Media-Whore D'Oevres



(image via trb.com)

"The day before Hillary Clinton racked up her emphatic—if mostly meaningless—victory in the West Virginia primary, Barack Obama’s chief strategist was in an Upper East Side apartment with dozens of political insiders, dealing with the new facts on the ground. Surrounded by views of the East River and trays of salmon-filled pastries, sesame chicken and lobster dumplings, the strategist, David Axelrod, addressed a room of about 75 Democratic activists and fund-raisers that included a number of newly converted Clinton supporters. 'Obama’s the candidate,' said Sarah Kovner, a former Clinton administration official and longtime Clinton ally who was in attendance. 'I’m a Democrat and I have been a Democrat for a long time and I want to win in November, and I don’t want to continue a fight that isn’t a fight anymore.'" (Observer)



"Pete Doherty celebrated playing his first gig since his release from prison last night by partying until the early hours of the morning with Amy Winehouse. As previously reported, Doherty played the Forum in London's Kentish Town with his band Babyshambles. After the gig had finished, he got a lift with his ex-girlfriend Lisa Moorish, the mother of his five-year-old boy Astile, about half a mile down Kentish Town Road from the venue to Amy's flat in Camden. Once there, Pete greeted the badly-beehived singer with what seemed like a full-on kiss. The hapless duo were then snapped stumbling around outside her house at around 4am today in a clearly inebriated state." (3AMGirls)

"'I am in this race because I believe I am the strongest candidate... and the strongest president,' Hillary Clinton said in her victory speech tonight. Hillary has certainly said things in this campaign that she clearly doesn't actually believe (see the gas tax holiday). But I think this reason, more than any other--more than her campaign debt, or the millions of women invested in her candidacy, or even the Clintons' sense of political entitlement--explains why she stays in the race, even in the face of crushing delegate math. (The pro-Obama Jed Report now calculates that Hillary would need to pick up a ludicrous 93 percent of the remaining available delegates, assuming the self-declared 'Pelosi Club' superdelegates who have said they will back the pledged delegate winner stick to that promise.) She may be deluding herself, but Hillary really seems to believe that Obama neither deserves nor can win the White House. And I suppose if that's how she truly feels then it's hard to blame her for staying in the race, so long as she doesn't damage him beyond repair." (TNR)

"Is this another wave of bad news? Now a prominent Hollywood film director just emailed me the following allegations about a heretofore unknown battle brewing between the Directors Guild and The Weinstein Co over residual payments for 20 to 30 films that may lead to arbitration or worse. (See below for the emails, which I condensed with his permission.) UPDATE: Tonight I spoke to Harvey Weinstein and his CFO Larry Madden, who both contend they know nothing about this and have not been personally contacted by the DGA. 2ND UPDATE: Harvey called again to say he's 'just discovered' that The Weinstein Co uses a third party service to calculate and pay residuals. 'Whatever the problem is, we're looking into it immediately.'" (See his full statement below...)" (NikkiFinke)

"I am more than a little disgusted by the Republican attempts to exploit the less than informed fears about Barack Obama in certain segments of the Jewish community ... I disagree with Obama's position on Hamas, which is at stark variance with his larger -- and eminently wise -- principle of trying to keep lines of communication open with everyone, friend and foe alike ... As a Jewish-American, and a supporter of the state of Israel, I find their demagoguery--and the disastrous course they prescribe--quite embarrassing." (Time)

"Meanwhile in another part of the forest, down south of Fourteenth, about ten o’clock down on West 12 Street where it intersects with West Fourth, a young woman here in town named Hilary Heard was giving a surprise 40th birthday party for her fiancé, one journalist named George Gurley ... I can’t help writing about him with a certain affection because George evokes that. He’s been going with Hilary for quite some time and he’s so committed to his work that he turned their visits to a couples therapist into a widely read series about contemporary relationships in the Big Apple. George hails from the Midwest. His beautiful mother Katherine has been married a couple of times so that George has half-brothers and a (now former) stepfather who went off with Anna Wintour, the famous Vogue editor. So George has a good story of his own ..." (NYSocialDiary)