Why are other senators remaining silent? Five years ago, House Speaker Newt Gingrich was tarred and feathered for signing a $4.5 million book deal with Rupert Murdoch. He returned the advance. Mrs. Clinton’s equally sleazy deal has raised barely a peep. Two nonpartisan groups, the Congressional Accountability Project and Common Cause, have implored Mrs. Clinton to take only royalties, but she clearly has no intention of doing so.
Of course, the joke is on Viacom. Mrs. Clinton received her stratospheric asking price because she claimed her memoirs will address the Clinton administration’s scandals. Who does she think she’s fooling (besides Viacom)? The book is to be published in 2003, when Mrs. Clinton will be two years into her first term as senator. It would be political suicide for her to remind readers of even one hair on Monica Lewinsky’s head.
JANUARY 22, 2001 BY TERRY GOLWAY
Conquering Clintons Squat in New York
Illustrated by Drew Friedman
FOR YEARS NOW, WE’VE BEEN watching Bill Clinton’s approach into New York—fund-raisers and friends, birthday cakes at Radio City and nights at the Waldorf. He was like a lumbering Airbus circling the air lanes above Kennedy Airport.
Well, he’s finally touched down.
And, in a weird act of synchronicity, he’s preparing to settle into the very space from which his buddy, Miramax head Harvey Weinstein, and editor Tina Brown spawned their almost-monthly magazine, Talk, and from where, on the 56th floor of Carnegie Hall Towers at 152 West 57th Street, Ms. Brown hatched an almost-memorable profile of Hillary Rodham Clinton in Talk No. 1.
In those offices—for which the taxpayers may pay as much as $750,000 a year—the southern windows provide views of passing blimps and heartbreaking sunsets glinting off the Empire State Building; the western windows provide the Hudson River to the Meadowlands; to the majestic north, the former president will see Central Park itself in perfect green miniature, down to the skaters at Wollman Rink. The eastern windows peer down 57th Street, where power brokers live and work and eat.
And he will be among them.
Julian Niccolini, managing co-partner of the Four Seasons Restaurant, already has a table waiting for Mr. Clinton. And like a good many New Yorkers, he’s expecting to see him sometime soon.
Beginning at noon on Jan. 20, 54-year-old Bill Clinton will be a former president and a New Yorker, a combination not seen since Richard Nixon spent some time on the Upper East Side and Herbert Hoover lived out his chilly exile in an apartment in the Waldorf Astoria.
FEBRUARY 12, 2001 BY GEORGE GURLEY
THE OBSERVATORY: MANHATTAN MINX
ELISABETH KIESELSTEIN-CORD, a 21-year-old socialite, was on the phone and pissed off. A reporter had been calling her friends. “I haven’t done anything mean—to anyone, in my entire life—so I’m not concerned that someone’s going to be like, ‘Oh, she kicked me,’” she said. “It makes me feel very awkward. You know, I feel like this is the most invasive procedure that I’ve ever done. I really am being eaten up over this one.
“My life is not about cocktail parties,” she continued. “That’s why I don’t feel comfortable being photographed at them. You know what, I’m a young girl, O.K.? And the last thing I want is to have a bunch of obstacles thrown my way because someone has written about me in such a way that is—I’m very upset, I need to go.”
She called back. “I really wish I hadn’t embarked on this labyrinthine journey with you to begin with, because it’s out of control in my mind!”
Ms. Kieselstein-Cord is tremendously skinny, with caramel skin, dirty blond hair, big hazel eyes and lips that were described as “doll-thick” by a character in Woody Allen’s 1996 film Deconstructing Harry, in which she appeared as an extra.
Ms. Kieselstein-Cord’s photograph has appeared in Harper’s Bazaar and W. Her father, Barry Kieselstein-Cord, is a well-known designer of high-priced accessories—belts, handbags, jewelry, sunglasses—which are popular in Manhattan, but considered more stylish in places such as Houston and Dallas. Her mother, Cece, is an artist and a socialite.
While Ms. Kieselstein-Cord has been lumped with all the other dewy “It Girls” of New York circa 2001, she professes to be perplexed at the attention she’s getting.
“I find it very bizarre when I go home and listen to my answering machine,” she said, “and there are all these messages from people asking to work with me, about different projects. And I think, ‘Why in the world do they want to do this?’ And I figure, I’m part of the things that make New York New York.”
FEBRUARY 19, 2001 BY FRANK DIGIACOMO
Jennifer Lopez Has a Big…Week
LAST WEEK, MS. LOPEZ WAS INARGUABLY THE BIGGEST HOME-GROWN crossover star to hit New York since Barbra Streisand. Her Reddi-Wip of a movie, The Wedding Planner, was the highest-grossing picture in the country until Hannibal showed up; her album J. Lo was roaring through record stores in the city; her magnificent butt was staring out from store windows and street-vendor carts from Yankee Stadium to the Battery; and she mixed it all with coy sightings and non-sightings with her charged beau, hip-hop artist Sean (Puffy) Combs, ingraining her purity with the intoxicating arsenic trace of scandal that has turned a very few gorgeous big stars—from Clara Bow to Lana Turner to Marilyn—into dangerously heated superstars.
On Feb. 10 in New York, anybody with the inclination to do so could have luxuriated in the aura of Jennifer Lopez. That might have meant anybody’s turning on the radio to hear her sing, “Even if you were broke, my love don’t cost a thing,” from the single from her second album, which had crested at No. 1 on the Billboard charts, but which had the mind-numbing pleasure-giving quality that only the most insipid gloss can provide. Anybody could have picked up a copy of Rolling Stone magazine and admired the photos of Ms. Lopez’s butter-and-brown-sugar skin busting out of a series of scanty Xena-style costumes. Anybody could—and did—float toward the street vendor on Madison Avenue, who was selling watches and CD’s but using a poster of Ms. Lopez looking over her shoulder and aiming her butt like a Martian death ray: the most lethal black-and-white sex poster since Raquel Welch wore a torn bikini in One Million Years B.C. Or turned on Saturday Night Live and watched Will Ferrell declare to Ms. Lopez that he was “deeply and totally in love” with her “jungle rump,” then ogled as Ms. Lopez dropped her robe onstage to reveal the green Versace dress with the steepest, deepest cleavage tumble this side of Victoria Falls.
Illustrated by Philip Burke
FEBRUARY 26, 2001 BY TANYA CORRIN
THE OBSERVATORY: THE HARRIS EXPERIMENT
GO TO WWW.WELIVEINPUBLIC.COM. THERE YOU WILL SEE JOSH Harris, sleeping in the master bedroom of his magnificent Soho loft. You will see his cat, Neuffy, jump onto the bed and curl up at his feet. I see him, too, though I’m a few blocks away, watching him on my laptop at 56k. Josh looks so vulnerable that for a brief moment I want to reach out and hold him. The moment passes.
A few days ago, I was lying next to Josh. You could log on and watch in full-motion video as I woke up, tossed on my purple robe, brushed my teeth and fed Neuffy. We’d planned to live together in public—every minute of our lives in the loft, documented by 32 cameras and microphones—for 100 days. By day 60, I had to get out. By day 78, still unable to find an apartment, I chose couch surfing instead of remaining in a very public nightmare.
For four years, Josh and I were Silicon Alley’s “It” couple. We met in 1996, when he was running the Internet entertainment site Pseudo.com and throwing Warhol-scale parties. I loved his galvanizing personality and wild ideas. He said he loved my ambition and spunk. Soon, Josh had convinced me to quit my corporate job and start an online animation company to make erotica tailored to women. Silicon Alley was flush with cash. Anything was possible. I’d never been happier.
Then, last March, he told me that he wanted to find out if I was the one. We’d already tried living together three times, but I packed for what I hoped would be the last time. By then, Josh’s first company, Jupiter Communications, had gon
e public, and he had worked himself out of a job as founder of Pseudo to become a “full-time artist.” I had become an Internet TV producer, making digital videos and hosting my own show on Pseudo.
Two months later, instead of asking me to marry him, Josh asked me to go public.
Mayor Giuiliani threatens funding for Brooklyn Museum
Illustrated by Drew Friedman
MARCH 5, 2001 BY JASON GAY
Meet Four-Eyed New Sex Symbol, ‘Weekend Update’ Anchor Tina Fey
SHORTLY AFTER IT WAS ANNOUNCED that Saturday Night Live head writer Tina Fey would take over as co-host of the “Weekend Update” news segment this season with Jimmy Fallon, fellow writer Paula Pell cornered Ms. Fey in the labyrinthine NBC Studios at 30 Rockefeller Center.
“Paula threatened to beat the crap out of me as soon as she saw any change in my behavior,” Ms. Fey recalled.” She hasn’t beaten me yet.”
Still, Tina Fey has changed since last August, when Saturday Night Live creator Lorne Michaels gambled and gave the 30-year-old one of the show’s most prominent roles. In the ensuing months, Ms. Fey has undergone a caterpillar-like transformation from a schlumpy, sweatpants-wearing writer to a comedy princess.
“She’s transformed herself into a total hottie!” said SNL featured player Rachel Dratch.
Ms. Dratch described her friend’s comedic style as subtle yet purposeful: She will insist on writing a sketch that has an underlying point or payoff, as opposed to just riffing on a single joke or character.
Despite her growing popularity, Ms. Fey said she doesn’t get noticed on the street. Her life remains low-key. “Am I clubbing with J. Lo?” Ms. Fey laughed and shook her head. So no J. Lo. But if some people think that Tina Fey, the writer, is also a Saturday Night Babe, well, that’s just fine. “She must be psyched about it…anyone would,” said Ms. Dratch. “But she doesn’t walk around thinking, ‘I’m hot!’ I think it’s kind of new for her, being a sex symbol.”
MARCH 5, 2001 BY ALEXANDRA JACOBS
Tail Hook…
THERE THEY WERE, ASCENDING the stairs of the Bergen Street station: pants that zipped up the rear. Is this what the female sex has come to?
Sara Federlein, a 29-year-old grant writer for the aptly named Aperture Foundation, defended her size-eight, navy wool butt-zipper pants, which she received in a clothing swap. “They’re really flattering, because they zip up the back and are kind of low-slung,” she said.
If they were so great, why did her friend give them up? “In truth, the zipper thing never really worked for me,” said Francine Stephens, also 29. “The zipper part, my mom didn’t like that at all. And she’s very hip!”
MARCH 12, 2001 BY IAN BLECHER
ACID REFLUX, CHIC GASTRIC AILMENT, REPLACES THE ULCER—ASK GANDOLFINI
THE THING ABOUT THE MEN in gray flannel suits, who came home from World War II and got married and bought a house in Great Neck with its very own fallout shelter, who lunched on Dag-woods and napped all weekend, who feared only the boss and the communists: They all had ulcers. Ulcers were all the rage among the high-powered neurotic set not so long ago—the Marx Brothers made a cartoon promotional film for The Saturday Evening Post called Showdown at Ulcer Gulch; James Gleason played a stressed-out newspaper editor with a hole in his stomach in Meet John Doe.
Then, in 1983, Barry Marshall made an amazing discovery. Contrary to medical opinion of the time, ulcers are caused not by stress, not by hoagies, not even by the Russians; they’re caused by bacteria called Helicobacter pylori. Suddenly, they were curable with simple antibiotics. Just as suddenly, they became passé. Who gets ulcers anymore?
Illustrated by Barry Blitt
The ulcer went the way of afternoon highballs, newsreels, Sputnik and fin-tailed convertibles. But now, the children of the ulcer age are claiming a digestive grievance of their own. Acid reflux, an ailment caused by the backup of stomach acids in the throat, is becoming the ulcer of the New Age. And just as the mere mention of ulcers conjures images from the mid–20th century, someday acid reflux will do the same for the early 21st: The stressed-out dotcommer, the harassed defender of the Clinton family, the edgy day trader—all of them reaching for brand-name capsules to relieve the sour, verklempt feeling in the throat.
APRIL 2, 2000 BY GEORGE GURLEY
25-YEAR-OLD BROKER LEE MUNSON IS SWAGGERING RELIC OF THE BOOM
LEE MUNSON IS A TALL, LANKY, swaggering 25-year-old who moved from California to Manhattan three years ago and became a stockbroker. Now he works at a top brokerage house in midtown, drives a BMW and is married to an attractive 27-year-old woman who works in the art world.
One recent evening, Mr. Munson was in a cab on his way to Bellevue, a bar on 40th Street and Ninth Avenue.
“I realized at a very early time moving to New York City that my life was going to be shit out of luck unless I did something that made more fucking money—or as much money—as a drug dealer,” he said. “There was only one thing that you could do, other than being a drug dealer, which I have no aptitude for anyway. Selling stock. So during good times, I make as much as a top drug dealer or mob guy—legally! Ethically.
“I consider myself a capitalist,” he said. “Purebred. And you know what, I think the world is sick. And communism is so concerned about the world and helping your fellow brother. Fuck you, my fellow brother sucks. Why do I want to help him? He’s a scumbag.”
The next day I called Mr. Munson’s wife, Alison Bamert.
“Lee really rocks and he’s totally interesting, but you have to keep in mind that he shouldn’t always be taken, like, completely literally,” she said. “He’s very interested in playing mind games with people and seeing what reaction he gets. And if you don’t realize that, that can really turn people off.”
MARCH 26, 2001 BY FRANK DIGIACOMO
TO LIVE AND DINE IN N.Y.
MIDWAY THROUGH OUR MEAL at the restaurant Daniel I asked Jean-Louis Palladin what goes through his mind when he is in the kitchen.
Mr. Palladin—the 54-year-old French chef formerly of Palladin, Jean-Louis at the Watergate Hotel, and now Napa in Las Vegas—bolted upright in his chair. He looked at Tanya Bogdanovic, his Greek-Yugoslavian girlfriend, a flirtatious woman with dark eyes and a boyish haircut.
“It’s like making love to a lady like that,” he said as his hand reached out and grazed Ms. Bogdanovic’s slender arm.
A dark cloud of a thought formed in my brain: How can a man wrestling with death be so alive? If you were to see Mr. Palladin on the street, you would not think, There goes a sick man. But in December he was diagnosed with lung cancer, and by the time you read this story, he will be waiting to learn if his second round of chemotherapy shrank his tumor sufficiently to allow his surgeons to remove it.
And yet I can assure you that Mr. Palladin is a man more alive than either you or me.
“He’s amazingly strong,” said chef Eric Ripert. “He can still eat like a pig, fuck like a rabbit, drink like a fish.”
APRIL 30, 2001 BY CHRISTINE MUHLKE
The Observatory: Do-It-Yourself Dinner
IT FIGURES THAT AFTER nearly a decade of affluence, excess and hot-toweled pampering, a New York restaurant could come along and make a big splash simply by offering people the opportunity to fend for themselves.
That’s much of the appeal of Craft, an oddly conceived new restaurant in the Flatiron district launched by Gramercy Tavern chef Tom Colicchio.
Craft, we are told, is built upon tenets of simplicity and selection. Diners are provided with hypersized menus that resemble spreadsheets and list dozens of meat, poultry, fish and vegetable options; meals arrive with ingredients plated one by one, near-naked, on plain white plates or in shiny copper pots.
In essence, Craft puts the responsibility for a high-priced meal not on the fancy chef, but on you, the fancy customer. Naturally, this makes the restaurant something of a haven for control freaks. Are you one of those people constantly pulling the waiter aside and ordering off the menu? Then step
to the plate: Craft is your kind of joint.
“It seems like a natural New Yorker fantasy,” said Style.com gossip columnist Jill Kopelman. “[New Yorkers] tend to be controlling—what they want, when they want it. Everything [at Craft] is so specific.”
“There’s this period where you’re thinking, ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ especially by the time you get to the dessert menu,” said Mitchell Davis, a cookbook author and director of publications at the James Beard Foundation.
In fact, instead of being a heavenly gift, Mr. Davis thinks Craft is something of a comeuppance for control-freak diners. After all, people who go into restaurants and fussily make changes to the menu don’t do it because they want something else, he said. “It’s because of power.” Craft calls the picky eater’s bluff. “When they get so many choices, they don’t want to eat anything.”
If you do want to eat, however, you first must tackle your fear of screwing up. New York diners forever worry about the ordering mistake, the culinary faux pas that triggers a humiliating roar of laughter from the waiter and the rest of the table. With all of its menu options, the potential for screwing up at Craft seems far higher.
Mr. Colicchio sounded somewhat surprised at the suggestion that Craft was stirring up trouble. “People say, ‘Ah, I see what you’re trying to do. You’re trying to–’ And I’m like, ‘I’m not trying to do anything! Make good food, that’s it!’”
Still, Craft does represent a severe challenge not just to the culture of the star chef, but also to culinary submission. At Craft, Mr. Colicchio’s talents are only part of the show; the diner has an equal responsibility in the success of a meal.
The Kingdom of New York: Knights, Knaves, Billionaires, and Beauties in the City of Big Shots Page 40
