Media-Whore D'oeuvres

"When I was a young and odd child, one of the oddest things I did was collect Entertainment Weekly. Our family, like so many middle class families, had always had a subscription to Time, and one dayEntertainment Weekly began arriving with it. In those early days, it was called entertainment weekly, and in many ways, it resembled many of the entertainment websites (The A.V. Club, Grantland, Vulture) that dominate the field today. There were long, industry-oriented cover stories, buttressed by surprisingly non-banal interviews with stars, producers, directors, musicians, and authors. The second half of the magazine was divided by medium: Movies, Television, Music, Books and Video, each with its own colored tab. Delightful. I'd read each issue from cover-to-cover, deciding on its predominant 'themes,' and record this data in an elaborate database program on my Apple IIe. As a finishing touch, I'd give each issue a "grade," emulating EW's own, then-novel system of affixing a grade to the media products it reviewed. In my North Idaho town of 30,000, we had three movie screens and I wasn't allowed to watch cable. But EW's approach to media appealed to me in the way that all broad, detail-oriented taxonomies appeal to children: It provided me with a field to master and the tools to do so. Eleven-year-old me was an expert on the Weinsteins, Sundance, and the phenomena of sex, lies, and videotape and The Crying Game—without ever even seeing the movies, or really even knowing what they were about. The early and mid-90s Entertainment Weekly was a trade magazine for the masses: A publication that promised to make consumers, whether 11 or 45, into near-experts. It took a while to figure out the format—at first, it was a little too snobby New Yorker and not enough Henry Luce-style middlebrow—but by the mid-90s, it had hit its stride. But doing what its readers liked and doing what its parent company Time Warner needed did not always, or even often, coincide." (TheAwl)

"Immediately before the presidential election in 2012, Fox News viewers were certain of one thing: Mitt Romney was going to win. It didn’t matter that poll after poll had President Barack Obama winning by a comfortable margin. Conservative pundits Michael Barone, George Will and Dick Morris all expected Romney to earn more than 300 electoral votes. Even after Obama's victory was certain on election night, Karl Rove wouldn't admit defeat. For those of us reading Nate Silver and other election forecasters, those conservative predictions were laughably bad. And election night proved us correct: Obama won with 332 electoral votes. The millions of Republicans who were shocked and disappointed on election night were not let down by their hubris, although it undoubtedly played a role. The real fault lies with conservative media system, which had become an echo chamber of right wing talking points that did not reflect the national landscape." (TNR)

The late Jimi Hendrix, the electric guitarist Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis

"Last night, Chelsea Hotels hosted an opening for Princess Gloria von Thurn und Taxis’ Come On Darling, Don’t Be Mad at the Hotel Chelsea Storefront Gallery. Guests such as, Gloria von Thurn und Taxis , Ed Scheetz, Aby Rosen, André Balazs, Andres Serrano, Antonio Homen, Boaz Mazor,  Calvin Klein, Carlos Mota, Carmen D’Allesio, Cheryl Dunn, David Kuhn, Edward Cavendish, Lady Liliana Cavendish, Eric Shiner, Francesco Clemente, Genevieve Jones, Glenn O’Brien, Jeff Koons, Jeffrey Deitch, John Derian, Juan Carlos Fernandez,  Kalup Linzy, Laura Eastwood, Lex Fenwick, Maripol, Maury Hopson,  Nur Khan, Paul Mathieu, Peter Marino, Richard Pandiscio, Sir John Richardson, Sante D’Orazio, Sally Singer, Sofia Barrenechea, Susanne Bartsch, Tiffany Dubin, Todd Eberle, among others, were treated to the premier viewing of the portrait series drawn by the artist, containing familiar faces from past and present, all of whose history intertwine with the bohemian hotel. The lively space was punctuated by festive margaritas and sangria compliments of Qui Tequila. Long known as the 'punk princess,' Gloria has long been an influential patron and supporter within the art community. An icon of the 1980’s, Princess Gloria frequented the Hotel Chelsea. As she recalls, 'I went to the Chelsea Hotel, not to sleep, but to look at who is there all the time when I was young.' The Princess witnessed a revolutionary art scene at the Chelsea encountering Jasper Johns, William S. Burroughs, Donald Baechler, Francesco Clemente, Julian Schnabel, Charles Bukowski, among many others." (GloriasPortrait)

Caroline Schmidt Barnett and Amanda

"The American Federation of Arts (AFA) held its 2014 Spring Luncheon on Wednesday, June 4th. This year's speaker was acclaimed fashion designer, photographer, and passionate collector and patron of the arts, Reed Krakoff. He was joined in conversation by Margaret Russell, editor- in-chief of Architectural Digest ... Event décor was provided by Matthew Robbins Design. Proceeds from the luncheon support the research and development of new AFA exhibition projects. 
Approximately 140 guests were in attendance, including AFA Board President and 2014 Spring Luncheon Co-Chair Clare McKeon, Co-Chairs Elizabeth Belfer, Ashleigh Fernandez, Stephanie La Nasa, Merrill Mahan, Capera Ryan, and Shirin von Wulffen; Vanessa Cornell, Cacho Falcon, Elisabeth Holder, Sloan Overstrom, Frank E. Richardson, Robin Zendell, and AFA Director Pauline Willis." (NYSD)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"In private meetings and public statements ahead of her book’s publication, Hillary Clinton and her allies have presented a united front with President Barack Obama, highlighting their transition from campaign rivals to Cabinet confidants. Yet in the weeks before her memoir, 'Hard Choices,' hits the shelves, news accounts have detailed instances of substantive foreign policy disagreements between the two while she was secretary of state – from the Russian reset to Syria to the U.S. embargo against Cuba.Clinton’s relationship with Obama presents a delicate challenge for the former secretary of state as she rolls out her book this week and potentially a presidential campaign months from now. She does not want to appear disloyal to her former boss but could use some separation given his anemic poll numbers. She’d have to have Obama supporters enthusiastically on board a presidential campaign, while fending off Republican attempts to depict her as representing a third Obama term. Her allies dismiss as simplistic the prism through which Clinton is seen as either with Obama or against him, but Republicans are already seizing on any ray of daylight between them, which further complicates her challenge.'Her record is our record,' former National Security Council and Obama adviser Tommy Vietor, who has joined Clinton’s team to handle response to her book, told Democrats at a recent briefing in Washington. In her book — a manuscript of which was sent to the White House for review before it was printed, two sources told POLITICO — Clinton writes about some of the foreign policy debates in which she differed with the president, from whether to arm Syrian opposition rebels to whether Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak should leave office quickly amid the Arab Spring protests. Foreign policy is not typically an issue at the forefront of voters’ minds in presidential races, but that may be different if there’s a former secretary of state on the ballot." (Politico)





"President Obama and Hillary Clinton have begun a delicate dance to 2016. As the former Secretary of State edges toward a presidential run, she is putting some daylight between herself and the man she would succeed, on issues ranging from the release of Bowe Bergdahl to the civil war in Syria. In Clinton’s new book Hard Choices, to be released Tuesday, she says she disagreed with Obama on Syria and advocated in vain for the arming of rebels fighting the forces of President Bashar Assad. On the Bergdahl swap, Clinton has said she would not second-guess Obama’s decision, even as some former administration officials have told reporters that she would have driven a harder bargain with the Taliban. Adding to the intrigue, Obama and Clinton had lunch at the White House two days before the Taliban handed Bergdahl over, a meeting that did not appear on the president’s official schedule. Once rivals, Obama and Clinton both profess that they are now strong allies — the president referred to her recently as a 'really, really good' friend.Yet already, they are sometimes at cross-purposes, with Obama’s team guarding his legacy, even as he struggles with low approval ratings, and Clinton’s team readying for a possible White House run in which she would inevitably have to distance her political brand from that of her old boss.The two camps have the power to inflict damage on one another, and Clinton, Obama and their loyalists will have to work carefully to prevent old wounds from reopening.The release of Hard Choices presents an opportunity to show how far they’ve come. By common consent, the enmity in the wake of the 2008 primary was felt more acutely by the respective staffs than by the candidates.Now, the leading liberal super-PAC that supported Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign, Priorities USA Action, has been retooled as a pro-Hillary vehicle with Jim Messina, who managed Obama’s 2012 bid, serving as co-chairman. Other Obama loyalists, such as field directors Jeremy Bird and Mitch Stewart, are working with the Ready for Hillary super-PAC.Another core Obama player, Tommy Vietor, who bashed the Clinton camp in the 2008 primary and went on to serve as an assistant press secretary at the White House, is working directly on Clinton’s publicity campaign for her book." (TheHill)

REX USA/Tim Rooke/Rex

"Juan Carlos, king of Spain, announced last week—in a surprise decision—that he would be abdicating the throne, handing the proverbial royal baton to his 46-year-old son, Felipe. At 76 years old, Juan Carlos, per reports, had decided he wanted to let his son rule while he was 'in his prime,' and many outlets last week couldn’t help but compare the Spanish succession to the situation across the water in Britain, where Prince Charles, 65 years old, now the oldest heir to the throne in Britain in over 300 years, continues to wait. And now Juan Carlos has, per reports, made this comparison even more explicit, reportedly telling Rafael Spottorno, chief of the royal household, 'I do not want my son to wither waiting like Prince Charles,' according to Spain’s El Mundo newspaper. 'He saw, above all, that his son was in his prime and didn’t want to see him like Prince Charles who will be 66 in November,' the newspaper claims." (VanityFair)





"Saturday night I went, as a guest of JH, with his wife Danielle and mother-in-law Kathleen, to the Park Avenue Armory to see Shakespeare’s 'Macbeth' starring Kenneth Branagh and Alex Kingston. This version was commissioned and produced by Park Avenue Armory and Manchester International Festival (where it was performed last July). This New York production was produced in association with Colin Callendar, and it’s not a secret among theatre-goers. It is spectacular. Ben Brantley in the Times reviewed the production last July when it was performed in a cathedral in Manchester, England ... The whole evening was like that. A two-hour play, as you may know (although some have made it longer in their productions). The one thousand guests including some children sat rapt throughout. One little boy, probably no more than 8 or 10, with his father, never took his eyes off the performance. There are battles and rains (yes, real rain and real mud)and thunder and fires and blood bursting. A doomed fright. All because of the Thane of Glamis and Cawdor and the imagined promise of power. Amazingly this is the stage debut of the great Sir Kenneth Branagh in New York, as well as his leading lady Alex Kingston. It’s a limited run, through Sunday, June 22nd. I hear it’s sold-out -- although try and see, if you can. You won’t forget it." (NYSD)

RIP, Ygritte #GoT

Wildling, you made our hearts sing ...

The McLaughlin Group

Washington Week in Review

Friday News Roundup - International

Friday News Roundup - International

Media Whore D'Oeuvres

"God, gays, and guns. The era in which controversies over so-called social issues like these defined the Right and the Left in American politics is rapidly coming to an end, thanks to the pronounced liberalism of the youngest cohort of Americans—the Millennial generation, whose members were born in 1981 or later. God? Millennials are the least religious of Americans. A quarter are 'nones' or unaffiliated, according to a Gospel Coalition poll, and fewer than one in ten say that religion is important in their lives.¹ Guns? According to a Gallup poll, fewer Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 own guns (20 percent) than the national average (30 percent).² And a majority of Millennials support gun control: 56 percent, according to a National Journal poll,³ and 59 percent, according to Pew.⁴ Gays? According to a Pew poll, the Millennials are the only cohort in which a majority (70 percent) support gay marriage. Millennials are also more likely than members of older generations to describe themselves as liberal, according to a 2009 Pew poll: 29 percent, compared to 40 percent moderate and 28 percent conservative.⁶ Only 20 percent of members of Generation X, 18 percent of Baby Boomers, and 15 percent of members of the Silent Generation describe themselves as liberal.⁷ While individuals often become somewhat more conservative as they grow older, it seems likely that the Millennial generation will permanently shift American attitudes to the left—on social issues, if not necessarily on economics. Thanks to generational shifts in values like these, it is likely that in the decades ahead there will be a dramatic realignment in American politics. Although it is likely to reshape the two major parties, it will not be a mere 'partisan realignment' of the kind studied by political scientists. Rather, it will be a realignment of American public philosophies or political worldviews. This worldview realignment will be accentuated by a number of long-term demographic and cultural changes. But the chief catalyst of the realignment will be the near-universal victory of social liberalism. In a nation in which both parties are socially liberal, existing coalitions are likely to break up and reform in striking ways." (Michael lind)









"(Gloria) Vanderbilt was born in February 1924, the only child of railway heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt and his second wife, Gloria Morgan. A year later, Reginald drank himself to death and, after a bitter court case, his young widow lost custody of her daughter, little Gloria, to a paternal aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (founder of the Whitney art museum in New York). In the intervening years, Vanderbilt has been through so many incarnations that everyone has their own version of her: to me, she will always be the woman whose form-fitting jeans, with distinctive signature and swan logo, invented designer denim in the 1970s ... Most canvases take her an average of two to three days to complete. One of the few times she has had a problem with a painting was with a portrait she has been doing of her youngest son Anderson, a news presenter on CNN. She has been working on it for a long time: it’s a sketch of him with a list, in red, of all the hotspots he has visited since 1993: Cambodia, Rwanda, and so on. 'I’ll probably have to start over,' she says. 'I did another one of Anderson years ago when he was at Dalton [a private school in New York],' she says, 'and I made him take it to school to show, and he says he was mortified. But now I think he rather likes it.'Vanderbilt takes me into a guest bathroom, where she has painted every tile with designs and the names of friends and dates that are special to her. Then she shows me a fireplace she made and installed in another room. It’s a surround painted bright turquoise with glittery silver, a little kitschy but also endearing. 'I would redecorate every six months if I could,' she says.Did you always, I ask, want to make art? 'Yes, since I was a girl, but there was no way to discuss it; it was only when I was at the Wheeler school [a private day school] in Providence that I met a wonderful art teacher and it seemed possible.' I ask if she was worried about not being taken seriously, or concerned that her celebrity status would overshadow her work. 'Well, I did study at the Art Students League [of New York],' Vanderbilt says, 'but I think I learnt as much from posing for great artists like René Bouché and Marcel Vertès, and I was very lucky in that all my husbands were very supportive of whatever I did. Stokowski was very supportive of my painting, Sidney [Lumet] of my acting, and Wyatt Cooper was a miracle of support. Boy, do I miss him. I’m always thinking, ‘Why aren’t you here so you can see this, and I can get your take on it?’ 'But Anderson has a great eye, and he’s always my first viewer, if he’s here. He could have been an artist but he went another way.'" (FT)





"I am not embarrassed to admit that the obituaries on the back page of The Economist make my week. They’re thought-provoking and written with energy. Each column is a window onto another world, where genocidal SS captains escape to Argentina and open a deli with best cold cuts in town, and where British men create Tibet’s communications network and end up imbibing Maoist propaganda in order to escape life in Chinese prison. The woman who writes these obituaries is Ann Wroe, a stalwart of The Economist since 1976 and the author of nonfiction books on topics as diverse as the Iran-Contra affair and Pontius Pilate. She is softly-spoken and sharp, her willowy English demeanor masking a razor-sharp analytical mind. After working as Arts and Books editor and US editor, she took on obituaries in 2003. She told me that the job “gives you a chance to write, really to write.” Her secret? Chronology doesn’t matter. 'You just have to try and get the essence of who they are, and it has to boil down to what was most important to them.' Her role is to meld the mind of a journalist with the creativity of a novelist. One memorable example of this free-wheeling writing was Wroe’s obituary of Benson, a 25-year-old carp that lived in a pond in Peterborough; Wroe wrote that 'in her glory days she reminded some of Marilyn Monroe, others of Raquel Welch. She was lither than either as she cruised through the water-weed, a lazy twist of gold.' Benson tragically lost her mate and spent her remaining days comfort eating until her ultimate demise.Wroe recalls that 'it was a summer evening, I remember, and I went and wrote it in my garden. And I just felt that feeling of lazing around at the bottom of a river. I just imagined myself in the world of being a carp.' The subject of the week’s obituary is decided on Monday, and it must be written and polished by Tuesday. This 36-hour window is a marathon attempt to consume as much information as possible. 'I just sort of feed it all in. Make a huge great collage in my mind. And then it compresses down terribly: there must be millions of words in there and it just comes down to a thousand.'" (Isabelle Frasier/TheHairpin)





"Following the death of Sir Winston Churchill in January 1965, there were contrasting verdicts from two near-contemporary English writers. In his English History 1914-1945, the last volume in the old Oxford History of England, A.J.P. Taylor described Churchill in a biographical footnote, ending with the five-word sentence, 'The saviour of his country.' But a very different note was struck by Evelyn Waugh in a letter to his friend Ann Fleming (wife of Ian, the James Bond novelist): 'He is not a man for whom I ever had esteem. Always in the wrong, always surrounded by crooks, a most unsuccessful father.' In today’s American climate of Churchill-worship, those words must seem astonishing, and only Waugh could have said that Churchill was 'always' in the wrong, although he was certainly wrong a good deal of the time, while there were enough dubious people in his entourage to give some colour to “crooks.” But it’s the last words which are stingingly painful even now. Churchill truly was an unsuccessful father—with one shining exception. She was Mary Churchill, Lady Soames, who died on the last day of May at 91. Not only was she the last surviving child of Winston and Clementine Churchill, she was also the only one who had grown up safe and sound, to live a long and fulfilled life. When I first met Mary in the 1970s, she was in a state of transition, from motherhood to authorship. It would be impertinent to call her a friend, but I stayed with the Soameses at their house in Hampshire thanks to my friendship with their daughter Emma, a sparky young journalist and gal about town who has since had an admirable career as a magazine editor." (TNR)

Bloomberg Video: The World's Largest Mobile Pay Network ... Is In Kenya

Lunch with the FT: Gloria Vanderbilt

"Gloria Vanderbilt, now 90, has been famous for many things in the course of an extraordinary and varied life. An artist, actress, heiress, model, socialite and fashion designer, she’s been married four times (to agent and film producer Pat DiCicco, conductor Leopold Stokowski, film director Sidney Lumet and author Wyatt Cooper) and courted by luminaries from Marlon Brando to Frank Sinatra, Howard Hughes to Roald Dahl.

As if in contrast, every day she eats the same thing for lunch: a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich and, occasionally, an apple. Yet for this interview, Vanderbilt has agreed to put aside her routine and to go round the corner from her studio to Ze Café. As a kind of quid pro quo, however, she first wants me to come to her studio, a small white room in a ground floor apartment on the far east side of Midtown Manhattan, just below the apartment in which she actually lives.It’s not a bad deal. The apartment, which represents nine decades in a suite of rooms, is about as close as you can come to a life in microcosm. It’s very full.

Vanderbilt was born in February 1924, the only child of railway heir Reginald Claypoole Vanderbilt and his second wife, Gloria Morgan. A year later, Reginald drank himself to death and, after a bitter court case, his young widow lost custody of her daughter, little Gloria, to a paternal aunt, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney (founder of the Whitney art museum in New York).In the intervening years, Vanderbilt has been through so many incarnations that everyone has their own version of her: to me, she will always be the woman whose form-fitting jeans, with distinctive signature and swan logo, invented designer denim in the 1970s." (LunchwiththeFT)

Bloomberg Businessweek: Japan's Incredibly Shrinking Empire

"Japan of course is scarcely the only society to have fallen prey to epic hubris or unbridled xenophobia. (The list pretty much winds back to the Babylonians.) Yet Japan’s brand of cultural bigheadedness is proving an obstacle to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s three-pronged policy to revitalize the country with a mix of radical monetary easing, fiscal stimulus, and pro-growth measures. Abenomics, as these initiatives are known, requires foreign capital and younger overseas workers to offset Japan’s graying masses. Last year, Abe pledged to double foreign direct investment to 35 trillion yen ($340 billion) into his country. 'Turning our eye to the world beyond Japan, we find a great number of non-Japanese who are brimming with ability,' Abe said in an early May keynote speech at an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) ministerial council meeting in Paris. “I wish to have such people more actively engaged within Japan.' Japan is a jus sanguinis (right of blood) country, meaning that even if you were born and bred on the archipelago, speak the local tongue as eloquently as the emperor, and recite long passages from The Tale of Genji with ease, you’re out of luck if your parents aren’t Japanese. Naturalized citizenship is a possibility, but it requires five continuous years of residence, no run-ins with the law, and the financial wherewithal to support oneself. The rules governing work and permanent residency visas are among the strictest in the world. Foreign nationals account for only 1.6 percent of the nation’s population, the third-lowest proportion after Poland and Slovakia among 26 members of the OECD that provide such data. In the U.S. the rate is 6.8 percent, and in Switzerland it’s 22 percent. All of this matters because Japan is simultaneously aging and shrinking." (Businessweek)

WSJ: G7 Decoded

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"The ritual started in earnest last fall in the midst of the biggest humiliation of Barack Obama’s presidency, the failure of the health care website. Anytime he heard a sliver of good news, the president reacted the same way: He knocked on the polished cherry wood table in the Roosevelt Room. It’s a small thing, almost a nervous tic, but Obama’s habit of knocking on wood during Obamacare meetings had become notable, something that close advisers talked and even joked about among themselves. Obama had always projected the aura of a deeply confident man, someone who on the basis of past experience was justified in assuming that good luck just naturally happened to him. But in the second term, confronted by recurring setbacks and regular reminders of the limits of his power, he began to convey a sense that even hopeful news might be ephemeral, a mirage.
When Obamacare fixer Jeffrey Zients told the president for the first time that the website would finally hold up under a rush of visitors, Obama joined his senior aides in a round of knocking. When the insurance marketplace finally functioned as it should, they knocked. When enrollment numbers picked up in March, they knocked.In interviews with more than 60 people who have had close dealings with Obama — his aides, lawmakers, friends, historians, critics and outside advisers — the portrait emerges of a president shadowed by a deepening awareness that his time and power are finite, and that two-thirds of his presidency is already in the past tense." (Politico)





"Sometimes so much news circles Hillary Clinton, it’s hard to believe she has yet to declare that she’s running for president.This week, People magazine teased bits from its forthcoming cover story with the former secretary of state; news broke that the Clinton camp reportedly met with The New York Times to try and quell the paper’s coverage of her; she backpedaled on support for the deal to bring home an American prisoner of war; and Vladimir Putin called her a weak woman. Clinton masterfully answered People’s question about a 2012 concussion that has prompted Karl Rove and other Republicans to speculate that she may suffer from brain damage. Clinton denied having any lingering effects, then pointed out that a certain other high-profile politician has survived plenty of concussions (via Politico Playbook) ... Ryan, of course, is a likely 2016 presidential hopeful, and Clinton was smart to link him to the story. If the 'brain damage' meme sticks until they’re both officially running for office, Ryan would presumably point out that there’s a difference between a young athlete and a politician in her 60s, but score one for Clinton all the same. Speaking of circuses, Matt Drudge tweeted on Wednesday that it appears as though Clinton was leaning on a walker in her People cover photo, a stretch of the imagination that should have been ignored but instead spread across the conservative media and resulted in the magazine releasing another photo that proved Clinton was indeed leaning on a patio chair. Across the world, a Kremlin-released English transcript of an interview with Putin included a bizarre, misogynistic response to Clinton’s comparison of Russia’s actions in Eastern Europe to Adolf Hitler’s moves in the 1930s ... The Washington Free Beacon reported Wednesday that top Clinton aides held a meeting with the Washington bureau chief of The New York Times, in which they supposedly asked the paper to back off its coverage of Clinton, given that she was not holding public office. Neither party would comment on or confirm the story, but some in Clinton’s camp are said to be worried about the danger of overexposure this far before the 2016 election.: (VanityFair)



"In her 2009 book on Brooke Astor, Mrs. Astor Regrets, NYU professor and New York and Vanity Fair contributor Meryl Gordon chronicled the sad and tawdry unraveling of one of the city’s most storied families. And when Huguette Clark—heiress to the copper mining fortune of her father, the robber baron Senator William Andrews Clark—died at 104 in 2011, leaving behind a fiercely-contested will, Ms. Gordon was asked by her publisher to train her Social Register expertise on Ms. Clark’s largely-mysterious life. The result, The Phantom of Fifth Avenue, offers an alluring, enigmatic portrait of a woman who shunned virtually all face-to-to face interaction during her last decades, the final two of which she elected to spend—despite good health—in a hospital bed, as her palatial residences on Fifth Avenue, and in Connecticut and California sat dormant. The Observer met recently with Ms. Gordon in the Upper West Side co-op she shares with her husband, the journalist Walter Shapiro, where she discussed the riddle of Huguette Clark and the thrill of writing about a city full of fabulously wealthy ghosts. Phantom is out in hardback from Grand Central publishing. The Phantom of Fifth Avenue is your second book about New York high society. Is this an area in which you’ve always been interested? I’m from an upper middle class Jewish family in Rochester, New York. My mother was a social worker and my father was an accountant. But when I first moved to New York, I became fascinated by reading people like Liz Smith, who still does a column, and Cindy Adams. There were gossip columns in every major newspaper. I remember at one point looking at the paper and realizing that I knew more about what these women were doing every day—where they were shopping and their clothes—than I did about my own friends. That world has always interested me because it’s a closed-off society.Did you find any overlap between Ms. Astor and Ms. Clark? Well, they both married Princeton men of about the same era. And I found a couple of overlaps where I think Huguette was on boats with Vincent Astor. And I’ve wondered if they overlapped during different moments of their lives. But Brooke Astor was an incredibly public person who went out virtually every single night in New York and wanted to know everyone. Huguette led the world’s most private and quiet life. She really did not want to be in the headlines. She did everything possible to withdraw from the world." (NYO)

.

"It was Wednesday, so it was Michael’s. Even busier than Tuesday, and louder than hell, thanks to the Con Ed workman who were drilling on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, and right by my table.  Nevertheless the show must and did go on.I was invited to lunch by Leslie Stevens, Lisa McCarthy and Kathy Rayner, all working on organizing the 40th anniversary celebration this summer of the Animal Rescue Fund (ARF) of the Hamptons. In their forty years, ARF has rescued and secured adoptions for 20,000 dogs and cats.  They are a no kill shelter and never turn an animal away, including those adoptees who are returned ... Meanwhile back at the Michael’s lunch tables. At the table next to us: Lovey Arum and Mary Carol (Mrs. Milton A. 'Mickey') Rudin. Mrs. Arum is the wife of Bob Arum, the biggest fight promoter in the world and is in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. Mrs. Rudin is the widow of the prominent Hollywood lawyer, one of the power figures of tinseltown in its heyday. He was famous to the public as Frank Sinatra’s lawyer but that was only one of many famous names on Rudin’s client list. The relationship with Sinatra was a long and deep one as “counsel, defender, investment partner and friend. He was also Marilyn Monroe’s lawyer and coincidentally, at the time of her death, the brother-in-law of her shrink Ralph Greenson. Other clients included Lucille Ball, the Warner Brothers, Marvin Davis, Steve Ross, Steve Wynn, Elizabeth Taylor, the Jackson Five, Norman Lear, Liza Minnelli, and even the Aga Khan. At table one next to Arun and Rudin, agent David Kuhn with Kerry Kennedy. On the other side of the ladies: Joe Zee with a woman from Carolina Herrera; and in the corner: George Lucas; next to him Stan Shuman. Next to him Alice Mayhew with Jill Abramson, the recently relieved executive editor of the New York Times. Alice Mayhew, the great Simon & Schuster editor, was also editor of Lynn Sherr’s new biography of Sally Ride, the first woman astronaut. Lynn was lunching a few tables away with Peter Price, as was her agent on the project Esther Newberg, who also gave the book party for Lynn this past Tuesday night. Meanwhile back to the list: in the middle of the room, Duh Boyz: Della Femina, Kramer,  Imber and Bergman. Across from them TV producer Joan Gelman with her friend Joan Hamburg, the WOR talk-radio veteran who after 35 years of keeping the listeners interested, got the boot Tuesday morning. Called into the Human Resources office (where she thought was going to be told she’d also have to fill in for someone who had called in sick), she was told she could leave. Now! No thanks, no nothing. This form of firing is not new in the big bad world of media, be it broadcasting or print. It is cruel, but then, so are a lot of the people practicing that method of executive direction. Jerks, ultimately." (NYSD)





"The Guardian, financed through a trust created by its then owners in the Thirties, has traditionally been organised as something like a private-equity firm, with investments in a variety of businesses whose profits went to supporting a newspaper. Earlier this year, with the newspaper costing more than the investments yielded, it liquidated most of its holdings, converting itself into an entity more like a wealth-management company or, perhaps, even a family office, wherein capital could be tapped to support the interest of the family. One of those interests is Edward Snowden - at a cost far from accounted for. Curiously, the Guardian  may well be the best-funded newspaper in the world. But, at its current losses, there is also something finite to that money - even a willingness for it to be finite. Between business discipline and philosophical mission, it would choose the latter. Between exigencies and martyrdom, martyrdom.I have written periodically for the Guardian  for more than a decade. Most recently I contributed to what it has portrayed as something of a life-or-death effort to transport a new version of the Guardian to the US, giving me a sideline view of the effect of the Snowden story, not just on readers or the political world, but on the organisation that produced it. The cost of heroism, if you will. US expansion has long been a Guardian dream. For some years now, there has been no growth left for it in the UK market - with circulation and advertising in perilous decline - but the US market seemed to the Guardian management full of opportunities for a serious but stylish, left-leaning news outlet. The obvious models, albeit on something of the opposite political spectrum, were the Financial Times  and the Economist, which had adroitly managed to internationalise their brands with an investment in US distribution (quite a substantial investment). But the Guardian was looking for something more, something transformational. Like Superman blasting off from the doomed planet of Krypton, or the Corleone family leaving New York for Vegas, or even like Rupert Murdoch, the Guardian's bugbear, outgrowing London and moving his headquarters to New York, the Guardian, by setting up shop in Manhattan - on the corner of Spring Street and Broadway in Soho - had a kind of spunky or wildly speculative confidence that it could become an American voice. Not just a British voice in the US. The planned expansion was all the more gutsy - or harebrained - not just because introducing a media brand in the US market is a complicated and expensive effort, but because there was no clear way for the Guardian, even if it were to become a clarion voice, to make money in the US." (GQ)

Cornelia Guest before her office table setting, last night.

"Last night Cornelia Guest threw a small cocktail party at her offices in the East 70s. It’s from here that Cornelia runs her catering business, as well as her handbag business and her animal philanthropies. The office was once upon a time the ground floor of limestone mansion. I know this because all of her doors open to a garden." (NYSD)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"]In the last three presidential elections, the Democratic candidate lost among white working-class (non-college) voters by an average of 22 points. The worst performance came in 2012 when Obama lost this group—once the bulwark of the Democratic coalition—by a staggering 26 points (62-36).
The loss of this key demographic is mitigated to some degree by its shrinking size. The numbers of white working-class voters will probably dip to just 30 percent of all voters by 2020 and 44 percent of white voters. This is a dramatic decline from 1988, when white working-class voters were 54 percent of all voters and almost two-thirds (64 percent) of white voters. Some argue that since the ranks of the white working class are declining, Democrats should simply rely instead on their rising “Obama coalition” of minorities, unmarried and working women, seculars, Millennial generation voters, and educated whites living in more urbanized states. Yet it would be a grave mistake for Democrats to count on this strategy. For one, the Democrat’s deficit with working-class whites was the key reason for the G.O.P. landslide in 2010, and could hand the Republicans another big win in the upcoming mid-terms. Despite their declining numbers, white working-class voters will be an ever-present threat to progressives in elections and to progressive governance as long as so many remain so hostile to the party.The Democrats don’t need a majority of white working-class voters to come over to their side. But Democrats do need to deny the Repubicans the supermajorities of white working class-voters that they counter-mobilize today. Moreover, broadening the party’s appeal to white working-class voters should greatly reduce the threat posed to the Democrats when other constituencies, such as Latinos or younger voters, for example, exhibit only modest turnout, which is particularly a problem during off year elections, or waiver in their support for the Democrats." (DemocraticStrategist)


























"I was going down to Michael’s to meet with the Quest editorial staff to discuss upcoming issues. Michael’s was very busy and very noisy with the verbal excitement bouncing off every art-covered wall. In the table in front of us was Susan Sarandon, the actress and ping-pong tycoon with His Holiness, the Gyalwang Drukpa, who is head of the world’s second largest sect of Buddhism, the Dragon lineage. The Dragon lineage has its biggest following in the nations and Kingdoms of Nepal, Vietnam, Tibet, Ladakh Northern India and Bhutan where it is the state religion. His Holiness, as he is universally called, is one of the 'Super Lama’s' of Buddhism, second only to His Holiness the Dalai Lama. It was the Dalai Lama who recognized and confirmed His Holiness as the twelfth incarnation of the Dragon lineage when the Drukpa was only three years old ... One of the reasons Sarandon is so drawn to the dynamic Holy man is that he broke the millennia-old prohibition of letting women practice the ancient spiritual art of kung-fu. The BBC did a fine documentary on these so called 'Kung-Fu Nuns.' Several people stopped by the table to say hello to Ms. Sarandon and meet His Holiness, including Kathie Lee Gifford, Judy Cox and Sharon Bush -- who was quick to invite the couple to her box at Saturday Night’s Pastor Joel Osteen revival at Yankee Stadium -- and the lovely Maureen Reidy, the newly installed President of the Paley Center for Media." (NYSD)





















"Peter Brant and supermodel Stephanie Seymour’s fashion-obsessed sons Peter Jr. and Harry crashed Monday’s CFDA awards, a source tells us. We’re told the decadence-loving heirs arrived at Alice Tully Hall and walked the red carpet uninvited. 'As soon as they were done having their picture taken, they were immediately escorted out,' says a spy. While the brothers missed the ceremony, they did make the after-party rounds, turning up at the 'unofficial' Top of the Standard bash, as well as Dior’s event for International Award winner Raf Simons at Ladurée.A rep for the Brant brothers claimed, '[They] were invited but there was a ticket mix up at the door so they left. They did not walk the carpet.'" (P6)

The kind of guy that spends $2k on a passport holder. Photo: Instagram

"A rich 23-year-old passed out in his apartment with two naked women on Saturday night and woke up 12 hours later missing a lot more than his dignity. The sexy thieves, who fixed our victimized Casanova a drink right before his slumber, allegedly made off with his $10,000 Rolex, an iPhone, over ten grand in cash, and a $2,000 passport holder. Michael Curreri, who likes to post pictures of himself with fancy cars on Instagram, picked the ladies up at Tao before bringing them back to his Gramercy Park apartment, the New York Post reports. They showered together, as is customary in these arrangements, and then the fateful beverage was served. Police told the Post that cases like this are pretty common in Manhattan, but they released a description of the bandits in case anyone has spotted them: One is black, one is white, both have long hair and weigh around 120 pounds, and possess a great eye for expensive passport holders." (NYMag)




"It was mid-morning and I was invited out. Night bat that I am I scarcely step outdoors before dusk and instead, especially now as the summer amplifies, I am committed to a nocturnal life and bow down to the polar blast of my a/c. But here was my friend Sunny texting, suggesting an adventure. Yes I replied and searched for my bathing suit, eventually found with a seam of dust at the fold.Sunny pi...cked me up in a rumbly pickup truck with kayaks in the bed and we drove to her favorite secret spot. I could sooner reveal the coordinates to an active treasure site, so let’s just say we pushed off from a slash of green mangrove tangled shore. I followed Sunny’s lead into the emerald water. All around were crystal rods of light and its play on the blue-green tiled seabed with its wittering wavy baroque diamond shapes. I was hypnotized. 'Didja see that?' 'I heard the splash!' This went on all afternoon but I missed every sighting. We paddled in the kayaks and then dove in the water, tumbling and rolling. To swim hard in one direction and then shoot down to the coral bumpy ocean floor was paradise. On the beach we drip-dried, luxuriating in the sun’s coddling rays. 'Thanks Sunny,' I said, 'I should really get out during the day more often.'" (Christina Oxenberg)












"The late afternoon rain cooled off the town somewhat by early evening. It was a busy one. Down at Cipriani-Wall Street, the Gordon Parks Foundation honored individuals who have contributed their lives to the arts ...  Also a musician and a writer, Gordon Parks was most famous for his photo essays in the great days of LIFE Magazine, and as the director of several films including the 1971 hit film SHAFT. They honored Irvin Mayfield, the Grammy Award-winning American jazz trumpeter and bandleader. He was introduced by Soledad O’Brien; and artist and photographer Lorna Simpson, who was introduced by Leslie Parks, daughter of Gordon; plus fashion designer Vera Wang, who was introduced by Chelsea Clinton; and Ed Zwick, filmmaker and producer who was introduced by Adam Gopnik. George Lucas and Mellody Hobson were presented with the first Gordon Parks Patron of the Arts Award.The evening’s Co-Chairs included Alicia Keys, Karl Lagerfeld, Donna Karan, and Kaseem ‘Swizz Beatz’ Dean.  Dinner Chairs were Anderson Cooper, Agnes Hsu-Tang and Oscar Tang, Annie Leibowitz, Lisa and Richard Pepler, Peggy Rice, Jed Root, Russell Simmons, Alexander Soros and Gerhard Steidl." (NYSD)





"For guys, the mythology of The Stoner runs deep. There's Cheech and Chong, Bill and Ted, Harold and Kumar, James Franco and Seth Rogen, the dudes from Dude Where's My Car, and plenty of other stoner bros to round out a High Times list of "13 Great Stoner Movies." The Stoner Girl appears to be a more elusive creature with a less public history, launching many a debate about the state of Marijuana and the Modern Lady.  Historically, it just hasn't been safe for women to go public about pot. Back in 2000, when Friends was still on the air and Jennifer Aniston was America's sweetheart, she unapologetically came out about enjoying weed and media outlets proclaimed her image as 'tarnished,' even bringing in unrelated family troubles to the matter. There are things that good girls are supposed to do and marijuana, apparently, isn't one of them. No wonder then that there have been so few movies or TV shows featuring girls getting high. As recently as the 2000s, the only examples you had of lady tokers in pop culture came down to 'retro characters' like Donna and Jackie on That '70s Show (who weren't even shown smoking on camera) and Milla Jovovich in Dazed and Confused or little-seen indie roles like Anna Faris in her 2007 flick, Smiley Face. In 2010 there was, for a moment, a glimmer of hope as buzz started to build around Best Buds, a stoner comedy that Natalie Portman would star in and produce. The premise was centered around two female best friends trying to get some pot to their friend before her wedding. But a stoner 'chick flick' proved to be a hard sell and the project was quietly put back on the shelf. Though the female stoner mostly seemed to exist in a media vacuum a decade ago, women nowadays are coming out of the smoky shadows and writing their own high histories online." (Papermag)

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Most accounts of the long roller-coaster ride of the idea of universal national service see William James as the father of the idea. After delivering an influential address at Stanford University in 1906, the popular philosopher elaborated his proposal in 1910 in a long, widely read essay titled 'The Moral Equivalent of War.' 'This is my idea,' James wrote. 'Instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature.' Through such service, he asserted, 'injustice would tend to be evened out' and 'numerous other goods to the commonwealth' would result. 'Our gilded youths' would “get the childishness knocked out of them' and 'come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas.' He predicted: 'It is only a question of blowing on the spark until the whole population gets incandescent.' In the decades since, there has been a continuing discussion over James’s idea—whether it should be mandatory or voluntary, and, if voluntary, whether it could become as common an expectation as finishing high school is now. There have been high and low points for national service. The question today remains: Can blowing on the spark succeed in making enough Americans incandescent about the idea so that it becomes an accepted part of our culture?" (Harris Wofford)

Illustration by Kristian Hammerstad

“'Even billionaires have feelings,' Alexandra Cohen had taken to saying. Her husband, Steve Cohen, is the billionaire in question. He’s one of the most successful hedge-fund managers in history—'the Michael Jordan of trading,' in the words of one Wall Street observer. He’d built SAC Capital Advisors into one of the most profitable hedge funds in the world while amassing a net worth estimated at $11 billion. Cohen was never known for his attention to feelings. He had a reputation for brusque, money-talks-bullshit-walks office interactions. He was the opposite of a ­sentimentalist—if one of his traders missed his numbers, he was gone.But that was before U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, suspecting him and his firm of insider trading, began pursuing Cohen as if he were a crime boss. Federal agents bugged his home phone and raided the offices of former employees who’d started their own hedge funds. They subpoenaed millions of pages of SAC documents while working their way up the chain of command, flipping one former employee after another. They even had one past portfolio manager attempt to infiltrate Cohen’s company by getting himself rehired, though Cohen didn’t take the bait.As Bharara’s web closed around him, Cohen complained to associates that his success had made him a target. 'I’m not doing anything different than a hundred other people have done,' he said to a colleague. 'It’s not who I am, it’s what I am.' He called Wall Street peers, trolling for sympathy: 'I feel like I’m watching a bad movie and I’m the star,' he’d say. On vacation one year, he ran into a fellow hedge-fund manager: 'It’s not fair,' he complained. 'Why me?'" (NYMag)




"Outside groups poured a staggering $2.5 billion into the 2012 election — far more than the $1.6 billion spent by party committees — as power migrated from party honchos to a handful of billionaires and political consultants, according to a book released Tuesday by POLITICO Chief Investigative Reporter Kenneth P. Vogel. In 'Big Money: 2.5 Billion Dollars, One Suspicious Vehicle, and a Pimp – on the Trail of the Ultra-Rich Hijacking American Politics,' published by PublicAffairs, Vogel details the explosion of cash in politics and the efforts of conservative and liberal millionaires whose costly forays into politics are not dissimilar from those of rich sports junkies who spend millions to buy a professional team. There’s even some overlap between big donors and team owners. For example, New York Jets owner Woody Johnson is a leading GOP donor, and Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos, a major Democratic donor.Among the highlights of 'Big Money':* Liberal megadonors discussed funding a primary challenger to President Barack Obama in 2012 – perhaps then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – and attempted to commission a poll from a top Democratic pollster to see how she would do in the general election.* Karl Rove, before leaving the White House, quietly advised a group called Freedom’s Watch, which raised $56 million ahead of the 2008 race, primarily from Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson, and set the stage for Rove’s Crossroads groups.* Even after the disappointing 2012 election, the Koch brothers political operation raised far more money at its first donor seminar of the 2014 cycle — $70 million — than it raised at the first seminar of the 2012 cycle: $49 million.* Koch operatives conducted background checks on hotel waitstaff and collected smartphones, iPads and other electronics before many sessions at the first 2014 seminar, in Indian Wells, California.* Obama, at a secret 2012 meeting with rich liberals, pledged to use his political capital in his second term to pursue a constitutional amendment to blunt the impacts of the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision— a promise he has not pursued." (Politico)

by Carlos Alvarez/Getty Images

"Today’s surprise news that 76-year-old King Juan Carlos would be abdicating his throne, handing it down to his son, Prince Felipe, means that Felipe’s wife, Princess Letizia, will soon be known as The Artist Formerly Known as Princess Letizia—or, more commonly probably, as Queen Letizia.

So, what should you know about Letizia? Let’s take a look. — She was a somewhat 'controversial' partner for Felipe. Letizia, 41, was born a 'commoner'—coming from a “professional middle-class family,” per People—which is taboo enough for someone marrying into a royal family—but, in addition to that biographical detail, she was also a . . . divorcee (cue loud gasp, followed by fancy-china-crashing-on-a-marble-floor sound effect) when she started dating Felipe. (She was married to her first husband, Alonso Guerrero Perez, a writer and high-school literature teacher, for about a year.) — She has a journalism background. Letizia’s father and grandmother were both journalists, and she got into the family business herself, becoming a “well-known TV presenter and reporter” in Spain, working for networks like CNN and the Spanish equivalent of Bloomberg. And if it weren’t for her journalism career, she never would have met Felipe, as her meet-cute with Felipe, as it were, occurred at a colleague’s dinner party (which took place shortly after she had won the prize for best Spanish journalist under the age of 30)." (VF)

Carl Schurz Park dog run.

"Regular NYSD readers are familiar with our frequent park shots

. Our choices have to do with proximity. JH lives near  Riverside Park, and also keeps his camera handy when he crosses town. He is naturally drawn to Central Park which was “his” park growing up in New York as he did. He remembers the Park as a kid when it could be a dangerous place for a kid to play, and is well aware of the great differences that have resulted from the Central Park Conservancy’s work.I’ve been familiar with Carl Schurz Park all my adult life. In my twenties, I lived nearby, and then since I came back to New York from California in the early 90s.  Being a 'dog person,' and since it has been on my doorstep, I’ve been walking through the park almost everyday – often year-round – for more than twenty years." (NYSD)

NYT David Carr: My First Big Break

Media-Whore D'Oeuvres

"Recently, after a long, drawn-out fight over an overdraft fee, I decided to break up with my bank. I withdrew my balance, closed my accounts, and began looking around. I wanted to find a ­disruptive bank, in the Silicon Valley parlance—one better than the opaque, fee-filled behemoths I’d dealt with in the past. The problem, I quickly learned, is such a thing doesn’t yet exist. The big banks all offer basically the same bevy of services, and small banks and credit unions tend to skimp on the add-ons I need, like mobile-banking apps and spending trackers. All of them, big and small, run on the same outdated infrastructure—paper checks, debit cards that require punched-in pins, wire transfers that take days to clear. Despite Wall Street’s reputation for ruthless efficiency and staying ahead of the curve, the last truly important innovation in consumer banking might have been the ATM. To listen to Silicon Valley tell it, that will change soon. 'I am dying to fund a disruptive bank,' venture capitalist Marc Andreessen tweeted earlier this year. Financial start-ups—known collectively as 'fintech'—are spreading like kudzu, each with a different idea about how to usurp the giants of Wall Street by offering better services, lower fees, or both. Bitcoin and other digital currencies are the tech scene’s infatuation du jour. But a number of other companies are finding success by innovating within the monetary system we already have. 'When I go to Silicon Valley … they all want to eat our lunch,' lamented ­JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon this year.Part of the reason the tech world is interested in finance is the sheer amount of money involved—financial services is a $1.2 trillion industry, and U.S.-based fintech start-ups raised an estimated $1.3 billion last quarter alone. But banking is also a prime candidate for disruption because, like much of the old-line corporate world, it tends to run on bloated, creaky technology. Even something as simple as applying for a loan can take weeks or months, thanks to the sheer number of human hands such transactions pass through. And, since each intermediary wants a cut, fees are everywhere. Undercutting big banks and speeding up processes might not be as sexy as, say, creating the next Snapchat, but it’s low-hanging fruit for techies who want a way in to a lucrative market. After all, today’s megabanks are really just bundles of particular, loosely related services cobbled together by years of acquisitions and market ­consolidation. If those bundles can be broken apart, the start-up world’s revolution looks a lot more plausible." (NYMag)
















"The spring social season is winding down as both official and private Washington move toward a more laid back warm weather agenda. But it goes out with a bang. Just look at the White House, where on Friday, President Obama shed not one but two high level appointees: press secretary Jay Carney (it was time), and Veterans Administration Secretary Eric Shinseki (it was a scandal). Who could be next up for a Friday media dump as the Administration gears up for the mid-term elections? Obama may be a lame duck but no president wants his last referendum to include deep losses in the House and Senate ... If I have any criticism it would be aimed at some White House staff. The press operation is controlling to the point of being a negative. There’s an almost Nixonian cynicism toward the role of journalism and journalists. You won’t hear this from the White House press corps, because that relationship – press corps/press office – is usually too cozy. But if you come in to observe an event, well, you are herded. I don’t believe it comes from him, and that’s been confirmed by friends who are close to the seat of power. The prize for handling the needs of print and broadcast journalists in an affable and effective way still remains with the White House press team of President George Bush, #41. Shout out to Marlin Fitzwater and Laura Melillo Barnum. And, even with what they were up against (Whitewater, Monica, etc), President Bill Clinton’s front guard were surprisingly open and considerate. Shout out to Mike McCurry. It sets a tone. It matters." (NYSD)

Photo: Spencer Platt/2014 Getty Images

"It's tough to choose a low point of Saturday night's Working Families Convention for Governor Andrew Cuomo. Was it when a WFP leader took the podium to blast him as a liar? Or perhaps it was Cuomo being forced to reshoot a video to be played at the convention. Or maybe it was going along with almost all of the WFP's issues—then having the final video greeted by boos and screams of 'bullshit!' by conventioneers. No matter. By Sunday afternoon Cuomo was treating Saturday night's nuttiness like a bad dream, something he'd slept off like too many Jagermeister shots. 'At these political conventions you either win or you lose,' he coolly told reporters after marching along Fifth Avenue in the Celebrate Israel parade. 'I won.' That he did. Cuomo's re-election campaign got the WFP's endorsement. But the governor, and almost everyone else involved, shed quite a bit of political blood in the process. Even the 'winners' in this melodrama are going to have a treacherous few months, at least, in front of them. Start with Cuomo. One of the most fascinating elements of this episode is how a governor with $33 million in the bank, robust public approval ratings, a solid first-term record, and an obscure Republican opponent allowed himself to look as if he'd become hostage to a party most New Yorkers still have never heard of. Part of the answer is the leftward drift of the state's electorate, in contrast to Cuomo's determinedly centrist policy choices, particularly on economic issues. Yet the governor, an astute political analyst, had recognized this a long time ago, and he understood that Bill de Blasio's victory last fall guaranteed him a problem with the WFP.That's why the answer is as much personal as tactical. Cuomo wants to beat his father's 1986 victory margin, when Mario Cuomo was re-elected with 65 percent of the vote. Picking up liberal votes on the WFP ballot line—or preventing someone else from siphoning votes—makes it easier. On the other hand, Cuomo has been dismayed that progressives still don't think he's done enough, even after legalizing gay marriage and tightening gun laws. So Cuomo needed and disdained the WFP at the same time, which led to this weekend's confrontation, and left him looking weaker.The WFP, meanwhile, maximized its leverage, getting the gov to pledge to a long list of its demands, most importantly that Cuomo will campaign to establish a Democratic majority in the state senate this fall." (NYMag)

Prince Rupert zu Loewenstein with Keith Richards (KEN REGAN/CAMERA 5).

"In today’s Diary, we’re featuring one of those fascinating obituaries – this one of Prince Rupert Loewenstein -- from the Telegraph of London. Prince Rupert, who died two weeks ago, was famous in the world (those who knew of him) as the financial adviser to the Rolling Stones. This obit will explain how he was much more involved than that from the early 1970s until the early 2000s. I never met him although I first heard of him when I was living in Los Angeles; he had rented (or bought) a house nearby. His was a European name that everyone in Hollywood perked up to, both the aristos and moguls in the music and the movie business. That’s magnetism in the world of the high rollers. The prince (everyone referred to him as Rupert) also had a good reputation, as someone likeable, as well as shrewd – not so ordinary in ole Tinseltown. His title – Prince – was legit and that , along with the Prince’s association with the Stones, gave him heft in the more rarefied circles both in Show Business and in the world outside of it. This obituary provides the explanation of a great career – although he probably never would have described it as such – in the international music and entertainment business. He was his own kind of showman, but an authentic.From the Telegraph of London: Prince Rupert zu Loewenstein was a Bavarian aristocrat and banker who disliked rock and roll but made The Rolling Stones very rich." (NYSD)





"These days the Ku Klux Klan is mostly an unfunny joke, a smattering of ignorant racists who play dress-up and hold poorly planned, sparsely attended rallies to protest the renaming of parks. But half a century ago the Klan's power stretched from coast to coast, and members of the hooded hate group carried out firebombing attacks and murdered civil rights workers in the South. In the 1970s, internal conflicts and infiltration by the FBI weakened the Klan, but it was still dangerous enough that in 1979 KKK members killed five protesters in North Carolina. It was during this era that Ron Stallworth, the first black cop in Colorado Springs, infiltrated the local Klan organization. He first made headlines in 2006 when he went public with his story and explained how he had stumbled upon the Klan and managed to become a leader in the local chapter by faking racist sentiments over the phone and sending a white colleague to meetings in his stead. He just released a book, Black Klansman, about his experience, so I figured now was as good a time as any to talk about how he pulled off a trick straight out of Blazing Saddles (and one that made for the first great skit on Dave Chappelle's short-lived TV show)." (VICE)





"In a previous Monday Note, I expressed concern for the cultural integration challenges involved in making the Beats acquisition work. What I learned from the on-stage interview is that Jimmy Iovine and Eddy Cue have known and worked with each other for more than ten years. Iovine says he’ll be coming to Cupertino ‘about once a month’, so my initial skepticism may have been overstated; Apple isn’t acquiring a company of strangers. But are they acquiring a company that creates quality products?  While many see Beats Music’s content curation as an important differentiator in the streaming business, one that would give a new life to its flagging music sales, others are not so sure. They find Beats Music’s musical choices uninspiring. I’m afraid I have to agree. I downloaded the Beats Music app, defined a profile, and listened for several hours while walking around Palo Alto or sitting at my computer. Perhaps it’s me, my age, or my degenerate tastes but none of the playlists that Beats crafted for me delivered neither the frisson of discovery nor the pleasure of listening to an old favorite long forgotten. And my iPhone became quite hot after using the app for only an hour or so.
Regarding the headphones: They’re popular and sell quite well in spite of what The Guardian calls 'lacklustre sound'. I tried Beats Electronic’s stylish Studio headphones for a while, but have since returned to the nondescript noise-canceling Bose QC 20i, a preference that was shared (exactly or approximately) by many at the conference. There was no doubt, at the conference, that Apple understands there are problems with Beats, but there’s also a feeling that the company sees these problems as opportunities. An overheard hallway discussion about the miserable state of the iTunes application (too strongly worded to repeat here verbatim) neatly summed up the opportunity: ‘Keeping Beats as a separate group affords Cook and Cue an opening for independently developing an alternative to iTunes instead of trying to fix the unfixable.’ It’s worth noting that the Beats Music app is available on mobile devices, only, and it appears there’s no plan to create a desktop version. This underlines the diminished role of desktops, and points out the possibility of a real mobile successor to the aging iTunes application." (Monday Note)

Andrew Cuomo, Third Parties and New York State