"How do you get to Carnegie Hall? If you wanted to enter the legendary premises last night, you'd have to be on Cindi Leive and Bill Wackermann's good side. Glamour hosted its 19th Annual Women of the Year awards, and it was an affair of epic planning proportions. The event involved the special security forces for the former President Clinton, hundreds of screaming Girl Scouts on the balcony, dozens of stylists and manicurists in various hotel rooms around the city, countless travel negotiators, and even seat-fillers to ensure the smooth running of the event ... Even though the likes of Dr. Jane Aronson and Susan Rice took the stage to standing ovations during the night and Estelle performed, many were most eager to seeing the youngest honoree: Rihanna .. Her presenter Iman appeared impressed. 'I kind of live with a rock legend, so I know what it takes,' offered the supermodel. 'Rihanna is not there just yet, but give her another decade or so.'" (Fashionweekdaily)
"Tim Geithner, US Treasury secretary, on Wednesday reiterated his belief in the importance of a strong dollar, ahead of the arrival in Asia of US President Barack Obama. 'I believe deeply that it’s very important to the United States, to the economic health of the United States, that we maintain a strong dollar,' Mr Geithner told the Japanese press in Tokyo. The weakening of the dollar, which on Wednesday dropped to a 15-month low on a trade-weighted basis, has led to some concern over the future of the dollar as the central currency in the global economy. 'We bear a special responsibility for trying to make sure that we are implementing policies in the United States that will sustain confidence… in investors round the world,' he said." (FT)
"The Martha Stewart Center for Living threw its second annual gala last night in Chelsea. Liz Smith hosted the event, which honored journalist and author Sir Harold Evans, at the Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia headquarters on West 26th Street. Before dinner, there was a cocktail hour while guests bid on silent auction items such as photographs taken and signed by Martha, a yoga class with her personal trainer, and a teeth bleaching session with her dentist ... Stewart presented Sir Harold Evans with the 2009 Living Award, and he delivered a humorously self-deprecating acceptance speech. George McNeely of Christie's ran the live auction, which consisted of just three items: lunch for four at Le Caprice with Martha Stewart, Liz Smith, and Sir Harold Evans; an on-camera experience in a segment on The Martha Stewart Show; and a dinner party catered by Chef Pierre Schaedelin and hosted by Martha at her farm in Bedford. The dinner party was a big hit, and went to Jim Cramer, host of CNBC's Mad Money, for $12,000." (NYSocialDiary)
"The Obama administration’s attempt to relaunch the Middle East peace process isn’t just dead. The decomposing corpse is stinking up the room. The president’s personal prestige has been dinged—in the Arab world, in Israel, and in Europe and beyond. He has undercut his core strategy of reaching out to the Arab and Muslim world by showing a new, more 'even-handed' American policy in this bitter dispute. There was nothing more predictable than this embarrassing and damaging public flop. The administration dug a hole for itself and jumped merrily in. Four things went wrong, one after the other. First, Obama made what Arabs heard as a promise: that he was going to get Israel to stop all construction in all settlements in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This was rash and wrong; there is no way the Israeli government would accept this condition of its own free will—and Obama lacks the power to force this deal down Israel’s throat. Second, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu refused to cash the check Obama rashly wrote. He declined to accept the full construction freeze that the president wanted. Third, the Arab world then refused to help Obama by making some concessions to Israel in exchange for the partial freeze Israel proposed. Finally, in those conditions, Muhammad Abbas, a weak leader of an even weaker proto-state (the Palestinian Authority), threatened to throw in the towel, saying that he can’t carry on anymore under these conditions." (Walter Russell Reade/TheDailyBeast)
"The New Yorker has never published a masthead. But four and a half years ago, this newspaper assembled the magazine’s staff list and published it to look like one. Since then, some editors, researchers and writers have left, and been replaced by new talent. The magazine has gotten a little younger too (witness the hiring of Ryan Lizza, Nick Trautwein, Ariel Levy, and 26-year-old managing editor Amelia Lester). But one thing has stayed the same: the sheer size of the magazine’s editorial staff. 'In order to do what we do, we need a sizable staff,' said editor in chief David Remnick in an interview. 'We don’t publish 10 issues a year, or 12 issues a year. We publish 46. If The New Yorker is going to be worthy of the name,' he continued, 'and achieve a level of prose or accuracy or depth, or if it’s going to give the reporters or writers the time they need to achieve what I hope we can achieve, we can’t do it with a minuscule staff.'" (Observer)
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