World News Center
The Democrats' Topical Depression
July 30, 2010 While Republicans just move on when they make mistakes, Democrats in New York go into therapy. It took no time at all for last week's righteous rage against the Bush campaign's stoking of the Swift Boat Veterans' smear campaign against John Kerry to morph into self-flagellation about the way the candidate is blowing it.
Old Warriors Giving Their Last, Worst Shot
July 30, 2010Bob Dole's nasty swipe at John Kerry's war wounds this week made you understand why Viagra has been losing market share to Cialis. The sight of that bitter old face piling on to protest that Kerry did not bleed enough is instant detumescence.
The Governor Slips Out Under Cover of Gayness
July 30, 2010New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey's gay declaration of independence, when he advanced downstage to muse about his inner turmoil, brought an oddly Shakespearean turn to the national soap opera. The difference is that when Shakespeare's Richard III goes on about what it's like to be a hunchback, he's talking only to himself. That's what a soliloquy is -- a character's inmost thoughts, overheard only by the audience. Whereas Jim McGreevey was cleansing his soul in front of all the other characters in the drama of a family and a state, including millions of strangers. His thoughts are no longer inmost. They're outmost.
Paranoia Sneaks Up On a Suspecting Electorate
July 30, 2010Among New York Democrats there's a weird fatalism about John Kerry's chances in November. The city's mania to see the president routed does nothing to lift the mood of bullish defeatism. What you hear is that Bush will still win by a hair -- not because Kerry fails to rev the electorate's engine, but because "they" will "pull something."
Barack Obama, Shaking Up The Sound-Bite Culture
July 30, 2010 In the media-saturated Hamptons, the summer's poolside reading is emblematic of life in the 21st century: the 9/11 commission report and Us magazine. There doesn't seem much alternative to the daily diet of terror and trivia -- except for the lingering impact of Barack Obama, which continues to reverberate as the only bounce worth talking about.
TINA BROWN
July 30, 2010Tina Brown is away. Her column will resume when she returns.
Unapologetic, Martha Is Left Holding the Bag
July 30, 2010Martha Stewart's statements on the courthouse steps after her sentencing last Friday unleashed a whole new round of schadenfreude.
Looking for an Angel to Outfox Murdoch
July 30, 2010If you hoped to get away from the U.S. political campaign this summer by going to London, forget about it. Right now in the United Kingdom, unless people are talking about soccer, it's all about Blair and Iraq -- and since Blair and Iraq are inextricably tied up with Bush and Iraq, this provides no vacation from rancor.
Democrats Warm To 'Fahrenheit 9/11'
July 30, 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
July 30, 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.
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