Photos by ETP
Last night was the book party for Dana Vachon, a struggling young writer who can't seem to catch a break. ETP dispatched lovable party correspondent Julia Allison to the scene to report on the merriment afoot, and capture it for posterity. Below is her take on the whole affair, making for a neat trifecta of coverage. There, now maybe someone'll actually give this Vachon kid a chance. Enjoy!
Most book parties are two very short hours: show up halfway through, drink free alcohol, pretend you've read the book, leave. But if you're New York media's token Catholic-nosed "Lit boy" Dana Vachon, the party for your debut novel - merely the first party, we might add - will stretch well over three incredibly crowded, liquor-fueled hours and include a good percentage of people who not only read the book, but reviewed it as well.
We arrived around 7:30, but could barely squeeze our way into the packed downtown brunch spot Felix, a venue not entirely big enough for the primarily late 20s, early 30s assemblage. With a lone Duke photographer and no Partick McMullan in sight (what!?!), the Huff Post camera — wielded by the ETP posse of myself, Glynnis MacNicol, Sven Hodges and Rachel Sklar — had the New York exclusive.
Vachon, working his signature casual preppy could-it-be-more-obvious- I-went-to-Duke jacket-and-an-oxford look, held court amongst two notoriously disparate factions: the bankers in camel hair sports coats and the people who really don't like bankers in camel hair sports coats. Or, as the latter are sometimes collectively known, "the media."
MSNBC
Well, this Imus fiasco continues to zig and zag. ABC News reports that Barack Obama has become the first Presidential contender to issue a fatwa against Imus. (What? You were betting on Tancredo?)
"I understand MSNBC has suspended Mr. Imus," Obama told ABC News, "but I would also say that there's nobody on my staff who would still be working for me if they made a comment like that about anybody of any ethnic group. And I would hope that NBC ends up having that same attitude."
Obama went on to relate that he had visited the Imus show only once, two years ago, but he didn't, like, INHALE or anything.
UPDATE: That didn't take long! According to TV Newser, MSNBC has become the first to cave to Obama's demand: it's rumored that the decision has been made to cancel their simulcast of Imus in the Morning. Expect a decision tonight or tomorrow.
RELATED:
Obama: Fire Imus [ABC News]
More news-in-brief, delivered bullet style, after the jump.
The Village Voice
Now would be as good a time to tell you what's cooking over at the New Times Village Voice Omnimedia Sheinhardt Wig Company's kitchen as any other. This week: Brooklyn lesbians channel the thug life, Nat Hentoff enjoys a bong hit for Jesus, words find their way across Borders, some video totally blew up on the internet, and Rudy and Judi demonstrates some serious media game.
Rarely is it asked: is our media shining us on with the way they cover our Presidential elections? When's the last time you heard cogent policy analysis that dissects and compares the candidates' take on the big issues of the day? Maybe around the time of the Teapot Dome scandal? Does it feel sometimes like we are left to base our decisions on things like hairstyle, suit color, handshake, or the relative volume as they declaim on whether the Iraq War is the greatest war or the greatest war ever? Well, Matt Taibbi thinks so, and making our must-read list for today is his latest article for Rolling Stone: "THE LOW POST: The Return of Evil Campaign Journalism." In it, Taibbi provides an illustrative and edifying roadmap with which one can follow the course of Campaign 2008 before it even happens!
Let's break it down.
1. The Election Cycle Commences Way Too Soon
"The election, after all, is nearly a full Martian year away, with a Super Bowl and two World Series still to play out in between..." True dat! Why, there are three championship teams that Don Imus still hasn't slandered!
2. The Election Cycle Begins in a Seinfeld Stage
It's a "show about nothing", and by reliably purging their initial coverage of anything remotely substantive, the press is certain to keep it that way for as long as possible. Instead, as Taibbi points out, the story remains "a prolonged prime-time character-driven drama crafted around a series of fake conflicts that always get resolved by the end of the program, in this case November 2008. Marcia and Greg make driving-test bet in segment one; Marcia imagines instructor in underwear in middle segments; Marcia and Greg's bet ends in a tie, family loves each other again." Err...those aren't Seinfeld characters, Matt! But, point taken--one of the candidates is, after all, sure to get hit with the Hawaiian Tiki Curse. (Our money's on Romney.)
CNN
TV Newser reports that CNN anchor Anderson Cooper--who once tracked The Mole!--will soon be rolling with a fatter bankroll. The rumored figure: $50 million over the next five years. As Newser comments, "That's a Katie Couric sort of salary." True. And best of all, no one's questioning whether Cooper plagiarized someone else's colonoscopy back in March of 2000.
With news of the coming ka-ching, one wonders how this will affect the cable news landscape, especially where the big network show-ponies are concerned. As recently as last February, Eat The Press related news of Keith Olbermann's salary negotiations, which earned the always-on-the-YouTube editorializer a modest $4 million over the length of a four-year deal. At the time, Olbermann was just keeping up with the Coopers: Anderson reupped at a similar $4 million in January of 2007.
The prickliness of Olbermann's negotiations were noted by various and sundry sources. Nevertheless, NBC News' Steve Capus made it sound like the network was making the firmest of commitments to Countdown, calling it "the centerpiece for the resurgence and the real growth at MSNBC" and describing the signed deal with Olbermann "a good day for MSNBC and a good day for NBC News." Ahh, but there has to be a morning after.
Related:
$50 Million Over 5 Years For Cooper? [TVNewser]
Anderson Cooper's $50 Mil Contract [Gawker]
Failing Upward [Page Six]
Previously, on Eat The Press
Four More Years: Keith Olbermann Re-Ups With MSNBC
In conjunction with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Google has mapped the crisis in Darfur in a shockingly real form. The LA Times' Jim Puzzanghera reports:
Zoom in and the words "Crisis in Darfur" appear, along with icons of flames marking 1,600 villages destroyed in fighting between government militias and rebels that has led to the deaths of more than 200,000 people.
Google goes further, taking it from eye-popping information to active participation with a specific "How Can I Help?" link on each pop-up window (see above).
This initiative highlights the genuis and heart of Google in two ways: First, it is fitting that the initiative comes from a company that with the motto "Don't Be Evil," a corporate citizen leading by example (well, mostly, cf censorship in China). The goodwill built up by initiatives like this can't be overstated. Second, this is yet another example of great ideas springing from Google's policy of allowing employees to spend 20% of their time on projects of their choice, and that's when former Google employee Andria Ruben McCool developed the project. McCool, whose family includes Holocaust Survivors, took the idea to the Holocaust Museum for its Genocide Prevention Initiative. That's one way of standing behind another motto: "Never again." McCool hopes they have help:
"I hope it makes a difference," McCool said. "I hope some politician sits down and has a conversation with somebody else who's a skeptic and opens up their computer and goes on the Internet and says, 'How can you dispute this?' "
Indeed. Perhaps someone should email George Bush the link.
Google puts Darfur crisis on its map [LAT]
The New York Observer
Wednesday brings us our roundup of the highlights from The New York Observer. In this edition, socialites rebrand, Lorne Michaels thinks Tube, Bigfoot is finally photographed, two editors try to save the world from all our crappy email, and NYT shareholders contend that the Trib isn't the only newspaper headed to Zell in a handbasket.
via YouTube
You know, life's never easy when you find yourself on national television having your character impugned by a man whose Comedy Central show managed a single good joke in its lifetime (the End Women's Suffrage bit) and the guy who flacks for Isaiah Washington, so we sort of sympathize with the plight of Emily Gould, who got stuck in Jimmy Kimmel's version of the Night of the Long Knives on Larry King Live a few nights ago. The clip, presented at the left, is suitably vertigo inducing, but for all the talk of Gould's deer-in-the-headlights act, one hesitates to say she "lost" the battle. After all, how can you lose when the stakes are so terrifyingly low.
Gould was confronted with a number of arguments, all largely spurious. At one point, it seemed that Kimmel was arguing that celebrities deserve some sort of blanket protection from opinion--but you cannot now unring the Web 2.0 blog empowerment bell: everyone's cranky barroom blather can now be preserved for posterity. Gould was also shamed with the notion that Gawker Stalker (the near real-time celebrity tracking feature that was the bone of contention) was giving psychopaths a greater opportunity to wreak havoc on the rich and famous. But this line of argument seems to have an a priori problem--after all, in the days before the internet, those who wished to impress Jodie Foster nevertheless had options.
Eric Boehlert
Is there any tag team capable of doing more damage to the truth than over-eager warbloggers enlisting with gossip guru Matt Drudge? The two factually challenged camps joined forces last week in an effort to slime CNN's Iraq reporter Michael Ware by spreading the bogus story that he'd heckled Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during a Baghdad press conference. It actually took less than one day for the malicious falsehood to be debunked. And in the...
Harry Shearer
It's not yet even in the NYT's search database, but Tuesday's Times carried an Adam Nossiter profile of Ed Blakely, the redevelopment "czar" of New Orleans, tied to the introduction of his proposed plan for targeted redevelopment. Only problem: as the story itself notes twice, the plan was introduced almost a month ago. Blakely was appointed, according to the Times' timeline, three months ago. In other words, the news "peg" was now almost as old...
from trumomcomfessions.com
Back when you were a kid, were you ever afraid that Mommy didn't love you and wished you'd never been born? Well, you may have been right, judging by some of the entries already on brand-new website True Mom Confessions. The site, which just launched, is meant as a repository for the darkest, guiltiest thoughts of moms — without all the hassle of gluing, decorating and searching high and low for a stamp. Here, blurted revelations are facilitated by a super-easy submission box — type and go! — offering the kind of ease and efficiency moms can rarely take for granted.
And what are these revelations, you ask? Here are a few:
We get it, being a mom can be rough. Founder Romi Lassally (inagural and former editor of HuffPo's "Becoming Fearless" page) said that the site sprang from "a hellish weekend with my three children (6, 9 and 16) which culminated with me leaving piles of vomit on the carpet hoping the dog would eat it" (she awarded that one the "Confession of the Week" on the site, so ladies, you're going to have to step it up to have a shot). Lassally, who co-founded and co-edits the site with mommy blogger Rebecca Woolf from Girl's Gone Child found the episode was strangely liberating: "I confessed my parenting faux pas to a friend and realized how good it felt to just get it out and not deal with any more guilt...and so the site was born." (No word on whether the dog (a) ate the vomit or (b) if not, how bad it smelled the next morning).
So far the site consists of just one page but Lassally hopes to expand (right now it's just a pet project, personally funded). But the wild popularity of PostSecret as well as obsessively-addictive mommyblogging sites like UrbanBaby (see Emily Nussbaum on the subject in NYMag) suggest that the little site may have giant, chubby legs. Its simplicity, anonymity and interactivity may be the perfect cocktail for mothers (who might otherwise turn to an actual cocktail). Even those reluctant to share their bad-mother qualities can weigh in on those of their peers with an option to click on "Did It" or "Thought It" — the idea, of course, being that everyone else is a lousy mother, too there are mommies like you all over with the same feelings, you're not alone.
Regardless of the subject matter, the model is clean and easy and primed for ripoff by enterprising websites looking to up their interactivity — the model can be applied to all manner of confessions, never mind all types of relationships or really area of concentration. Nevertheless, according to Lassally the only spinoff plans so far are for a "True Mom Confessions" radio show launching in May. Read, listen, and let the mysteries of your childhood become clear as you realize all the little ways in which you made Mommy's life hell.
Update: We have solved the mystery of the vomit! According to Lassally, "The dog ate it....or someone else did. Only a wet spot left on the carpet the next day!" Wow. Therapy and household cleaning tips!
Harry Shearer
You'd think that a story which has occupied so much oxygen this week--lead story on all three network newscasts Tuesday night!--would have all the basic facts nailed down for us by now. So here's a little fact I haven't been able to ferret out--maybe I'm just a poor Googler: is Imus' two-week suspension from his radio show and simulcast gigs paid or unpaid? If it's a paid suspension, it's what we civilians would call a...
