Illustrated by Barry Blitt and Victor Juhasz
Feeling Queasy…: The Good Ship HRC
Illustrated by Barry Blitt
JANUARY 28, 2008 EDITORIAL
ON FEBRUARY 5, OBAMA
LOST AMID THE SOUND AND fury of this year’s primary season is the certainty, not the promise, of change. For the first time since 1952, there is no heir apparent to the administration in power.
The stakes have rarely been higher in a presidential election. The question is not if there will be change in American leadership, but what kind.
And the change that is being offered has a focus and intelligence that is kindred to the best American traditions. It is embodied by one candidate in the Democratic Party who is offering a reinvigorated America: Senator Barack Obama.
The New York Observer urges New York Democrats to support Mr. Obama in the state’s presidential primary on Feb. 5.
New Yorkers might ask why they should not pull a lever for our junior senator, Hillary Rodham Clinton. While Mrs. Clinton is an extraordinary United States senator for New York, we believe that Mr. Obama can be a great president for the United States of America.
Most of the other candidates have absorbed, assimilated or appropriated Mr. Obama’s issue of change. It is a powerful concept. But a great deal of the argument for Mr. Obama’s candidacy is about one great issue in American life: restoring and reinvigorating American democracy.
Democracy is the greatest strength of this still-young nation. Its living enactment is our gift to the world. It is the product of our best instincts and most powerful ideals. But it has been polluted, sullied and compromised by an obstructive administration that seems to have no particular regard for its attributes.
It is difficult to remember the last national candidate who has charged and jazzed the democratic system as Mr. Obama has. Partly as a result of his candidacy, college campuses have remembered why they are proud of the United States, kids are going door to door, runners are handing out leaflets on weekends, racial lines have been culturally melted and the electoral approach to presidential campaigning has been reborn.
And, as more than one commentator has said, America is being reintroduced to the world.
FEBRUARY 4, 2008 BY NICOLE BRYDSON
Globally Warmed: The Couture of Climate Change
With increasingly erratic winter temperatures, short-sleeved and even sleeveless coats are starting to make a crazy kind of sense to many New York women
TO THE LONG LIST OF OXYMORONIC garments produced by our novelty-desperate fashion complex—corduroy culottes! Uggs in Malibu!—now add sleeveless coats. “They look great!” enthused Kasia Steczyk, 27, a special-events intern at the Brooklyn Academy of Music who owns a whopping 10 of ’em.
What’s the latest thing in fashion these days? Buying stuff that requires you to buy…more stuff. Think iPod accessories, those little clip-on gew-gaws now available for Hermès Birkins, and these baffling arm-exposing coats that appeared on the Marc Jacobs fall ’06 runway and have been spotted everywhere from high-end stores like Opening Ceremony and Miss Sixty to Forever 21, H&M and Club Monaco.
One can’t help but think the trend has something to do with increasingly erratic winter temperatures. For all the eco-conscious magazine theme issues and organic parties (waitresses in hemp dresses! Green-tinis!), the fashion industry’s basic response to Al Gore and his sufferin’ polar bears has been: Hey, New Options! Witness the spread in the August Vogue that blithely declared: “As the planet heats up, the jacket is stealing the coat’s thunder…. It’s got every age and sensibility stylishly covered.” We may not be able to un-melt the polar ice caps—but we’ll be damned if we can’t find a style solution in the interim.
Helena Fredriksson, designer of the eponymous label H Fredriksson, who has designed coats with shorter sleeves, called the category “the new in-between piece.”
“The short or no sleeve has felt a bit unpractical previous seasons with cold fall and winters,” she said. “Now in our current times of global warming, they do make more sense.”
And there are aesthetic advantages as well. “The three-quarter sleeve can give a more interesting shape in terms of design, and it’s easier to make sense with a volume three-quarter sleeve than a full length,” Ms. Fredriksson said. “It also gives an opportunity to show longer gloves, which I like, and it gives a less bulky feel when wearing. The short sleeve and no sleeve is not as interesting in terms of sleeve design to me, but I do like the simplicity of it.”
Of course, the style has its detractors.
“Those coats drive me crazy!” said Julie Gerstein, 29, a writer for OK! magazine. “I saw a woman today in a floor-length sleeveless fur coat. So tacky and wrong on so many levels.”
FEBRUARY 11, 2008 BY FELIX GILLETTE
NYTV PRIMARY SCREAM
Chris Matthews, MSNBC’s Manic Oracle of American Politics, Has Been Through a Lot of Elections, But ‘I’ve Never Seen Anything Like This! This Is—’ What? ‘Bigger Than Kennedy!’
CHRIS MATTHEWS WOKE UP ON SUPER TUESDAY AT THE RITZ Carlton on Central Park South. For breakfast, he tore into a bowl of Raisin Bran with skim milk, slurped down a cup of coffee (no cream, no sugar) and attacked a stack of newspapers. Moving from story to story, he scribbled notes directly onto the newsprint, circling important facts and figures and jotting down the occasional exclamation points. He particularly liked an article in the Daily News by Rich Cohen suggesting that Barack Obama should be president, and Hillary Clinton his chief of staff.
Afterward, MSNBC’s prizefighter—the political pundit who knows more and filters less than anyone else in the business and who with his manic emotional odes to a certain senator from Illinois has become a fascinating sideshow attraction in this crazy primary circus—had hoped to go for a morning constitutional.
But this morning, in lieu of going for a walk, Mr. Matthews, who is 62, called the South African embassy. Recently, MSNBC announced that Super Tuesday would be broadcast live in South Africa, and Mr. Matthews, who spent two years in the Peace Corps, “spreading capitalism in the bush,” wanted to greet properly his faraway viewers. The nice woman at the embassy signed off on Mr. Matthews’ phrase of greeting: Sanibonani! Mr. Matthews planned to use the phrase later that night.
In the meantime, he continued to ponder the big factors in the campaign. History. Courage. Change. Hope.
“I’ve been following politics since I was about 5,” said Mr. Matthews. “I’ve never seen anything like this. This is bigger than Kennedy. [Obama] comes along, and he seems to have the answers. This is the New Testament. This is surprising.”
It was the morning of Super Tuesday. Everything was still in play.
Illustrated by Robert Grossman and Victor Juhasz
Illustrated by Robert Grossman and Victor Juhasz
MARCH 17, 2008 BY AZI PAYBARAH
The Touchable
Eliot Spitzer, Tortured Straight-Arrow Governor, Becomes Client 9 Forever
IN RETROSPECT, ELIOT SPITZER’S first year in office—during which time he lost high-profile fights with the Democratic Assembly and the Republican Senate, and introduced an initiative so toxic it nearly derailed Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign—only seemed like a disaster.
The revelation, broken this week on the Web site of The New York Times, that he paid thousands of dollars for a prostitute to meet him in Washington is the real thing.
It’s not simply that Mr. Spitzer has systematically alienated virtually everyone in Albany—Republican or Democrat—meaning that he has no political allies in his time of need. Or that he has managed to turn his considerable popular mandate to dust.
The worst thing about Mr. Spitzer’s transgression is that it finally, definitively and, barring a miracle, irreversibly destroys the premise of his political existence.
A clean-as-a-whistle crusader, he’s not.
“I have acted in a way that violates my obligations to my family, and violates my—or any—sense of right
and wrong,” Mr. Spitzer said during a brief appearance in his midtown office on March 10, as his red-eyed wife stood behind him. “I apologize first and most importantly to my family. I apologize to the public, whom I promised better.”
It was the most coherent part of a vague and largely defensive-sounding statement that satisfied exactly no one.
Afterward, some officials offered rote statements of sympathy for Mr. Spitzer’s family while politely avoiding the issue of whether he should resign.
Illustrated by Philip Burke and Victor Juhasz
MAY 20, 2008 BY DOREE SHAFRIR
What, Me Host?
Why Was Guileless Jimmy Fallon Hired for Conan’s Late-Night Desk? ‘I Got the Sense He Was Built for It,’ Says Producer Lorne Michaels; ‘You Get to Tell Jokes, Meet Cool People,’ Says Scruffy Ex-SNL Guy
LAST WEEK, AT A PRESS CONFERENCE AT NBC HEADQUARTERS AT 30 Rockefeller Center announcing that he would take over for Conan O’Brien on NBC’s Late Night next year, when Mr. O’Brien moves into Jay Leno’s big chair, Jimmy Fallon looked just a little sheepish.
“I’m very excited about this,” he told the crowd of reporters. “I hope to make this the best show, and the show to make everyone choose me to fall asleep during.” The crowd laughed politely. On the podium with him was his mentor, NBC comedy guru Lorne Michaels, who produces Late Night, which airs nightly at 12:30 a.m., and who had selected Mr. Fallon as its new host, just as he had anointed an unknown 30-year-old Conan O’Brien 15 years earlier.
A week later, on the phone from the Los Angeles home he shares with his wife of five months, the movie producer Nancy Juvonen, and their dog, Lucy, Mr. Fallon reflected on his decision to take the job.
“It’s a comedian’s dream where you can get a job where you can tell jokes on national television,” said Jimmy Fallon. “It’s amazing. That’s why comedians work comedy clubs. They work any room they can get a laugh! I missed that. I missed the applause, and I missed working with writers and getting out there and telling jokes and doing bits. Late-night television is responsible for some of the best moments on TV! And you get to meet a bunch of people. I find people interesting. I really do. I think I’m looking forward to that as well, so much. It’s almost like, what don’t you like about the job?”
MARCH 24, 2008 BY AZI PAYBARAH
HIS EXCELLENCY
Governor David A. Paterson: Whap! The full-frontal download of his past has charmed Albany and stunned New York
ADMITTEDLY, IT’S HARD TO KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO MAKE OF David Paterson’s unorthodox debut as governor.
An attempt to preempt a wave of press speculation about his personal life by granting an interview to the Daily News on March 17—the day he was sworn in—put the issue of his extramarital activities in play without putting it to rest, leaving out the name and professional position of the woman he had been sleeping with.
From here, the scenario goes like this: The press, free now to address in print what they’ve been talking about in private for a while already, plumbs the depths of Mr. Paterson’s relationships in search of overlap with his role as a public official and his access to campaign funds and public money.
And here’s the likely ending: Mr. Paterson survives. The thing he has going for him, above all, is that no matter what the press turns up, none of the big players in Albany has an interest in seeing Mr. Paterson fail.
For the Democrats, an early exit for David Paterson would mean Governor Joe Bruno. For Mr. Bruno it would mean a level of scrutiny that he, even more than Mr. Paterson, is ill-prepared to endure. And for the public, it would mean yet another scandal after an exhausting (and deeply unappealing) week of stories about Eliot Spitzer and prostitutes.
And besides, just about every elected official, interest group and lobbyist in Albany seemed far too occupied adjusting to Day One, Part Two, to do anything but pursue their business as usual.
Illustrated by Philip Burke and Victor Juhasz
Illustrated by Victor Juhasz
APRIL 7, 2008 BY JOHN KOBLIN
OFF THE RECORD: MAG AS HELL! WHERE WILL MAGAZINES BE 10 YEARS FROM NOW?
IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS IN Graydon Carter’s world, you’ll walk onto a plane, or a subway, or a soon-to-be-invented mode of transport, and you’ll tuck a little electronic book under your arm. Inside that little book, which will be very expensive at first but soon will cost $150, there’ll be a series of mylar “pages,” and there will be small buttons off to the side, and once you hit one of them, whoooosh, words and photos from Vanity Fair will suddenly appear.
“In a decade time frame?” asked Chris Anderson, editor of Wired. “No. Technology adoption happens slowly. This is the editor of Wired telling you no. Obviously, newspapers are going to be changing dramatically over the next few years, but magazines are not newspapers. And I think magazines 10 years from now are going to look something like they do now.”
Interviews with editors of magazines like Wired, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Us Weekly and several others elicited more of the same: Magazines are not, for the most part, worried about the Internet.
Most magazine editors seem to have emerged from 10 years of mostly noncommittal fiddling around with the Web confident that the magazine of the future will be largely the magazine of the present. That is, when they are willing to look past the next print deadline to contemplate the magazine of the future at all.
Isn’t It…? HBO hired Tina Brown and Frank Rich
Illustrated by Drew Friedman
JUNE 2, 2008 BY JOHN KOBLIN
OFF THE RECORD: The Times Magazine Dapples Sunlight on Its Memoirist
THIS PAST WINTER, PAUL TOUGH, A STORY EDITOR AT THE NEW York Times Magazine, brought Emily Gould, a recently retired editor of Gawker.com, to the sixth floor of the paper’s skyscraper on Eighth Avenue. Sometimes, writers meet with the magazine’s editor in chief, Gerry Marzorati, and this was one of those times.
Mr. Marzorati had never before heard of Ms. Gould, he told Off the Record. They talked for around an hour about her “wanting to write some memoirish piece about having lived a fair amount of her life on the Internet in her first years in New York; I was interested.”
The task of illustrating fell to Elinor Carucci, a freelance photographer who said she does mostly fine arts work and spent several hours over two days in a one-on-one photo shoot at Ms. Gould’s apartment in Brooklyn.
Mr. Marzorati said his instructions were “to try to convey this sort of intimacy and dreaminess and sort of intimate detachment—if that’s a meaningful oxymoron—that is in the piece. They worked that out together.”
And this is how an image of Ms. Gould, poured upside-down onto a rumpled bed wearing a camisole, no bra and a come-hither look, landed on New Yorkers’ laptops and brunch tables over Memorial Day weekend. The writer was involved in winnowing the photos to a dozen, Ms. Carucci said. Still, “when I saw the cover, I was shocked,” Ms. Gould said on the phone from Bryant Park on May 27. Did she feel a tad exploited? Ms. Gould paused. “Yeah, I really don’t want to talk about it.”
JUNE 2, 2008 BY GILLIAN REAGAN
THE OBSERVATORY: GET PLENTY OF IRONY! THE GOLDEN ARCHES, ARCHLY
Three-star pigs in a blanket, $55 mac ’n’ cheese with truffles, peanut butter and foie gras: When did eating in Manhattan become so demandingly witty? GILLIAN REAGAN longs for the days when a Twinkie was just a Twinkie
FROM MAY 28 UNTIL JUNE 2, visitors to the first-floor atrium at Henri Bendel on Fifth Avenue, weaving through perfumed salesladies at a trunk show for Gold Skin Care, will find Sarah Magid, an organic baker from Greenpoint, Brooklyn, selling her most popular item, a “Goldie”—a cylindrical chocolate sponge cake filled with buttercream that retails for $8.
“People see it and say, ‘Oh my God, is that a Twinkie and it’s…organic?” said Ms. Magid. When she started making the confection two years ago, she dubbed it a “Tweenkee,” but she eventually changed the name in less direct tribute to the Hostess pastry, and perhaps a nod to the phra
se “golden oldie.” Enthusiasts include staffers at Women’s Wear Daily and Ed Bucciarelli, the CEO of Bendel. “They just laugh and then they eat it,” Ms. Magid said. “It brings a sense of humor to the food.”
Not everyone is amused, however. Such gourmet gimmicks are increasingly common in New York’s rarefied circles, where dining outside the home has become a prolonged and occasionally wearying exercise in wit and detachment. We have entered an era of Ironic Food, with chefs taking working-class staples, citifying them into nearly unrecognizable form and serving them with a wink and a smile to the upper crust.
At BLT Market, Laurent Tourondel serves “pigs in a blanket”: prime cuts of beef and pork cuddling in a delicate puff pastry, served as a complimentary start to a meal. Daniel Boulud, Olde Homestead and the Wall Street Burger Shoppe have all done burgers of varying degrees of unaffordability. And at Graydon Carter’s Waverly Inn, the once-mocked $55 plate of truffled mac ’n’ cheese has become one of the restaurant’s defining dishes.
Combined with the brigade of Park Slope mommies pouring “evaporated cane juice” (a.k.a. sugar) down their children’s throats, it’s enough to send anyone scurrying over to the nearest Dollar Menu.
JUNE 9, 2008 BY MEREDITH BRYAN
Ben-Her Friends, Romans, Ladies!
Friends, Romans, Ladies! Why Are Gladiator Sandals Hot Shoes for Women Warriors This Summer? They’re Sexy, Powerful, Flat! Says Cynthia Rowley: ‘Orthopedic Spartan Shoes’
ON A RECENT SUNDAY EVENING, AT THE PRIVATE CLUB NORWOOD on 14th Street, designer Michael Kors was explaining the appeal of the gladiator sandal, the shoe New Yorkers are not going to be able to escape this summer. “It’s comfortable and powerful,” he said. “What could be better? Sexy, comfortable and powerful all at once. It works with any length; you can wear it with a short dress, wear it with a long dress, wear it with shorts….”
The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots Page 68