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Democrats Warm To 'Fahrenheit 9/11'
September 10, 2010 After more than a week of round-the-clock Reaganolotry, New York was so ready for the rollout of Michael Moore's Bush-bashing movie. I mean really, really ready. There was such demand to get into a small screening at the Beekman Theatre on Monday night that executive producer and host Harvey Weinstein moved the celebrity crowd to the thousand-seat Ziegfeld Theatre. This was a canny PR move. There was only a one-week frenzy window between Gippermania and the pending Clinton memoir, and Weinstein flew right through it.
Dancing Into Hearts and History
September 10, 2010One of Ronald Reagan's unsung achievements is that he saved Vanity Fair. By March 1985, I had been editor in chief for a year, but the glossy monthly that had been launched in a blaze of hype a year before and then belly-flopped under its first two editors was still in the throes of a severe identity crisis. We needed something big and we needed it fast, since Conde Nast Chairman S.I. Newhouse had just made it plain that we had only six more months to fool around before he kissed this money-losing turkey goodbye.
For Baby Boomers, Greatest Moments Disappeared in a New York Minute
September 10, 2010The pileup of World War II ceremonies is causing an outbreak of Greatest Generation envy among the media baby boomers who are covering them. In her Sunday column in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd spoke wistfully of the "moral clarity" of World War II. In the Hamptons on Memorial Day weekend, most of the pundit class spent evenings arguing about exit strategies in Iraq and then beating a nostalgic retreat to watch "The Longest Day," "Patton" and "Saving Private Ryan."
Disaster, Waiting To Happen
September 10, 2010It's not surprising the networks didn't air the president's speech on Monday. At last week's previews of the upcoming TV season, the big three revealed that they would cut back on summer reruns. And aside from the special-effects addition of blowing up Abu Ghraib prison, there were no more new ideas to be found in Bush's Iraq address than in an old episode of "The Bachelor."
Now and Then: A Hankering for History
September 10, 2010 History is hot. And not just because of Brad Pitt's flying thighs.
Images of Horror, Glimmerings of Hope
September 10, 2010Ever since the first snapshots of the hooded, wired-up Iraqi on the box we were yearning for some powerful defining image of American goodness to expunge Abu Ghraib's postcards from hell. Instead, we got an image of unfathomable horror and helplessness: Nick Berg decapitated before our eyes. His slaughter happened three days before we saw it, but as he dies and dies again on the video his death will always be in real time.
'Friends,' Letting The Good Times Roll On and On
September 10, 2010Since the finale of "Friends" has been declared a national day of mourning, I am trying to whip up an appropriately solemn sense of loss. If NBC can charge up to 2 million bucks for 30-second ad segments, there must be something more going on than the hope that the cast's Special Bond will survive, along with Joey's spinoff. After all, how nostalgic will we feel when "Fear Factor" or "I Want a Famous Face" eventually die their well-deserved deaths?
Taking the GOP Bait, Hook, Line and Stinker
September 10, 2010There was a surreal moment at a serious Manhattan dinner party Tuesday night when 12 power players who had all been talking at once about the mess in Iraq suddenly fell silent to listen to the waiter. He dove in shortly after he had served the coconut cake with lemon dessert -- perhaps to give moral support to the only Republican present, who was beginning to flag. Or perhaps he just thought it might be helpful for the guests to hear from one of the Ordinary Americans whose unhappiness with the status quo they are in the habit of earnestly invoking.
Bucks Without the Buzz: Democrats' Sedate Party
September 10, 2010 Democrats in New York are bummed that when they raised $6.5 million for Sen. John Kerry in a single night last week at the gala fundraiser at the Sheraton New York (and $2.5 million more for the Democratic National Committee at a breakfast the next day), their triumphant blowout garnered hardly a line of ink or an instant of prime time.
At Bush & Co., No Threat Of a Pink Slip
September 10, 2010Maybe part of the thrill of hearing Donald Trump utter the words "You're fired" on "The Apprentice" has to do with the fact that in public life no one ever seems to get canned. What are the chances of seeing Paul Wolfowitz trundling his wheelie bag out of the Pentagon for being wrong about Ahmed Chalabi and WMD? Or John Ashcroft admitting manfully that after his failure to take terrorism seriously it was only right for him to get the boot?
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