Last night Gawker founder Nick Denton hosted a little soiree at his Soho pad to welcome the American staff of the Guardian who recently moved their office to the neighborhood. And what is a party without a photo booth and a few boldfaced media names? We didn't save you any tea sandwiches, but you can at least enjoy the pictures.
Last night Time magazine had their big fancy shindig for its "100 Most Influential" list and many of the anointed showed up to Jazz at Lincoln Center to be rich, famous, and beautiful together.
Our invitation must have been lost in the mail, but we did send fictional freelancer Betsey Morgenstern to ask everyone some questions. No one responded to her querulous queries, but we have to print something, so here is what she asked everyone.
Are you aware that there is a secret "listserv" populated by Washington's most self-important journalists, where they conspire on how to control the world via their influential ramblings? This thing is big! And secret!
On the whole, the journalists who've TURNED AGAINST their former boyfriend John McCain are some of our least favorite journalists in the nation, embodying as they do everything insular and adolescent about the Washington Press Corps. They loved John McCain when he could convince them that he was only bullshitting to the voters, not to them. Now, he won't speak to them! And hey, he's lying about shit, too, but whatever. Today, another media person handed McCain back his class ring and ran home, weeping. Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, explain yourself!
"Back in 2000, after John McCain lost his mostly honorable campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, he went about apologizing to journalists—including me—for his most obvious mis-step: his support for keeping the confederate flag on the state house." That is Joe Klein, an exceptionally annoying Time columnist. He sorta gets why that is ridiculous, now, but in case he isn't all the way there, let's try to break it down for him:
So the Dutch, ever attuned to ruffling feathers and then giving the finger to the duck, have produced a documentary on John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt's "The Israel Lobby." You might remember that thesis, originally circulated in the London Review of Books, for its argument that American Zionist groups, namely AIPAC, and various evangelical backers of Israel, who believe the holy land is the return depot of the Son of Man, control U.S. foreign policy. How much so? Well, the word "strangle-hold" was used, until the authors wisely decided to drop it. And we apparently went to war in Iraq as a personal favor to Ariel Sharon ("One for the road, Bulldozer.")
Time political columnist and netroots scourge Joe Klein managed to stir up still more hatred by crafting a political metaphor from a woman's freak death by stingray yesterday off the Florida keys. The stingray leapt onto a boat and struck the woman, who fell backward, hit her head and died. Within hours, Klein was shocking and nearly killing from embarrassment fellow talking heads on CNN by using the stingray death to make a point about how politicians trash each other through aides who they then throw "overboard." For example, presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain just suspended an aide who highlighted an inflammatory internet video about Democratic candidate Barack Obama. The incident CLEARLY screamed out for a death-by-dasyatid reference! Video after the jump.
Two men who wear ties—Westchester dad and Time columnist Joe Klein and hot bloggy lawyer-liberal Salon boy Glenn Greenwald—are deep in a vicious tussle over a recent Klein column. In his Time column, Klein sort of made up an interpretation of a proposed bill and then went on a tirade about how America is pandering to terrorists. Now the liberals want Joe Klein to be fired! And Glenn Greenwald has written seven posts about Klein and how terrible Time magazine is in the last week.
Hey, you're probably wondering right now about what's going on at the London Book Fair! Psych. But there is a hot topic over at that trade show: Namely, who are the anonymous agent and "internationally bestselling" author behind a pair of romans a clef entitled Ego and Greed that agent Ali Gunn, who's repping them, says are to the media world "what Primary Colors was to Capitol Hill." She also called Ego "Heart to Heart meets The Devil Wears Prada." Make it stop! But least one editor who's read the 30,000 word submission, which Gunn says she's guarding closely and only showing to a "select group of hand-picked editors," has way less glowing things to say about the book.
