Adrian Grenier Reduced to Luring Women With BoozeMeanwhile, Cameron Diaz has signed on to play Seth Rogen’s love interest, and this thing with Kate Hudson and A-Rod is STILL happening, in today’s gossip roundup.
ByKatie Goldsmith
early and often
Today’s Primaries Could Change the Game, MaybeWhat will likely matter after tonight is how hard Clinton is willing to fight, and of course, whatever is going on in the heads of the undeclared superdelegates.
Jane Fonda’s Vocab Malfunction Might Affect FCC’s Ruling on Janet Jackson’s NipplesLAW
• Jane Fonda’s vocabulary malfunction on NBC’s Today show last week might influence the legal battle between CBS and the FCC over Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction in her 2004 Super Bowl halftime appearance. [Legal Intelligencer]
• New York City criminal-defense lawyer Jeffrey Schwartz receives support for representing the accused murderer of a 7-year-old girl. [NYT]
• Are television shows the reason lawyers get a bad rap? [Law.com]
company town
Jeff Bewkes Starts Cleaning House at Time WarnerMEDIA
• At least 75 Time Warner layoffs are expected to be announced today. The layoffs are among CEO Jeff Bewkes’s first public tasks since taking the helm of the company from Dick Parsons last month. Earlier today, Time Warner announced a 41 percent decline in fourth-quarter earnings. [MSNBC & AdAge]
• Maybe some of those Time Warner folks can hang their hats over at Condé Nast. The Observer evaluates Portfolio’s recent spending spree, during which it recruited top talent from The New Yorker, the Post, and the Times. [NYO]
• (Product)Red, the love child of Bono, iPod, and the Gap, has raised more than $22 million for fighting HIV and AIDS in Africa. But considering the big advertising bucks spent during the Super Bowl and elsewhere, some are arguing that it’s not enough. [NYT]
in other news
Valentino Scorches His Fellow Designers on the Way OutNobody knows how to burn bridges like a fashion designer on the way out. Valentino, the Italian womenswear legend who retires this month after 45 years in the industry, decided to go right for the toiles in an interview with reporters this week. “I certainly won’t miss the fashion world. It’s ruined! Everybody’s doing the same things. What’s missing is challenge, creativity, cheerfulness. These days it’s all about numbers! To continue working in an environment which says nothing in particular to me would be a bore,” he sniffed. “This environment is no longer stimulating.” In case that criticism wasn’t specific enough for you, the 77-year-old took aim at some of his longtime colleagues in the industry.
On Miuccia Prada: “[She] knows what she wants … even if we don’t share ideas about clothes.”
On Giorgio Armani: “In the course of 40 years, he has created a great style — but vulgar.”
On Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana: “[They were] shy at the beginning — now arrogant.”
On Donatella Versace: “[Her brother] Gianni’s talent was unique — but what grit she has!”
Valentino will be replaced at his eponymous company by former Gucci designer Alessandra Facchinetti as the company tries to expand. Asked about her talent, Valentino turned generous. “I’ve met her,” he said. “She’s pretty.”
Valentino takes parting shot at ‘ruined’ industry [London Independent]
early and often
The Final Bid: What the Candidates Had to Say Before Iowa Finally Stopped ListeningToday, Iowa is all about the last word. Encouraged by a recent favorable opinion poll in the state, McCain returned for a brief trip, along with Senators Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Sam Brownback of Kansas. All three were harping on McCain’s foreign-policy experience. “Call me old-fashioned, but I think foreign-policy experience matters,” Graham said. “And if it does matter, then the choice is easy.” “I know Pakistan, I know Israel,” explained McCain at a different event. “I know these countries, I know their leaders.” [NYO]
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton sent out talking points to surrogate speakers drumming up support across the state. They include bullet items like “Change isn’t something you just demand, or hope for, it is something you work for, and [Hillary] has been working for it all her life,” and “Hillary has stood up to the Republicans and beat them twice in landslides.” [Time]
intel
It’s New Year’s Eve. Run for Your Life.Well, folks, we were back for a moment, and now we’re gone again. But never fear, Daily Intel will return with a vengeance on Wednesday (and for good. We have no vacation written into our contracts — we just had to stop last week because our fingers, and souls, were bleeding). Since we know you’ve probably already left work and are going on to whatever horror you’ve got planned for this evening, we’re going to leave you with a bunch of heartfelt wishes for New Year’s Eve. While we would normally recommend getting the hell out of the city on this wretched night, we know you all, like us, are still here, and that you, like us, still allow yourself at your age to be bullied by some latent high-school-era belief that tonight should be the most fun night you have this year, and not only that, but the most fun night of your entire life thus far! We sure hope you won’t be disappointed! Here’s to that! And along with that we’d like to bestow upon you the following well-intentioned toasts…
May you
• Know more than eight other people at the giant open-bar party that you paid $200 to get into.
• Be so entertained by friends and merriment that you don’t have to watch any New Year’s Eve special on any major network, including MTV because God help you if you do.
• Not have to give a midnight kiss to that only semi-cute person you were sandbagging at the beginning of the evening in case no one hotter came around.
early and often
Chelsea Clinton Stonewalls 9-Year-Old ReporterWe couldn’t help but notice the following moment in a scantly picked-up AP story last night:
Sydney Rieckhoff, a Cedar Rapids fourth grader and “kid reporter” for Scholastic News, has posed questions to seven Republican and Democratic presidential hopefuls as they’ve campaigned across Iowa this year. But when she approached the 27-year-old Chelsea after a campaign event Sunday, she got a different response.
“Do you think your dad would be a good ‘first man’ in the White House?” Sydney asked, but Chelsea brushed her question aside.
“I’m sorry, I don’t talk to the press and that applies to you, unfortunately. Even though I think you’re cute,” Chelsea told the pint-sized journalist.
It sounds like Hillary’s campaign is taking its maniacal obsession with press control a wee bit too far. Come on, Chelsea, throw the little girl a bone. Don’t you remember when you were a cripplingly awkward preadolescent who was just trying to be taken seriously? Because we remember it. We remember it all too well.
Chelsea Clinton Guards Her Words [AP]
company town
Morgy Says, ‘I’m Too Old to Retire!’LAW
• Robert Morgenthau called a press conference in response to a “Page Six” item about him stepping down after 33 years: “I’m too old to retire.” The man is 88! [NYT]
• Big-time Mayer Brown partner Joseph Collins, who maintains offices in both New York and Chicago, has been indicted for fraud in the Refco case. [Above the Law]
• Which court is the worst “judicial hellhole” in the country? [Law Blog/WSJ]
gossipmonger
Ew, Lance Armstrong Is Hooking Up with Ashley Olsen?Lance Armstrong and Ashley Olsen hooked up at Rose Bar and then left at 2 a.m. The Jewish Theater of New York claims that the Times won’t review its plays because the paper is anti-Semitic; the Times says it won’t review its plays because they are bad. Kim Cattrall actually showed up to work before the other SATC cast mates for once. AOL chairman and CEO Randy Falco was roasted by Bob Costas and Brian Williams, among others. Ivana Trump made a kind of funny joke about Harper’s Bazaar editor Glenda Bailey being the devil in Prada at Denise Rich’s Angel Ball. (Diddy also left the ball with model May Anderson.) Michael Jackson went to Brooklyn to shoot a cover for Ebony magazine and was sweet despite prattling on about how much he likes kids.
in other news
HarperCollins Passes Over NYT Meanies for Kinder, Gentler WSJToday’s Observer has a story on disgraced memoirist James Frey who, remarkably enough, just sold a new novel to HarperCollins. Last week, Eric Simonoff, Frey’s swashbuckling agent, handed the big scoop to the Wall Street Journal — which more or less equates to a big honking F-U to the New York Times. “The New York Times has never been a friend to James Frey,” Simonoff sniffed to the Observer. Um, that’s putting it rather mildly: In his year-end column, Frank Rich grouped Frey with 2006 “villains” Mel Gibson and Michael Richards, saying, “It was a thrill beyond schadenfreude to watch them be soundly thrashed and humiliated for their sins.”
white men with money
Michael Mukasey: Giuliani’s Inside Man?Yesterday, when we gleefully listed Michael Mukasey’s homeboy specifications (born in the Bronx, went to an UES yeshiva, etc.), we glossed over the most intriguing part: the current A.G. nominee’s extensive ties to Rudy Giuliani. The connections between the two deserve their own list. Not only did Mukasey swear in the mayor in both 1994 and 1998, he donated heavily to his presidential campaign; Mukasey’s son Marc works at Bracewell & Giuliani, Rudy’s boutique law firm; and both Marc and Michael are the Giuliani campaign’s judicial advisers. In fact, as a federal judge in the Giuliani era, Mukasey had to recuse himself from some City Hall–related cases because of his friendship with the mayor. Today’s Times even describes a less-than-hilarious prank Mukasey played on Giuliani in the seventies (it involved Rudy getting a job at a law firm).
intel
Greenspan to Wife: Be Nice, or the Economy SuffersLast night, only hours after the Federal Reserve made its first big interest-rate cut in four years in an attempt to stanch the leaking housing and credit bubble, iconic former Fed chief Alan Greenspan had something to say. On the occasion of his new memoir topping the best-seller list, the finance gnome was grilled at the 92nd Street Y before a packed house — by none other than his wife, veteran NBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell. “I’m torn between proving my objective journalistic values and wanting to save my marriage,” Mitchell confessed early on. She seemed to favor the former impulse by dogging 81-year-old Greenspan, twenty years her senior, on whether he helped set up the current bust by repeatedly lowering interest rates post-9/11. “Guilty or not guilty?” she asked him. When Greenspan pleaded the latter, she reminded him that other experts had warned that super-low rates might fuel a backfire. “If you had some inkling, why were you so bullish about adjustable-rate mortgages?” she persisted. (Greenspan said that he’d only promoted ARMs on prime mortgages, not forseeing the subprime implosion that’s driven the current chill.) Mitchell concluded by asking her owlishly visaged old hub a question submitted from the audience: How do you deal with stress? “Have your wife talk to you nicely and pleasantly,” the Oracular One grumbled.
intel
Dolan’s Faith in Thomas as Delusional in Court as on CourtJust when you thought their sexual-harassment trial couldn’t get any more damaging for the Knicks, they shoot themselves in the foot. In a taped deposition by Madison Square Garden head honcho Jimmy Dolan, shown yesterday in court, the burly boss explained that plaintiff Anucha Browne Sanders was fired because she made sexual-harassment charges. And incidentally, at the Garden, it’s not harassment to use the N-word to describe a black person (this was revealed by aging exec Rusty McCormack. Andrea Peyser, back on her game since yesterday, describes McCormack as having “the complexion the approximate shade of ripe cheese.”) Of course, the question blaring from every news outlet is “Why are they still in this trial? Settle already!” The answer is simpler than you think.
company town
Facebook Hires YouTube’s MoneymanFINANCE
• YouTube’s former finance chief joins Facebook as CFO. Sales drums bang louder. [WSJ]
• Mark Lenowitz, a stock picker for Chelsey Capital and Q Capital Investment, admitted to insider trading. [Reuters via DealBook/NYT]
• James O’Shaughnessy, a Bear Stearns exec once called “the father of strategy indexing,” will leave the bank to start his own firm. [MarketBeat/WSJ]
company town
‘Jane,’ So OverMEDIA
• Jane mag is dead. [Radar]
• The Dow Jones board will meet with Ron Burkle today, but an alternative deal to Murdoch’s appears unlikely. [NYT]
• MTV Networks negotiated its upfront ad sales partly based on commercial ratings. [WSJ]
party lines
Skating With Mariska, Carson, Johnny, and the Kids
At last, an upside to this inconveniently truthy weather: an outdoor ice-skating party in April that felt as frigid as an ice-skating party ought to. “Skating With the Stars Under the Stars,” held at Central Park’s Wollman Rink last night, wasn’t a competition; it was a free-skate night benefiting Figure Skating in Harlem, a skating and educational program for girls, many of whom were on hand in snazzy ensembles to skate and get celeb autographs. The celeb contingent included lots of skaters — plus, of course, Mariska Hargitay. But the quotes of the night belonged to Carson Kressley and Johnny Weir; they’re after the jump.
company town
Speak, Models!FASHION
• Turns out models can speak — at least in Ridley Scott’s new Prada movie. [Fashionista]
• Bottega Veneta has designed the interior of a penthouse suite at the St. Regis. [British Vogue]
• Model Paulina Porizkova has joined the cast of Dancing With the Stars. [Flypaper]
• Naomi Campbell left Premier Models, where she’s spent most of her career, for IMG. [All Company News]
cultural capital
Now, New York Rappers Beef Via Photoshop
It’s a bit off topic for us, but the ongoing beef between New York rappers Tru-Life and Dipset seems worth mentioning. This weekend, in retaliation for the cover of Tru Life’s latest mix tape (above left), which depicts Dipset’s Jim Jones wearing Borat’s overly revealing yellow bikini, Dipset affiliates hacked Tru-Life’s MySpace page and put up photos of Tru Life in the bikini (above right). And with that, ladies and gentleman, we have reached the obvious end point of the evolution of rap beef; Jim Jones, who once threatened to slap the kufi off Nas’s head, is resorting to Photoshop geekery. At least no one’s getting shot. —Amos Barshad
Tru Life & J-Love — Tru York Mixtape Cover [Nahright.com]
Capo Strikes Back, Hacks Tru Life’d MySpace [Nahright.com]