Choire Sicha

“Sometimes government moves slow, but we run sure,” said Hiram Monserrate, councilman from Queens, on Monday afternoon. The Veteran’s Committee, which he chairs, was passing a Berkeley-esque resolution calling (again) for the federal government to repeal the “Don’t ask, don’t tell, don’t pursue” policy and replace it with a policy of equal rights for homosexuals in the military.

Now government is moving slower than ever.

This resolution was introduced by Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who was, except for maybe U.S. Representative Anthony Weiner, the city’s only solid candidate for mayor next year.  read more »

“It’s not the best time in the world to be a White House correspondent,” said Bill Plante on the sultry afternoon of Saturday, April 26. This was at Tammy Haddad’s annual pre-White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner lawn party. The blooming wisteria was strangling the woods that surround her house.

These nearly-over final four years of George W. Bush are Mr. Plante’s third second-term presidency in his years as CBS White House correspondent. “I guess he could still drop a bomb somewhere—there are people who think he means to do it,” Mr. Plante said.  read more »

Sometimes statistics can give rise to a piece of journalism. New York Times magazine contributing writer Benoit Denizet-Lewis, a resident of Boston, found that 700 gay men age 29 or younger were wed in the state of Massachusetts between May 2004 and June 2007.

What resulted is a 7000-word New York Times magazine cover story, published this weekend.

This number sounds like a statistical anomaly! It certainly is.  read more »

This morning, the New York Times announced the recipients of their 2007 Punch Awards. The awards, named after the nickname of former Times honcho Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, have two categories: "journalistic or editorial excellence" in community service and "business accomplishments."  read more »

“In fact, the press that covers me on a regular basis I think is kind of bored because I just talk about solutions,” a raspy-voiced Hillary Clinton told Larry King on Monday night.

They really are. So bored! Bored with all those SOLUTIONS! But she also had good news, everybody! Hillary Clinton is staying in the race for FOREVER—“until we get Florida and Michigan resolved”—which will be slightly after the time that Democratic National Party Chair Howard Dean drops dead and just before Satan returns to rule on earth.

Fortunately, our country has, for now, a rich resource of small-town papers, which still publish edited collections of stump speech transcripts that the national and the traveling press will never transcribe again, as they sit in their reserved seats at events and practice stabbing themselves to stay awake.  read more »

The wingnut parade at the 112th annual New York Times stockholder's meeting, held late this morning at the Times' conference room on the other side of a birch-and-moss filled atrium from the Times' newsroom tower, was out of control. And when chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. was not being harassed by pesky shareholders, he was being attacked by bugs. (He spent about a minute flailing at an insect that seemed to have emerged from his hair.) Cliff Kincaid of Accuracy in Media was there.  read more »

Tishman Speyer, the newly-chosen developers of the West Side rail yards, would like to eliminate the northernmost spur of the High Line.

Friends of the High Line president and co-founder Robert Hammond doesn't believe it's going to happen—after all, he's already overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the conversion of the elevated railway into a new city park.

When he first went to Mayor Bloomberg, he said, "The Mayor said 'Don't show us pretty pictures. We've got enough parks, we can't pay for them all.'"

So Hammond showed the city it could make money off the High Line—or at least, property owners in West Chelsea could and some other money would trickle down.

"I've seen this movie before," Hammond said today of Tishman Speyer's plans, speaking at the 2nd Annual Trends in New York City Land Use and Real Estate Development conference down at New York Law School this afternoon. "I think we'll get the whole Line," he said.  read more »

On Monday, April 14, Mariah Carey—“incredibly well-funded, corporately polished,” according to the bitter pop music critic of the Chicago Sun-Times—was on Oprah, stumping for votes.

“Now Mariah didn’t get her new body just by eating artichokes,” said Oprah.

Cut to the video, Mariah at the pool in a black bodysuit.

“I’m a female and I like the arms to be slender and toned!” said Mariah.

Mariah got the whole first 42 minutes of the show, and also, her new CD came out the next day!

Midway through her appearance, a mass e-mail was sent from David Plouffe, Barack Obama’s campaign manager: “You’ve probably heard about the latest dust-up in the Democratic race,” it opened.  read more »

On June 10, 1974, a large group of passengers were evacuated from city buses in midtown. They were crawling with roaches, according to an account in The New York Times.  read more »

The New York Times under executive editor Bill Keller still has fewer Pulitzer victories to its credit than during the short-lived reign of his predecessor, Howell Raines.

Under Raines, who served approximately 21 months before resigning in 2003 in the wake of the Jayson Blair scandal, the paper's news pages published seven Pulitzer-winning entries.

In more than twice that span of time—53 Pulitzer-eligible months as executive editor—Keller has published six Pulitzer winners.  read more »

“I look back at it now,” Annie Leibovitz said at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1991, “I realize that one of the things I loved toward the end at Rolling Stone were the conceptual covers.” She had left for Vanity Fair in 1983, in part to follow an art director she admired.  read more »

Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter showed up almost three hours in to this morning's Landmarks Preservation Committee meeting on the proposed St. Vincent's Hospital rebuilding in the West Village.

"I'm against it!" he said. The proposed towers would very nearly cast a shadow over his nearby restaurant, the Waverly Inn, after all.  read more »

Lawyers for Daniel Magnus, the former publisher of free-sheet newspaper Metro New York, have filed an amended complaint in New York's Southern District Court charging the media company with racketeering.

Magnus first filed suit against his former employers in February, claiming that he was owed severance and bonus pay; now he's amended the complaint to add RICO violations.

In the filing, he claims that the company asked him to backdate and alter corporate documents—and that this qualifies as racketeering because the U.S. mail and "wire communication systems" were used.  read more »

Voters were “stunned” and also “dumbstruck,” said the AP. It was just a “bombshell,” this admission from the governor.

This was August 12, 2004. “You’re right,” said David Lee Miller on Fox News. “This is nothing less than a stunning announcement broadcast live.”

But who was stunned?  read more »

What tactics might new governor David Paterson take in dealing with the media when they ask questions about his personal life, I asked Ken Sunshine, the public relations man who is friendly with both Paterson and former governor Eliot Spitzer, late last week.

"I think he should tell the press to go fuck themselves when they ask things that are inappropriate," he said. "Of course, I don't think he should follow that advice. You should delve into the lives of politicians at the same level you delve into the lives of press people."

But already, resulting in what was either a full disclosure or a limited hangout or a modified limited hangout, Paterson and his wife were conducting interviews with Juan Gonzalez of the New York Daily News. Meeting since Saturday, the couple carefully disclosed news of years-old mutual extramarital affairs.  read more »

The governor is on the move.

Co. were a day late and at least $2,721.41 short. At least his people recognized—and, probably more difficultly, convinced Spitzer—that someone needed to clean up his senseless public mess.

Unfortunately for Mr. Spitzer, at least one major firm turned him down on Tuesday as a client, according to an industry specialist. There was nothing that they thought they could do for him.

His sex-ring circus displays his greatest failure of articulation yet.

Back in the attorney general’s office, he had people who could decently interpret him for the public and the press.  read more »

Everyone's got something to peddle on the back of Eliot Spitzer's (are we still saying alleged?) prostitute problems. Low-grade PR firms and magazines have gone crazy.

Dr. Carol Cassell is available for comment, says PR By The Book! "As seen on The Today Show and Good Morning America, this author of Put Passion First: Why Sexual Chemistry is Key to Finding and Keeping Lasting Love, is known for her 'thought-provoking' and 'entertaining' interviews."

Why, that is "thought-provoking"! But it wasn't just publicists out to flack.  read more »

There's a rumor going around that the press conference is being delayed because David Paterson is being sworn in as governor.

Needless to say, this would mean that Spitzer is resigning.

Azi asked one of the governor's advance people here about it and got a digusted head-shake in response.

The reporters waiting here at the Spitzer press conference, at least the ones I've talked to, don't think he will resign.  read more »

38th floor, 633 3rd, waiting.

The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which each year rewards what they view as positive depictions of gay people in various media from reality shows to newspapers to comic books, has made a happy woman of Us Weekly editor Janice Min.  read more »

On Friday night at the Ritz, that trumped-up gay bar up in Hells Kitchen, something entirely too ordinary happened once too often: Madonna’s “Get Together” came on.

That’s the one that goes: “Can we get together? / I really, I really want to be with you.” (OMG, LOL, she’s so like deep.)

The gays pretty much always freak when something from her 2005 album Confessions on a Dance Floor gets played. It has hit its expiration date hard. They like it—but at this point, it’s as inflected with nostalgia as “Borderline” or “La Isla Bonita.” And on Friday night, according to two attendees, a distinct expression of “meh” accompanied the ritual playing of the Madge.  read more »

“I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country,” Al Gore said on December 13, 2000.

Well, George W. Bush didn’t listen to Al Gore’s advice, and neither so much did God. But Ralph Nader evidently took it as holy writ.  read more »

“I was around when there was a lot of hoo-ha about this back in the Giuliani administration,” said Barbara Warren, a longtime staffer at the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Community Services Center on West 12th Street in Greenwich Village.

The “hoo-ha” in question was the idea of gays as the great superconductors in whatever public health panic is gripping the city at any given moment. And pretty much everyone else in attendance at a thoroughly retro meeting at the center on Feb. 21 was there during the Rudolph Giuliani administration, too, and the Dinkins administration, and the Koch administration.  read more »

For all the clumsiness of the McCain press folks over the past 30 hours since The New York Times published their story about their candidate's ties to a lobbyist, they scored at least one direct hit—a talking point that has appealed to and happily been dispersed by the self-involved press.

But first, the idiocy!  read more »

Vanessa Grigoriadis did the TV shows. The Feb. 21 Rolling Stone, with her Britney Spears story on the cover, was hitting stands.

“Why do people sop up this issue of Rolling Stone?” Larry King asked on Feb 7.

On Feb 10, she went on CNN’s Reliable Sources.

“By writing this piece on everything from her family to her breast implants, haven’t you now joined the mob?” asked host Howard Kurtz.

(For just one thing, Rolling Stone covering Ms. Spears is like Running Times covering Martin Lel, like Yachting covering Paul Allen, like Cat Fancy covering pussycats.)  read more »

Remember when Al Gore's alien wolf-baby and Laura Bush's secret lovenest were on the cover of the low-end supermarket tabloids back in the summer of 2000? No? Well, this year's election is at last being given the vote of confidence by the masterminds at the Globe and the National Examiner, both publications of American Media Inc.—corporate home to Star, Sun and... Fit Pregnancy.  read more »

The perpetual bachelor party that was Park Avenue South has finally ended. Now that sexist bacchanalia is just compulsory night out with the boys; limp and early, out for a few beers and home and dry.

Men these days are delighted to be engaged. They just can’t wait to get in out of the cold. You can’t live a shelter-magazine spread without a spouse. Metrosexuality was the gateway drug to heterosexuality.

And so their marriages have the masculine sheen of an aggressive and antisocial act—more about leaving than arriving.  read more »

According to internal traffic measures, the Web site of the New York Times broke single-day traffic records this week—then broke them again the very next day.  read more »

BOSTON—Barack Obama spent his last days before Super Tuesday running for God of America. His cult is growing; his calling as America’s spiritual leader is cemented. Seriously, who would have ever thought that the next Christ would have gone to Harvard Law?

On Monday night in this sad seaside town where the 7-Eleven cash registers still displayed the laughable phrase “GO PATTS CHAMPS 08,” what looked like the cast of The Departed laid out the case for Obama as our salvation. The young crowd had stretched endlessly around the Boston seaport, all the way up and over a bridge to downtown.  read more »

It turns out that at the Obama overflow party B there is a party C, sort of--in the basement! These kids party! We were alerted to this latest Obama party by insane screaming and hollering, set off by...
Kansas? Delegates? California exits? Obamatinis?(Did I mention there were Obamatinis?) I don't know why everyone is screaming! This must be how Andy Rooney feels. "We win California, we win the presidential election," a guy says. "Forget it," a girl says. No, wait--yes we...
can?  read more »

Hillary Clinton is all on the TVs here--they can't turn her off as they did on New Hampshire primary night. The booing here at Obama party A is heartfelt and loud. (She's speaking incredibly well, by the way.)

Unfortunately a table of guys were hooting and hollering for a WDR cameraman (from somewhere foreign) while Clinton was talking about people who'd died from today's tornadoes.  read more »

I met a black Republican for Obama!  read more »

The crowd at the Obama party in Murray Hill seem to be taking this OK, cheering for delegate wins and the exciting win of Delaware. (Delaware: Still a state!)

They even cheered the exit poll numbers that found that male voters favored Obama. Uh, the men did. The women did not so much! So this is not a grim scene, even as Clinton handily takes New York.

But you know that people working on their first campaign had grander fantasies than a delegate squabble.

P.S. It smells less like barf in the back of the bar.

It's a bit chaotic here at the New York Obama H.Q. party at Tonic East, on Third Avenue at 29th Street.

Apparently the Giants enthusiasts have been here drinking all day and now they are being displaced a bit by the hopeful young crowd who are arriving in a steady stream. Honestly? It seriously smells like vomit up in the front. I really think some recently hurled!  read more »

BOSTON—Photographers are petting the bomb-sniffing dogs! Nuts! Next up, cats and dogs having sex. Seriously, usually they just take you to jail if you go near the dog.

Earlier, down on the seaport at the World Financial Center, the line to go see Barack Obama speak stretched, four and eight wide, for at least half a mile, curving along the shore and up and over a bridge to downtown. Fortunately there wasn't much of a breeze off the water, but the youngsters in line (and they are young!) were shouting and hopping to keep warm. Seriously.

Madness!

Barack Obama's speech at the Meadowlands early this afternoon was not terribly thrilling or very new. Reporters wondered why it wasn't happening downtown Newark. This was more an event for the cameras than the people—though one reporter suggested the campaign had become overly fearful of a repeat of the D.C. debacle, where fans and reporters alike had been turned away in droves from seeing Obama speak.  read more »

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J.—Robert De Niro has shown up to pitch for Barack Obama, just as the rumor had it, here at the Izod Center at the Meadowlands. He's looking sporty in a blue blazer. "Barack Obama does not have the experience to be president of the United States" is his opening line. For one thing: "He wasn't experienced enough to authorize the invasion of Iraq."

"And that's not all,” he went on. “It's clear Barack Obama does not have the experience to let the special interests run the government."  read more »

EAST RUTHERFORD—Newark Mayor Cory Booker is predicting record Newark voter turnout, and high attendance throughout the state.

"We've got another upset coming on Tuesday," he said. (The Super Bowl metaphors are not gonna stop allllll day!) "We're back here not to rock the sports world like the Giants just did, we're here to rock the world!"

"We're going to be hitting hard as soon as the polls open," he said.  read more »

EAST RUTHERFORD—All of the Jersey press is rolling up in here—the boys from Blue Jersey, Mark Bonamo, the managing editor of the Community Newspapers of North Jersey Media Group—at the newly-named Izod Center at the Meadowlands.

(Need we mention that the Meadowlands is the home of the SUPER BOWL-WINNING NEW YORK GIANTS? OH YES IT IS. Actually, we are on the floor where the Nets play, which probably means that I am standing in Jason Kidd's congealed sweat.)  read more »

Hey, Hillary!

Weren’t the vultures in South Carolina just bananas? Had you ever see them picking at the furry meat on the side of the road like that?

Or maybe you were busy.

So Teddy Kennedy tossed you to the curb. But can you imagine him actually endorsing a lady president, anyway? This just isn’t the national shocker that the chattering classes (most of whom were in elementary school in 1969 anyway) seem to think it is.

Remember when they used to tell jokes about Jews and Irishmen going into bars? No one tells those jokes anymore. In the 80’s, they were relegated to “Truly Tasteless” book collections. Now who will make jokes about (in your words) “a son of the South, an extraordinary African-American, and a woman”?  read more »

COLUMBIA, S.C.—John Edwards arrived on the small stage here at Jillian's eatery at 9:30 on the dot with his family. (I think he got a haircut! When did he have time for that?) "The three of us move on to February 5th," he said. Okay then! On the TV, which is playing him with a delay (what, is he going to suddenly start swearing?), it looks like he's in a big hall just like Barack Obama! But he's not!  read more »

COLUMBIA, S.C.—We've just been informed that John Edwards did not actually win the South Carolina Democratic Primary! Some other people (who are not at the Edwards not-victory party) may have heard about this by now from Wolf Blitzer. From the front of Jillian's restaurant, a plaintive wail went up: "Joe, please come to the host, your dining table is ready." This is a very sad moment here, for those who are not actually at the Edwards party but instead are here to celebrate birthdays or, you know, to just eat. Wait—we're just hearing that John Edwards will not place second either. Worse, John Edwards is not here—he is with his family, we hear, but campaign adviser (and internet visionary!) Joe Trippi is now with us in the dim press room. (Apparently he was not the Joe being seated for chicken wings.) Edwards himself will speak circa 9:30 p.m. EST.  read more »

COLUMBIA, S.C.—Yes, can you hear me? Hello? It's just BEDLAM here at John Edwards VICTORY PARTY HEADQUARTERS 2008, as a number of people casually dine on what look like chicken wings in Jillian's. We are in this large watering hole not far from downtown—and from the parking lot you can hear Barack Obama's fans yelling, awaiting his concession speech. (Right? I can't quite see the numbers under Wolf Blitzer on the T.V.!) Oddly enough—Curtis Mayfield's "Move On Up" is playing here inside Jillian's. That is the song that Barack Obama often plays after he has concluded a speech.  read more »

Columbia, S.C. -- A strong lack of excitement characterizes the downtown of South Carolina's capitol city. On the street near the statehouse, there are a few youngsters with signs, begging cars to honk. But that is about it.

Hillary Clinton will be leaving the state as the polls close: She will deliver her remarks from Tennessee tonight. The John Edwards party is at a downtown bar--all are welcome, no charge, begs his website. Barack Obama is having the party of the night, natch, in a big shindig at the convention center.  read more »

CHARLESTON, S.C.—Barack Obama conducted a completely staged-for-T.V. event here yesterday morning. In a large emptied deli (Jason's, on the Savannah Highway, where the sign over one of the steam tables reads "Real = No MSG"), he met with four women. Fifty members of the press watched with varying degrees of inattention. It was just like The View—but even more boring! (Not the women's fault; it was the staging.) This was the first of two "women's roundtables" he would conduct. So with a good chunk of the black vote presumably locked up, Mr. Obama is now trying to eat away at Hillary Clinton's female voters.

One of the women had brought her child along, but the youngster started making noise, so she was removed. (After the event, this woman would say she was "probably" voting for Mr. Obama: "I think so, yes." Another of the women, the lone African-American one, when asked the same, said "Yes," and hugged me. Twice.)  read more »

CHARLESTON, SC -- Last night a bit after 9 p.m., Hillary and Bill Clinton were reunited. This took place in a convention center in North Charleston, and the ballroom was showing plenty of floor. The Clintons brought along all their pals, like Charlie Rangel and David Dinkins and David Patterson and Sheila Jackson-Lee (Texas, 18th District) and former South Carolina state Representative Lucille Whipper, and also a few white friends! She brought them on the stage, President Clinton provided a brief introduction, and then Hillary was given the space, all to herself, for a speech.  read more »

CHARLESTON, SC—One of Bill Clinton's talking points this week is just how thick Hillary Clinton and John McCain are.

Today in Spartanburg, he described them as "very close." And the other night in Myrtle Beach, he called them "good friends," and said "they like each other." The topic seems to be coming up relatively often, and unprompted (not to mention that it's different than the attitude McCain has taken towards Clinton).

Maybe it’s because one of his stumping points is that his wife builds bridges with Republicans. But it also just makes one feel uncomfortable about what life after the conventions might (might!) be like.

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C.—Former President Bill Clinton, the only class-A champion worker of the media here in South Carolina, is up to something. And no one, particularly the press, is exactly sure what he's doing, or why he's doing it.

In Kingstree, around 6 p.m., Bill Clinton was taking questions and doing his Great Explainer thing for an almost entirely African-American audience in a municipal center. In the back of the room, the New York Times' Kit Seelye was typing away at her story that ran today. "Bill Clinton Accuses Obama Camp of Stirring Race Issue" was the headline, with contributions from two other reporters in other cities and scripts of new campaign ads provided by her editors. The story was largely about Clinton's unexpected (by the media, at least) remarks that took place a bit after 1 p.m. down in Charleston.  read more »

KINGSTREE, S.C.—In the Q&A session of a lovely talk by Bill Clinton (seriously!), an audience member took the microphone and said, "Black America is voting for Obama—a lot of blacks—because he's black." His concern was that then Obama would beat Clinton: "[Republicans] know they can't beat Hillary but they can beat Obama."  read more »