.
The service for Scott, a noted fashion designer and stylist who committed suicide March 17, was held at St. Bartholomew’s Church on Park Avenue. Others who attended included actresses Julianne Moore, Sarah Jessica Parker, Meg Ryan and Renee Zellweger; Vogue editor Anna Wintour; film director Baz Luhrmann; Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and fashion personality Andre Leon Talley. 'Everyone spoke that loved her. Everyone had their own beautiful memories of L’Wren. Mick Jagger spoke, Sarah Jessica Parker spoke, I spoke, Rachel Feinstein spoke, and all the grandkids and sons they read scripture,' said Talley, a former editor at large at Vogue. 'The mood was beautiful, solemn, elegant. The mood was L’Wren. She would have approved of everything, the flowers, every single thing. It was brilliant.'" (P6)














"The vicissitudes of getting old are linked to the mystical innocence of childhood as one daydreams the precious time away. I’m a daydreamer par excellence, and lately I’ve been thinking nonstop about my daughter. She’s getting married this week and I’m off to London for the festivities. Solipsist that I am, it’s nice to think of others for a change. It’s the nature of prestidigitation to mix one’s self and one’s children—I’ve got one of each—and I thank my stars that there’s only one bride, as I read with amusement that three gals in Massachusetts exchanged vows, although no state in America has yet passed a law that three can get hitched. (Not to worry, it’s bound to come. And why only three?)
Yes, time passes without mercy and I think of Lolly as a baby and then as a young girl, mostly haranguing me about being an absent father. Her tirades have left no scars—I was having a good time—so I look at pictures of her being held in my arms with love and amusement, always with a cookie in her hand, always trying to steal the spotlight from the poseur next to her acting like a respected father figure. I once wrote her a note telling her that she had the worst temper since Maria Callas, an aggressiveness that Field Marshal Hasso von Manteuffel would envy, and the intolerance of Savonarola. I finished the note by telling her that’s why I loved her as much as I do. She had it framed and asked me to repeat it at the bridal lunch .... When the mother of my children was expecting her, many Greek friends of mine approached me and wished me good luck and a son. We hadn’t had a girl in our family for generations. I wanted a girl and got one. Greeks have a strange relationship with daughters. It’s in a way mystical, because of ancient times and a woman’s place in society. Yet when Agamemnon asks the Gods what he has to sacrifice for a favorable wind to sail to Troy, Zeus decides that the king has to sacrifice his most precious of all children, not his son, but Iphigenia. Apollo, of course, takes pity on her and plucks her away, or so one of the legends tells us, and looking back it’s fortunate that the son wasn’t sacrificed because Agamemnon’s murder by Clytemnestra would have never been avenged, so sons do come in handy at times. My own boy, JT, arrived in the Bagel last week unannounced on his way to Puerto Rico for a bike race. 'Will you be back on time for your sister’s wedding?' I asked. He looked at me as if I had dropped acid. The same reaction my buddy Michael Mailer had when I jokingly told him I was missing her wedding because I had to defend my judo title in Reno, Nevada on May 3rd. 'Get off the LSD,' was his reaction.And so it goes. My little girl is going to be a Mrs., like the deputy editor of the Spectator, but unlike the latter, whose marriage drove me to despair and self-loathing, the former’s wedding will turn a tone poem into a fugue, from a minor to a major key, however corny it may sound. I last got hog-whimpering drunk on Friday, in Brooklyn, for Michael’s birthday and have vowed not to touch a drop until the night before I walk her down. Typically, the bride to be even warned me about that: I want to be walked down, not to have to walk you down, she said over the telephone. I could envision her mother nodding approval." (Taki)

"In the kitchen of a 1940s-era diner in Jersey City, the rapper known as Le1f swayed beneath ancient photos of Sylvester Stallone and Mike Tyson. It was early March, and he was shooting a video for his song 'Boom,”' with familiar hip-hop imagery abundant: medallions, weed being hot-boxed in a Jeep, a Brooklyn Nets jersey. But to one side of Le1f was a handsome man, who wore a cooking uniform and a come-hither expression as he filed his nails. They body-rolled in unison.'Welcome to Banjee Burger,' Le1f (pronounced leaf) rapped over the skeletal beat, as fog eddied around his white denim jacket. 'New World Order. L.G.B.T. cuties all over the world.' Even in a post-Frank Ocean age of gay tolerance, it’s unusual to find a male vocalist who expresses his interest in other men with such bravado and lack of ambiguity. But in recent months, Le1f, who is 25, has been embraced not just by the artsy downtown set, but also by fellow rappers and mainstream audiences. He is both subversive and increasingly influential. Although Le1f is loath to being ghettoized as a gay rapper — 'i’ve already cleared my own lane,' he tweeted on Wednesday. 'i’m driving now. bye bitches.' — he is the most visible and accomplished representative of that group, ever. He has performed on 'Late Show With David Letterman,' toured overseas and earned heaps of praise from pace-setting outlets like Pitchfork and VFiles. In a lustrous review for Le1f’s 2013 mixtape 'Fly Zone,' Stereogum called the record 'exhilarating' and a 'landmark moment for a very particular club-rap hybrid that feels very exciting.'In March, Le1f released his first commercial EP, 'Hey,' on Terrible Records (in partnership with XL Recordings), a Brooklyn indie label that has worked with Blood Orange and Solange Knowles. 'There isn’t a blueprint for Le1f,' said Ethan Silverman, a founder of Terrible. 'He can write, produce, sing, dance and entertain. And he looks incredible while doing it.'" (NYTimes)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"The size of China’s urban real estate market is staggering: There are more than 160 Chinese cities with populations over one million people. (The United States has nine.) Real estate investment makes up more than 10 percent of China’s GDP and 20 percent of outstanding loans. China’s high building-turnover rate also helps keep demand high: In 2010, an expert in the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development estimated that buildings in China last just 25 to 30 years, compared with an average of 74 years in the United States. Analysts have been predicting the burst of the China real estate 'bubble' for years. If that moment does come, it will be disastrous for the Chinese economy, and the global repercussions could be significant." (Politico)



















"The Time 100 Gala drew the most influential in the entertainment, media and political worlds, including Twitter’s Jack Dorsey and girlfriend Kate Greer (global director of social media and digital strategy for fashion brand Alice + Olivia), who sat with venture capitalist Vivi Nevo and Martha Stewart. Google’s Eric Schmidt — still married to wife Wendy — skipped the cocktail reception and arrived at the gala dinner with glamorous brunette Bengi Korkmaz, a partner at McKinsey &Company’s Istanbul office, with whom sources naturally insist he is 'just friends.'" (P6)







"When Craig Ferguson announced yesterday that he would be 'consciously uncoupling' from CBS come December, some Ferguson fans felt as though the decision was related to him being passed over as David Letterman’s Late Show successor, in favor of Stephen Colbert. But in a new interview, Ferguson claims that there are multiple reasons for his exit from CBS—none of which relate to him feeling as though he was dissed by the network. 'It wasn’t contentious,' Ferguson tells Variety of the upcoming split. 'I was just like, ‘I feel like I’m done.’' In fact, Ferguson claims that he had begun working out the details of his CBS departure before Letterman even announced his own retirement earlier this month. “It’s an inevitable thing when David announced his retirement, people are going to say, ‘Oh he’s leaving because of that.’ No matter what I say or what I do, they’re gonna say that.'The truth, Ferguson claims, is that, 'Ten years is a very long time in one job—for me. I wanted to leave the show before I stopped enjoying it. That was my goal. I didn’t want it to be a chore. . . . The whole idea is that show business should have some adventure to it, I think.' He even goes so far as to claim that he never had his eye on inheriting Letterman’s Late Show (even though he had a clause in his contract stipulating that if he did not succeed Letterman, he would receive a sizable payout from CBS.)" (VF)




"Last Monday night at Capitale on 130 Bowery, Symphony Space hosted its Spring gala, Fiddler at 50, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Fiddler on the Roof.  They honored Sheldon Harnick, the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning lyricist behind the iconic musical.  Symphony Space’s Gala was co-chaired by Lenore Davis and Amy Wilson. Honorary co-chairs for the evening were Mary Rodgers Guettel, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Harold Prince, and Stephen Sondheim. The evening was hosted by BD Wong. Performers included Kate Baldwin, Christina Bianco, Stephanie J. Block, Len Cariou, La Tanya Hall, Clint Holmes, Tovah Feldshuh, Linda Lavin, Megan McGinnis, Trevor McQueen, Jane Monheit, Christine Pedi, Andrew Rannells, Tori Scott and Leslie Uggams. Violinist Christian Hebel performed the role of The Fiddler. " (NYSD)