World News Center
A Month Full of Dates With Destiny
September 10, 2010January is the month when the other shoe drops. The news that the Bush administration just got itself a special prosecutor -- a man described as "Eliot Ness with a Harvard law degree and a sense of humor" -- to investigate the Valerie Plame leak is just another cause for people in power to sing "O Crappy Day!" as the new year rolls around.
Tough Time For Democrats
September 10, 2010The night before the announcement of Saddam's capture (round about the time that the tyrant was having a flashlight shone up his nose) I was at a media-heavy Manhattan dinner party that vividly dramatized the pre-spider hole mood. The guests -- mostly Democrats, with a smattering of moderate Republicans -- were unanimously kissing off Bush. It had been a particularly obnoxious week for a crowd that favors a more metrosexual approach to foreign relations: The Pentagon had displayed its upraised middle finger to France, Germany and Russia just as James Baker was due to leave for the Continent to romance the Euros into forgiving Iraq's debt. From appetizer to espresso, the guests bemoaned the administration's crudeness, incompetence and dangerous lack of diplomatic finesse.
Paris Hilton, in an Age Beyond Embarrassment
September 10, 2010The success of society babe Paris Hilton's reality TV show "The Simple Life," hard on the heels of the bootleg porn tape showing her steamily in flagrante delicto with her dirtbag then-boyfriend Rick Solomon, proves once again there is no such thing as bad press. We live in the post-embarrassment age. New promotional and marketing offers are pouring in for Paris, and a sequel (to the Fox series, not the sex tape) is in the works. Today, if some private sex act of yours winds up on the Internet, the only appropriate response is: How did I look?
DreamWorks Deal a Fantasy Made True
September 10, 2010There was something heartwarming about the sale of DreamWorks for an irrationally exuberant $1.6 billion to Viacom's Paramount Pictures this week instead of to its longtime suitor, General Electric's NBC Universal. It proved all over again that even if Hollywood looks overrun with corporate suits and marketing drones, it's still activated by emotion and perception.
The Future Face Of Network News
September 10, 2010Joe Gillis (William Holden): You're Norma Desmond. You used to be in silent pictures. You used to be big.
Anonymous Sources And a Known Quantity
September 10, 2010Media life seems to have turned into one long cannibal feast, a fratricidal Thanksgiving dinner minus the giving of thanks. No sooner have we finished dining out on roast Judith Miller with stuffing than we are ready for a nice, big slice of Bob Woodward pie.
The Ambassador's Undiplomatic Maneuver
September 10, 2010 LONDON There's a new catchphrase in London: Are you a skier? And it has nothing to do with winter sports. It's a quasi-acronym for Are You Spending the Kids' Inheritance? In the age of celebrity culture and instant news, cash is not the only fast currency. Former pillars of the establishment are shorting their Reputation, too.
Long Out of the Kitchen But Still Taking the Heat
September 10, 2010It's been an unsettling few months for women of a certain age. Between the flameouts of Judy Miller and Harriet Miers, the frantic reentry of Martha Stewart and the sight of former CBS News producer Mary Mapes shaking her gored locks on ABC's "Good Morning America," everywhere you turn there's a power woman either in extremis or declaring she's indestructible, which are usually the same thing.
The Late-Blooming Prince
September 10, 2010Most people don't have to wait till the age of 56 to come into their own, but you can't help feeling that the Prince of Wales has finally caught up with the zeitgeist. Or maybe it's the zeitgeist that's caught up with him.
This Time, the Prosecutor's a Corker
September 10, 2010It's one of the ironies of our media culture that the mystique of Patrick J. Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame case, grew to mythic size simply by virtue of Fitzgerald keeping his mouth shut until he has something to say.
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