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Tag: 2008
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Will MTV audience care who rocked the cradle?
MTV’s Rock the Cradle has kicked off its debut season, but does the average MTV reality show fan even care about these celebuspawn?
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MTV’s website describes the premise of the show, “Yeah, we’re searching for the next superstar, but this isn’t your average, every day singing competition. We’re shining the spotlight on children of rock stars to see who has what it takes to step out of the parental shadow and fulfill their DNA destiny. ‘Cause, really, isn’t everything better when celebrities are involved?”
But really, how many typical MTV viewers even know the music that made the parents of these contestants famous? Aside from seeing episodes of Being Bobby Brown on Bravo and reruns of the movie Grease on cable, it’s likely that “Hammer time,” would be nothing more than a legend for today’s teens, MTV’s target audience.
The contestants of Rock the Cradle sing each week, and the one with the highest score from the judges is safe from elimination. The rest have to depend on viewer support to keep them from being kicked off the show.
The show is judged by Britney Spears’ former manager Larry Rudolph, choreographer Jamie King, and celebrity stylist June Ambrose.
After the first episode, which aired last week, Lucy Walsh, daughter of The Eagles’ Joe Walsh, received the highest score, which isn’t too surprising. She’s the only contestant who already has a record deal, with Island Records.
Rock the Cradle may get some success if the contestants can hold audience attention without relying on famous parents. It’s pretty certain that the fans of Kenny Loggins, The Doobie Brothers and Olivia Newton-John aren’t tuning in to MTV regularly.
Rock the Cradle airs on MTV on Thursday at 10 p.m.
This post is tagged with: Al. B Sure!, Being Bobby Brown, Bobby Brown, Britney Spears, Eddie Money, Island Records, Jamie King, Joe Walsh, June Ambrose, Kenny Loggins, Larry Rudolph, Lucy Walsh, MC Hammer, MTV, Olivia Newton-John, Rock the Cradle, The Doobie Brothers, The Eagles, Twisted SisterRead related stories: Entertainment · Music · Television
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Ousted Sierra leaders tie suspension to Clorox criticism
At the very least, the timing raises questions: The biggest environmental group in the U.S. expelled 27 leaders of its Florida chapter shortly after the state committee accused the Sierra Club’s national directors of betraying their principles to endorse a “green” cleaning line by the Clorox Company.
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Willett noted another state chapter, Massachusetts, had also criticized the Sierra Club’s decision to endorse the new biodegradable cleaning line, “and no action has been taken against them, and there won’t be. That’s not how the Sierra Club works.”
First announced in January, the unprecedented partnership between the Sierra Club and Clorox has been hailed by supporters as a way to promote a green marketplace, and denounced by critics as a sell-out to a company most closely associated with Clorox Bleach. Under the deal, the Sierra Club gets an undisclosed percentage of profits from the sale of the new line, marketed under the name Green Works, in exchange for the use of its logo.
At least some ousted activists don’t buy the assertion that their suspension is unrelated to their criticism. Joy Towles Ezell, former chairwoman of the Florida chapter, told the Guardian that the same weekend in January that the chapter passed a measure condemning the deal, they were told of their impending removal.
She said that the new Clorox products should be named “Money Works” or “Toxic Works.”
“Clorox is the bad guy to me,” Ezell said. “. . .You sell your soul when you get involved with something like that.”
Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope admits he was skeptical when first approached by Clorox. But after reviewing the ingredients of the cleaners, most of which are plant products, and contemplating Clorox’s market reach, he decided to take the gamble.
“One of the reasons green home cleaning products haven’t achieved much market penetration is if they came from an environmental brand, people had the sense they won’t work … And if it came from someone with a cleaning reputation the reaction was: They can’t be green.”
Green Works may be an even bigger gamble for Clorox’s new CEO Donald Knauss, who came from Cola Cola in 2006, and who has pushed the company to launch its first new product line in 20 years. Knauss has identified sustainability as one of three core consumer trends with which he wanted to align Clorox products, and hired “green” consultants, who led him to the Sierra Club.
Green consultant Joel Makower, who worked on the project, calls the launch a watershed:
It’s an intriguing moment. Green Works enters the marketplace with a near perfect storm of market conditions: growing mainstream consumer demand for green products that don’t require compromise or sacrifice; significant interest from Wal-Mart and other big retailers in pushing greener products to the masses; a product that seems competitive with the leading green brands; and endorsement from Big Green.
Naysayers, however, predict the endorsement will undermine the credibility of the environmental group, noting that a month before the deal was signed, Clorox was fined $95,000 by the Environmental Protection Agency for donating a mislabeled Chinese version of Clorox bleach to a Los Angeles charity.
“The Sierra Club has become little more than another corporate front group,”
said Tim Hermach of Native Forest Council in Eugene, Oregon in a piece in Corporate Crime Reporter.Hermach had special animus for the group’s executive director: “Carl Pope has sold out the Sierra Club’s mission of saving nature and now seems proud of his role as an obsequious and professional Uriah Heep. As a result, Sierra Club is getting lots of corporate appreciation, cash and favors.”
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Cayne, Macklowe keep their condos at The Plaza
Another way the rich are different: They don’t have to pay mortgages.
A case in point: Days before Bear Stearns chairman James Cayne suffered a dizzying $900-million loss in wealth as a result of the fire sale of Bear Stearns, he purchased two apartments in the storied Plaza for a cool $28 million.
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The 1907 landmark, famous as the home of children’s book heroine Eloise, recently reopened as a mix of luxury condos and hotel units. The development boasts a Who’s Who of corporate chieftains, including New England Patriots boss Robert K. Kraft, Staples Chief Executive Ronald Sargent, Italian racing mogul Flavio Briatore and Dave Barger, chief executive of JetBlue.
Like Cayne, several have been socked by recent gyrations in the real estate and financial markets. Real-estate mogul Harry Macklowe, who spent $60 million last year to buy up a string of adjacent apartments, is facing a mountain of debt himself as a result of a $7 billion, seven-building buy last year. To stave off cash-hungry creditors, he has been trying to unload the iconic General Motors building, and the office tower at 1301 Avenue of the Americas. So far, though, he’s shown no sign of giving up his dream of a palace on the park.
Italian businessman Luigi Zunino, meanwhile, is trying to flip the third-floor apartment which he is in contract to buy, according to the Wall Street Journal. Zunino is the CEO of a Milan-based real estate company that lost three-quarters of its value in the last year. While most condos in The Plaza have been selling for between $4,000 and $6,000 per square foot, Zunino is valuing his apartment at $10,000 per square foot.
If he gets his $100-million asking price, it would set a record for residential real estate in Manhattan. If not, maybe he can start a support group for onetime Masters of the Universe in the Oak Room.
This post is tagged with: Business, Dave Barger, Flavio Briatore, James Cayne, Robert Kraft, Ronald Sargent, The Plaza, WealthRead related stories: Business · Wealth
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Geoffrey Garin fills Penn’s post in Clinton campaign
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton replaced one pollster and a strategist with another Sunday, letting Mark Penn go and filling his place with Geoffrey Garin.
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The adjective “well-respected” seems glued to Garin’s name in press accounts. The adjectives “controversial,” “abrasive,” “gruff” and “rumpled” were always pasted on Penn.
Penn had been serving as Clinton’s chief political strategist until he stepped down Sunday. He is also the chief executive of the Burson-Marsteller, a public relations firm.
Reportedly, Clinton had been angered that Penn and Burson-Marsteller were working to help the government of Colombia obtain a trade agreement with the United States.
Clinton opposes the alliance. Penn’s connection to Colombia could have hurt her with voters in the April 22 Pennsylvania primary.
“The important thing is just to win,” Garin told The Washington Post after he took over for Penn. “My view is the campaign has to focus on the work of April and May and the early part of June and do well at all of that. So on one level, first things first.”
Garin, 54, who joined the Clinton campaign last month as a pollster, has been president of Peter D. Hart Research Associates since 1984. He joined the company in 1978 as a senior analyst and vice president.
While at the company, he has worked as a pollster and strategist for several Democratic senatorial candidates. They include Charles Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California and Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia.
He has also worked with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the AFL-CIO and the American Federation of Teachers.
Garin’s connections to unions could help Clinton in Pennsylvania with some of the voters she needs to win the state and slow the momentum of Sen. Barack Obama.
Evan Miller of The New Argument blog notes that Garin gave some unsolicited advice to the Clinton campaign in February, advice the campaign ignored.
“If I were Hillary Clinton, the last thing I’d be doing is talking about super delegates, because the voters don’t want to hear that,” Garin said. “She really needs to make the case about why she’s the better candidate to lead the country.”
In other comments, Garin has emphasized the importance of speaking to the economic issues that are on people’s minds.
But at this moment in the Clinton campaign, personnel issues may be as important as policy issues.
Penn was in the middle of months of internal fighting. He seemed to have alienated everyone but Clinton and her husband, Bill Clinton.
Wolfson and Garin don’t have this history of contention, The Washington Post reported.
“People like Howard and Geoff,” one campaign aide said. “I presume there will be less strife.”
This post is tagged with: Geoffrey Garin, Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential campaign, Mark Penn, PoliticsRead related stories: Politics
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Found Muckety by accident. Has the TU come back to life?
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Hey Perry. No corporate overseer in this iteration.
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Heston’s journey from left to right
He played Moses and Michelangelo, but Americans under 40 are more likely to know Charlton Heston as the conservative activist who walked out on filmmaker Michael Moore.
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Those who recall him as president of the National Rifle Association may be surprised that Heston started out as a liberal Democrat. He campaigned for Adlai Stevenson in 1956 and John F. Kennedy in 1960. He opposed Hollywood censors’ attempts to prettify the language in Ben-Hur. He supported a gun control law, passed under President Lyndon Johnson, that forbade addicts and federal convicts from owning guns, and regulated interstate commerce in firearms
He was also a leading advocate of civil rights, raising money for the cause and joining Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington in 1963 along with Harry Belafonte, Jackie Robinson, Paul Newman, Josephine Baker and Bob Dylan—none of whom can be imagined as a conservative. Two years earlier, he had picketed a segregated theater in Oklahoma that was showing one of his movies.
“We certainly disagree with his position as NRA head and also his firm, firm, unwavering support of the unlimited right to bear arms,” said Earl Ofari Hutchinson, president of the Los Angeles Urban Policy Round Table, a civil rights group. “Charlton Heston was a complex individual. He lived a long time, and certainly, there were many phases. The phases we prefer to remember were certainly his contributions to Dr. King and civil rights.”
As he got older, however, Heston’s politics swung rightward. He seemed to follow the lead of Ronald Reagan, who had preceded him as president of the Screen Actors Guild (”Ronald Reagan was my president before he was yours,” Heston once wrote) and also as a liberal Democrat. Heston campaigned for Reagan and for both Bushes when they ran for president.
In a 1997 speech, he deplored a culture war being waged against “the God fearing, law-abiding, Caucasian, middle-class Protestant–or even worse, evangelical Christian, Midwestern or Southern—or even worse, rural, apparently straight–or even worse, admitted heterosexuals, gun-owning-or even worse, NRA-card-carrying, average working stiff–or even worse, male working stiff–because, not only don’t you count, you are a downright obstacle to social progress.”
He resigned from Actors Equity, calling the union’s refusal to allow a white actor to play the part of a Eurasian in “Miss Saigon” “obscenely racist.” By then, he also opposed affirmative action and criticized CNN’s coverage of the Gulf War as sympathetic to the Iraqis.
A staunch defender of the Second Amendment, Heston was elected president of the N.R.A. in 1998. “Those wise old dead white guys that invented this country knew what they were talking about,” he said.
Perhaps his most famous moment at the organization came at its 2000 convention where, paraphrasing an N.R.A. bumper sticker (”I’ll give you my gun when you take it from my cold, dead hands”), he waved a replica of a colonial flintlock above his head and shouted, “From my cold, dead hands!”
Michael Moore visited Heston to talk to him for the 2002 anti-gun documentary, Bowling for Columbine, But Heston appeared angry and flustered by Moore’s questions and walked out on the interview. Moore, who was criticized by some for “ambushing” Heston, posted a picture of the actor on his web site after he died.
In 2002, Heston was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. “If you see a little less spring in my step, if your name fails to leap to my lips, you’ll know why,” he said in announcing his condition. “And if I tell you a funny story for the second time, please laugh anyway.” He withdrew from public life, resigning from the NRA in 2003, although he accepted a Medal of Freedom later that year from President George W. Bush.
“The largeness of character that comes across the screen has also been seen throughout his life,” Bush said.
This post is tagged with: Charlton Heston, Entertainment, Martin Luther King Jr., Michael Moore, National Rifle Association, PoliticsRead related stories: Entertainment · Politics
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Mark Penn leaves Clinton campaign post
Mark J. Penn, one of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s key and most controversial advisers, is no longer her chief political strategist.
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Penn is the chief executive of Burson-Marsteller, a Washington public relations firm that had been hired to help the country of Colombia gain a bilateral trade agreement with the United States.
Any suggestion that Clinton supports the trade agreement could hurt her in Pennsylvania’s April 22 primary. Voters there connect foreign trade with the loss of jobs in their state and in the country.
Penn had said that other members of the firm were doing the work with Colombia. But according to The New York Times, Clinton was angered when she learned that Penn had met with officials from Colombia last week and she insisted on his demotion.
“After the events of the last few days, Mark Penn has asked to give up his role as chief strategist of the Clinton campaign,” Maggie Williams, the campaign manager, said in a statement Sunday evening.
Penn’s company also has ties with Blackwater Worldwide, the military contractor and Countrywide Financial, one of the leading issuer of subprime mortgages. According to the Times, Penn had also refused to stop dealing with those companies while helping Clinton.
Penn did call his meeting with the Colombia officials an “error in judgment.” After that statement, the government of Colombia severed its ties with Burson-Marsteller.
Clinton has been under pressure to do something about Penn for months. He is known to have an abrasive style that has irritated other staffers. And, especially when Clinton was losing in primaries, he was criticized for giving her bad advice.
“No matter how much bad stuff happened, (Clinton) kept to her Bush playbook, stubbornly clinging to her own Rumsfeld, her chief strategist, Mark Penn,” Frank Rich wrote in the Times earlier in the year.
Drawn to Bill Clinton’s team by Dick Morris, Penn helped fashion President Clinton’s 1996 re-election. Penn was also a leader in Hillary Clinton’s successful senatorial campaign in 2000.
And he guided Britain’s Tony Blair to his a third re-election as prime minister, just as he put Israel’s Menachem Begin in the win column.
Penn is the co-author of Microtrends: The Forces Behind Tomorrow’s Big Changes.
In Microtrends, Penn and co-author E. Kinney Zalesne divide the American public into emerging demographic categories. (Stay-at-home workers, etc.)
“There is no One America any more, or Two or Three or Eight,” Penn writes. “In fact, there are hundreds of Americas, hundreds of new niches made up of people drawn together by common interests.”
Penn is the nominal boss of Charles R. Black Jr., a key McCain adviser and spokesman.
Black is the chairman of BKSH & Associates, a lobbying firm that is a subsidiary of Burson-Marsteller.
The Times reports that Penn’s polling firm, Penn, Schoen and Berland Associates, will continue to poll for Clinton.
This post is tagged with: Burson-Marsteller, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Mark Penn, Penn, Politics, presidential campaign, Schoen and Berland AssociatesRead related stories: Politics
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Jay-Z cuts 2 deals – with Live Nation & Beyonce
Jay-Z has had a big week. The rapper is expected to finalize a contract with Live Nation records soon worth $150 million. If that weren’t enough to celebrate, last night he reportedly married his superstar girlfriend, Beyonce Knowles.
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Although the couple has yet to confirm their marriage officially, they were spotted last week in Scarsdale, NY obtaining a marriage license.
In addition to paying Jay-Z $25 million up front, Live Nation would also finance his future endeavors, including any talent consulting, clothing lines, tours, albums, and record labels that the rapper would work on in the future. The conglomeration of Jay-Z’s efforts would be labeled Roc Nation. The company would then split future profits with Jay-Z.
Jay-Z is known for his entrepreneurial success outside of the music business. He has made significant achievements in both the fashion and nightlife industries. He founded Roc-a-wear, a clothing line he sold for $204 million last year. He also started his own nightclub, the 40/40 club, which now has locations in New York, Atlanta, and Las Vegas.
Although Jay-Z still owes another album to Def Jam records, where he held the position of president until December 2007, he will be paid $10 million per record by Live Nation. His contract will require three albums from Jay-Z in the next ten years.
This deal will further cement Jay-Z’s departure from his self-proclaimed retirement. In 2003, when he released The Black Album, Jay-Z announced it would be his last studio album. In 2006, he released the album Kingdom Come, which he followed with American Gangster, an album meant to accompany the Denzel Washington film.
Live Nation will ink the long-term deal with Jay-Z even though his last album, American Gangster, did not garner the same success of his previous records, selling about one third the number of records that The Black Album sold. Jay-Z refused to release American Gangster on iTunes because believed the album should be purchased as a whole and not by individual tracks.
This is the third major deal Live Nation has made with a top recording artist. The company signed a similar deal with with Madonna in 2007 and another with U2 earlier this week, worth $120 and $300 million, respectively.
Related posts on Muckety- Henry Cisneros, Madonna and the Big O – October 19, 2007
- 50 Cent-Kanye and other feuds ignite Grammys – December 10, 2007
- Muckety This! Beyonce to Mario Batali – April 8, 2008
- Josh Brolin has several reasons to watch Oscars – January 23, 2008
- Muckety this! Madonna to Dalton Trumbo – March 23, 2008
- Smoke gets in Bono’s eyes – May 16, 2007
- Bill Gates yuks it up at CES 2008 – January 8, 2008
- Matt Damon, George Clooney and other sexy men – November 22, 2007
- Songwriter has more than a feeling about Huckabee – February 16, 2008
This post is tagged with: 40/40 club, American Gangster, Beyonce Knowles, Chris Martin, Def Jam records, Denzel Washington, Destiny’s Child Gwyneth Paltrow, iTunes, Jay-Z, Kingdom Come, Live Nation, Madonna, Roc Nation, Roc-a-wear, The Black Album, U2Read related stories: Celebs · Entertainment · Music
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Did ‘Yoo Doctrine’ spawn torture?
The disclosure this week of a March, 2003 memo from Justice Department lawyer John C. Yoo, asserting that laws banning torture were trumped by the president’s authority as commander-in-chief in a time of war, appears to offer a direct line to subsequent abuses at Abu Ghraib prison.
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Part One of the memo is here, and Part Two is here.
The memo was intended to deal with “unlawful combatants,” a label that would not apply to the largely Iraqi population captured during the Iraq war. But as our friends over at TPM Muckraker point out:
The natural suspicion remains that Yoo’s expansive parsing might have migrated over to Iraq. After all, Major General Geoffrey Miller, then the commanding officer at Guantanamo Bay, did travel to Iraq in August of 2003 to advise officials there on interrogating Iraqi detainees. Miller had been briefed on the Pentagon’s guidelines for interrogation, which owed much to Yoo’s green light.
Yoo denies that, noting that several military investigations have found that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not authorized by military policy.
The ACLU also points out that the March, 2003 document refers to other still-secret Justice documents, including one from 2001 that found that the “Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.”
The October 2001 memo was almost certainly meant to provide a legal basis for the National Security Agency’s warrantless wiretapping program, which President Bush launched the same month the memo was issued.
The existence of the March, 2003 document, which was addressed to William Haynes II, then the top lawyer at the Pentagon, has long been known, but its contents had not been disclosed before. Although the Justice Department told the Defense Department to stop relying on it nine months after it was written, the Post’s Dan Eggen and Josh White assert that Yoo’s reasoning provided the legal foundation for the military’s use of harsh interrogation tactics at a crucial time, as captives were pouring into military jails in Afghanistan and as the U.S. was preparing to invade Iraq.
Yoo’s opinions in the months after the 911 attacks have come to be known collectively as the “Yoo Doctrine.” Critics accused him of enabling torture and claiming unlimited powers for the president, charges which Yoo has denied.
In his 2007 book, “The Terror Presidency,” Jack Goldsmith, who took over the Office of Legal Counsel after Yoo departed, writes that the two memos “stood out” for “the unusual lack of care and sobriety in their legal analysis.”
Yoo was born in South Korea, grew up in Philadelphia, and earned degrees from Harvard and Yale Law School. After graduation, he clerked for Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and became a favored legal philosopher in conservative circles. He is now on the faculty of the school of law at the University of California, Berkeley.
UPDATE:
In his first interview since the release of the 2003 memo, Yoo denied to Esquire today that his memo applied to soldiers in Iraq or Afghanistan, or that it authorized the kinds of abuses revealed at Abu Ghraib.“The memo released yesterday does not apply to Iraq. It applied to interrogations of al Qaeda detained at Guantanamo Bay. I don’t [necessarily] agree that the methods did migrate to Iraq, because I don’t know for a fact that they did. The analysis of the memo released yesterday was not to apply to Iraq, and we made clear in other settings that the Geneva Conventions fully applied to the war in Iraq. There was no intention or desire that the memo released yesterday apply to Iraq.”
Related posts on Muckety- Bradbury nomination is torturous – January 26, 2008
- Anti-terrorism policies crafted by ex-court clerks – October 4, 2007
- Did Spitzer get a little help in hanging himself? – March 12, 2008
- Lies led Marion Jones to prison – January 14, 2008
- McCain backed by conservative law profs – February 4, 2008
- Military contractor accused of bribes – August 31, 2007
- Rumsfeld proposes U.S. propaganda agency – January 25, 2008
- Wolfowitz is back, as arms control adviser – January 25, 2008
- The Federalist Society litmus test – November 20, 2007
- High-profile lawyer takes Britney’s case – February 20, 2008
Read related stories: Colleges · Law · News
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Another mogul mulls Newsday bid
A fourth suitor may join the bidding war over Newsday, the suburban tabloid put on the auction block by the financially-beleaguered Tribune Company.
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Among New York media moguls, the 27-year-old may be considered an upstart, but he has deep pockets. In July, 2006, he spent $10 million to buy the money-losing Observer while still getting his MBA at New York University, telling the New York Times that the opportunity to buy a newspaper doesn’t come along very often.
Kushner joins a field of giants who are eyeing the still-profitable tabloid, including billionaire magnate Rupert Murdoch, publisher of the New York Post, real-estate developer Mortimer Zuckerman, owner of the New York Daily News and James Dolan, whose family owns Cablevision.
The magic number sought for Newsday is upwards of $500 million, as Tribune Chairman Sam Zell struggles to stay afloat after his highly leveraged purchase of the company last year. Besides Newsday, Tribune owns the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun, among other newspapers, as well as local television stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team.
Kushner, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, is the scion of a real-estate, banking and insurance empire valued at more than $1 billion built by his father Charles. But the elder Kushner suffered a spectacular fall from grace several years ago. He spent nearly a year in jail after pleading guilty to 18 counts of tax evasion, admitting, among other things, to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister to retaliate for her cooperation with federal investigators.
Jared Kushner is the only one of his parents’ four children to work at the family company, where he is a principal.
Related posts on the Muckety Maps in the news blog- Will the Tribune Company sell Newsday? – March 20, 2008
- Zell takes over Tribune – December 21, 2007
- Newspaper lobbyists may lose a moneymaker – October 20, 2007
- Bill Gates enjoyed biggest payday of 2007 – March 7, 2008
- Bruce Sherman and Hearst-Argyle – August 27, 2007
- Sulzberger dodges bullet – for now – March 18, 2008
- Murdoch’s media machine – June 25, 2007
- Burkle still chasing a newspaper dream – July 9, 2007
- Yucaipa may pay Bill Clinton $20M – January 24, 2008
- Mays family awaits Clear Channel buyout – February 12, 2008
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If Kushner was so smart, why did he buy a newspaper when he could have started one from scratch? Why stick yourself with a teetering brand, when now is the time to invent one’s brand anew in this brave new world of new media, particularly if you have a billion bucks to cover early mistakes?
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Murdoch’s Daughter Throws Obama Bash
Rupert Murdoch’s distaste for New York Sen. Hillary Clinton has often spilled out onto the pages of the New York Post, and into broadcasts on Fox News, both of which he owns.
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Sure, she may want to run her father’s billion-dollar empire some day. But it is likely that Obama’s story has particular resonance for Elisabeth Murdoch, whose first husband, Elkin Kwesi Pianim, is Ghanian, and with whom she has two children.
Since leaving her father’s employ to form her own television production company, Elisabeth Murdoch has established a reputation as a shrewd and strong-willed businesswoman in her own right, winning the sobriquet, Britain’s “Most Powerful Blond” from Tatler Magazine. Her company, Shine Ltd., has made a name for itself by adapting American hits like Project Runway for British audiences. Last month, the company clinched a deal to buy Los Angeles-based Reveille, another independent television production company behind the hit shows The Office and Ugly Betty.
A citizen of both the U.S. and Britain, Murdoch grew up primarily in New York City, where she attended the exclusive Brearley School and then Vassar College, and she continues to maintain close ties to the U.S.
She and her current husband, public relations guru Matthew Freud, the great-grandson of Sigmund Freud, are part of the international glitterati scene in London, which includes a number of wealthy American expatriates, some of whom signed on as co-sponsors of the Notting Hill fundraiser.
That list includes actress Gwyneth Paltrow, David Blood, who runs an investment fund with former Vice President Al Gore, Warner Brothers UK chief Josh Berger and Swedish heiress Cristina M. Stenbeck, a vice president of Investment AB Kinnevike.
Related posts on the Muckety Maps in the news blog- Muckety this! Sigmund Freud to John Lennon – March 29, 2008
- Obama pastor part of rabble-rousing tradition – March 19, 2008
- America’s ruling families – October 29, 2007
- At the Robin Hood Foundation the rich take from the rich – July 17, 2007
- The people behind the X Prize – September 15, 2007
- The inherent Muckety of Times wedding announcements – October 25, 2007
- Hat, rather than debauchery, blocks Horsley entry to US – March 31, 2008
- Why Ray Hunt is so powerful – September 24, 2007
- Legality of Hunt Oil deal “uncertain” – September 28, 2007
- Nugen quietly courts Obama superdelegates – March 18, 2008
This post is tagged with: 2008 Barack Obama presidential campaign, Cristina M. Stenbeck, David Blood, Dynasties, Elisabeth Murdoch, Gwyneth Paltrow, Hillary Clinton, J. Rupert Murdoch, Matthew Freud, News, Politics, Reveille, Shine Ltd., Sigmund FreudRead related stories: Dynasties · News · Politics
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Sam Nunn should share Chevron’s hot seat
Congress grilled oil company executives Tuesday about runaway energy costs and record profits. For Chevron, there was some irony. Former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn, a Georgia Democrat, is a member of Chevron’s board of directors.
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Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is a former Chevron board member.
Testifying in Washington were executives Stephen Simon of Exxon Mobil, John Hofmeister of Shell Oil, Peter Robertson of Chevron, John Lowe of ConocoPhillips, and Robert Malone of BP America.
Nunn, a U.S. senator from 1972 to 1996, joined Chevron’s board in 1997. While in the Senate, he chaired the Armed Services Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
In 2007, Chevron awarded Nunn nearly $345,000 in total compensation, according to an SEC filing Tuesday.
Robertson, vice chairman, had total compensation of about $14.2 million last year, according to Chevron’s annual proxy statement.
None of the other companies appearing in Washington Tuesday has such a direct connection to U.S. lawmakers, but ConocoPhillips does have diplomatic ties. Former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and former ambassador and Assistant Secretary of State J. Stapleton Roy are Conoco directors.
Related posts on the Muckety Maps in the news blog- Blackstone’s Peterson starts doling out a fortune – February 15, 2008
This post is tagged with: BP America, Chevron, Congress grills big oil, ConocoPhillips, Edward Markey, Exxon Mobil, J. Stapleton Roy, John Hofmeister, John Lowe, Peter Robertson, Richard Armitage, Robert Malone, Sam Nunn, Shell Oil, Stephen SimonRead related stories: Business · Politics
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Actors’ unions split on contract talks
After the disruption of the 100-day writers strike, Hollywood is growing uneasy because of the actors’ pending contract negotiations.
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AFTRA represents over 70,000 artists, while SAG boasts almost 120,000 members.
AFTRA made the move to end joint negotiations with SAG. AFTRA president Roberta Reardon explained the organization’s decision to separate from SAG in a letter to AFTRA members posted on their website on March 29.
The split was caused in part by one particular incident, involving the daytime soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful.
Reardon wrote that some of the leaders of SAG have encouraged cast members of The Bold and the Beautiful to decertify AFTRA as their union.
She says, “The people leading this drive apparently believe that decertifying AFTRA would further the goal of having one union for all actors. In fact, it would do the opposite … This situation is sadly not surprising given SAG Hollywood leadership’s ongoing campaign of misinformation to disparage AFTRA.”
Reardon adds, “How could we sit beside SAG at the bargaining table at the same time that its leaders in Hollywood are conspiring to undermine the gains we’ve achieved for all performers?”
Alan Rosenberg, the president of SAG, has called AFTRA’s decision “calculated, cynical, and may serve the interests of their institution, but not its members.”
The unions will negotiate separately with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. Contracts for both expire on June 30.
Both unions are scrambling to be the first to negotiate with the AMPTP.
AFTRA has said it is ready to begin talks as soon as possible, on its own. Rosenburg told the New York Times, “We have to move much more quickly than we wanted to.”
Rosenberg told the Hollywood Reporter, “It’s only right that we’re the ones to go to the table first … They have no movies and three TV shows. It’s not right that they set the standard.”
The Hollywood Reporter also reports that Reardon spoke yesterday with AMPTP president Nick Counter, telling him “AFTRA is taking a sane approach to these negotiations…It’s not about hysteria and emotion, it’s about getting what’s right for the members.”
The unions haven’t separated entirely. CeCe Dubois, Frances Fisher, Maureen Donnelly, Sumi Haru and Suzanne Burkhead currently serve as directors for both AFTRA and SAG.
Related posts on the Muckety Maps in the news blog- Friendships may help bring end to writers strike – February 8, 2008
- Winners and losers swap roles on American Idol – January 15, 2008
This post is tagged with: AFTRA, Alan Rosenberg, Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers, AMPTP, CeCe Dubois, Frances Fisher, Maureen Donnelly, Nicholas Counter, Roberta Reardon, SAG, Screen Actors Guild, Sumi Haru, Suzanne Burkhead, The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, The Bold and the Beautiful, writers strikeRead related stories: Entertainment
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Congressional showdown with televangelists
The aptly-named Creflo Dollar Jr. flies a Lear jet between his million-dollar mansion Atlanta and church services in New York City, where he also keeps a $2.5 million apartment.
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David and Joyce Meyer spent $23,000 on a marble topped toilet, $30,000 for a conference table and $11,219 for a French clock for the Fenton, Mo. headquarters of their not-for-profit an tax-exempt mission headquarters.
Such are the earthly rewards of preaching the so-called prosperity gospel, a controversial iteration of Christianity which holds that God rewards the faithful with material, as well as spiritual wealth.
But now the shepherds themselves are facing a reckoning. Dollar, White and the Meyers are among a half dozen TV evangelists being probed by Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, for possible misuse of donor funds and their tax-exempt status as religious organizations. The other targets are faith healer Benny Hinn of Grapevine, Texas; prosperity preacher Kenneth Copeland of Newark, Texas and Bishop Eddie Long of Lithonia, Ga.
Yesterday was a showdown of sorts – the deadline in the four-month inquiry to voluntarily submit information to Congress. Four of the six ministries indicated they would cooperate, even if they did not hand over the requested material; Dollar and Copeland, however, were defiant in their refusals.
Through an attorney, Dollar, a former board member of Oral Roberts University, called the inquiry an “unprecedented inquiry into the religious activities of a church.”
Copeland, also a former Oral Roberts board member, said through a representative that only the IRS had jurisdiction to question his ministry about finances.
A leader of the prosperity gospel movement, Copeland is close to former GOP presidential contender Mike Huckabee who appeared on his national television show last fall “for six days of frank discussion on the Biblical perspective of character.”
When Huckabee’s campaign struggled for cash, Copeland invited him to attend a national ministers meeting at his west Texas headquarters in January. The candidate, a Southern Baptist minister, raised $111,000 in contributions and another million dollars in pledges there, according to the Tulsa World. Copeland denied the appearance was a political endorsement, saying that Huckabee’s campaign simply rented a room, and Kenneth Copeland Ministries did not make a contribution.
Grassley sent a particularly extensive questionnaire to Copeland, requesting credit card records and information on offshore banking accounts; receipts for planes, and information about whether the ministry used its mineral rights to capitalize a for-profit company. ( The Ft. Worth Star Telegram reports that FAA records show Copeland owns three planes and his ministry has several more).
But it looks as if the Iowa Republican may have to issue subpoenas if he is going to succeed at forcing the church to render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s.
A spokeswoman for Grassley said yesterday that the inquiry is a “step-by-step process,” and no decisions have been made about congressional hearings or subpoenas. Grassley has defended the probe, saying he is investigating whether tax-exempt organizations are accountable to their donors, not their religious practice.
“The allegations involve governing boards that aren’t independent and allow generous salaries and housing allowances and amenities such as private jets and Rolls Royces,” he said when he announced the probe last November. “. . . I have an obligation to donors and the taxpayers to find out more.”
Kenneth Behr, president of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability, an accreditation agency for Christian ministries, called the inquiry “a very big deal,” in an interview with the Tampa Tribune. He said he is not aware of a high-ranking lawmaker ever undertaking such an extensive investigation. “I think he’s picking a fight,” Behr said. “He is not just asking them to come in and talk, he is asking them for everything.”
Related posts on the Muckety Maps in the news blog- Oral Roberts University tries to regroup – November 28, 2007
- Ted Turner softens stance on religion – April 2, 2008
- Tom Cruise bio puts spotlight on Scientology – January 15, 2008
- Blackwater’s protective web – September 22, 2007
- Did Spitzer get a little help in hanging himself? – March 12, 2008
- VECO corruption trial begins – October 23, 2007
- Saying goodbye to a grande dame – August 16, 2007
- A star-studded presidential campaign – January 10, 2008
- Kay Bailey Hutchison protects oil interests – October 29, 2007
- Obama pastor part of rabble-rousing tradition – March 19, 2008
This post is tagged with: Bennie Hinn, Bishop T.D. Jakes, Creflo A. Dollar Jr., David and Joyce Meyer, Eddie Long, Grassley, Kenneth Copeland, Mike Huckabee, News, Paula White, Religion, WealthRead related stories: News · Religion
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Jesus,hear my plea ,take these hypocrites vulgar gains and place them in chains. I don’t know if you have that power or your father “God” but surely “Senator Grassley” and the “Senate Finance Committee” do.
The only people who received prosperity are those “Bible Pimps” by using Jesus and the big Kahuna “God” as their cohorts to steal from these poor blind sheep. They got these bible thumping fools in a suffocating religious illusion so much so, that if these heathens are sent up the river the government better have the army protect them from themselves because they are so mind controlleded the KOOL AID might come flying off the shelf. -
This article tells us much more about Mike Huckabee, our best hope for the future of the country than it does these tv evangelists. If Mike Huckabee wanted riches and fame, he could certainly have it. He is the most articulate, best motivator, most charismatic figure out there now for conservatives. He could certainly land a big time tv spot and live comfortably much like Gore, basking in the limelight. But Huckabee is running on principles and the sincere desire to make a better country for the future generations. He wants to make a difference and his religious foundation is important only in that it grounds him, making him consistent, strong, calm and collected. Conventional wisdom would have said that Huckabee should have dropped out, like Romney when he realized the odds were not in his favor. But Huckabee was running for the people who supported him and the principles he believed in more than the favor of the GOP elite. THAT is the kind of president we need and deserve!!! As Huckabee often says, “he would rather lose an election than lose the principles that got him into politics in the first place”. May we only hope and PRAY we have another chance to put this man in the White House!!
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Kansas Jayhawks have big
Advice to anyone who wants to become a successful (and rich) men’s college basketball coach: Connect to Kansas.
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And their Kansas influences can be stretched back rather easily to the invention of basketball itself.
But for starters, here are the current Kansas connections:
The first is obvious, as Kansas is one the four teams left.
It’s coached by Bill Self who took over the team in 2003, replacing Roy Williams, who had coached at Kansas for 15 seasons.
Williams left Kansas for the University of North Carolina, which is also one of the Final Four teams.
So while Self and Williams have the strongest links to Kansas, John Calipari, the coach of the University of Memphis, another one of the four teams, also has a tie to the school in Lawrence, Kansas. He was an assistant coach there from 1982 to 1985.
Coincidentally, when Calipari left in 1985 to go to the University of Pittsburgh as an assistant coach, his assistant’s position at Kansas was taken over by Self.
The fourth Final Four coach, Ben Howland of UCLA, doesn’t have a Kansas line on his resume.
However, he was at Pittsburgh after Calipari left, serving as the head coach from 1999 to 2003 before he departed for UCLA.
The Kansas connection can be traced in another way, by looking at the career and influence of Dean Smith, the North Carolina coach from 1961 to 1997.
Born in Kansas, Smith played for the University of Kansas in the early 1950s.
His coach was Phog Allen, who in turn, had been coached at Kansas by James Naismith, the inventor of basketball in 1891.
Consequently, anyone who played for Smith or coached with him can claim to be only two steps removed from basketball’s origins.
Williams can cite a double influence in this regard as he played junior varsity basketball at North Carolina during the time Smith was coaching there.
He also was an assistant coach for Smith from 1978 to 1988 before he went to Kansas.
There’s another connector, as well – Larry Brown, the much-traveled college and professional basketball coach.
Brown played for Smith at North Carolina and was briefly an assistant coach for him, as well.
Brown was later the head coach at Kansas from 1983 to 1988. Both Self and Calipari served as his assistants.
Calipari was also an assistant under Brown during the 1999-2000 season when Brown coached the professional Philadelphia 76ers.
And though they didn’t overlap, Brown and Howland have this in common: They’ve both coached UCLA.
Related posts on the Muckety Maps in the news blog- Torre should have looked over the fence – November 3, 2007
- Knoblauch talks to Congress – February 3, 2008
- Jane Mendillo taking charge of Harvard endowment – March 29, 2008
- Andre Agassi Foundation names Miller CEO – January 16, 2008
- Cablevision’s James Dolan has string of losses – October 26, 2007
- Agassi & Graf: A new business empire – November 24, 2007
- Out of the park and into politics – October 13, 2007
- Lies led Marion Jones to prison – January 14, 2008
- Roger Clemens sues former trainer – January 7, 2008
- Candidates and baseball owners cover political bases – October 10, 2007
This post is tagged with: basketball, Ben Howland, Bill Self, Colleges, Dean Smith, Final Four, James Naismith, Jayhawks, John Calipari, NCAA, Phog Allen, Sports, UCLA, University of Kansas, University of Memphis, University of North CarolinaRead related stories: Colleges · Sports
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Hat, rather than debauchery, blocks Horsley entry to US
Hats off to Sebastian Horsley, the British writer and self-described “dandy,” who may have been barred from the U.S. for wearing a hat.
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That’s believable, as Horsley has fashioned a career out of chronicling his own enthusiastic (former, he says) use of drugs.
He’s also eagerly open about his time as a male escort and his frequenting of prostitutes. Indeed, he claims to have spent the equivalent of $200,000 in purchasing sex from 1,000 prostitutes.
He also insists his memoir is true, which, if so, would separate it from a recent line of true memoirs that have proven to be false.
“I’m not a politician, I’m an artist,” Horsley told the New York Times a day after his eviction. “Depravity is part of the job description.”
But the Times reported Sunday that Horsley is now saying that the real reason for his being sent home after landing at Newark International Airport was his trademark stovepipe hat.
“They asked my girlfriend, ‘Why is he wearing that hat?’” he told Times staffer David Colman. “And she told them, ‘Because it wouldn’t fit in his suitcase.’”
It was downhill from there. After eight hours of questioning, Horsley was gone.
Expulsion on moral grounds from the land of Eliot Spitzer and Larry Craig is an author’s dream if his book, Dandy in the Underworld: an Authorized Autobiography, is now available in the U.S. in paperback and in need of promotion.
Americans who won’t be able to see Horsley and his hat on book tour, can go to his MySpace.com page for blurbs on the volume that London’s Sunday Times calls, “One of the strangest, funniest and most revolting memoirs ever written.”
Not surprisingly, Horsley uses his MySpace page to rant about his forced departure from Newark.
Sample: “God Bless America, land of the free, but sadly not home of the depraved.”
On his own behalf, he also links to a supportive London Independent editorial. It suggests that Horsley, who once had himself crucified in the Philippines for no apparent reason, could have had better timing, as he came to American during Easter week.
“Although he has no religious pretensions other than ardent self-worship – far from dying for the sins of others, he lives for his own – such behavior tends to go down rather badly in America, particularly among immigration officials,” the Independent wrote.
Horsley, 45, was born to wealth and family dysfunction.
His father, the late Nicholas Horsley, was the millionaire chairman of England’s Northern Foods.
“A self-confessed champagne socialist, he enjoyed gambling and drinking and parties,” The London Times wrote upon Nicholas Horsley’s death in 2004.
In an interview with The Sunday Times last year, Nicholas Horsley’s first wife, Valerie, said that she and her husband drank continually, even during her pregnancies.
“I was not a great mother to Sebastian,” she said. “I’m not being hard on myself, or even reveling in guilt. It’s just true.”
Sebastian’s brother, Jake Horsley, is a film critic.
Related posts on the Muckety Maps in the news blog- The people behind the X Prize – September 15, 2007
- Italian murder draws worldwide attention – January 12, 2008
- Benazir Bhutto’s American support network – December 31, 2007
- Congressional showdown with televangelists – April 1, 2008
- Friendships may help bring end to writers strike – February 8, 2008
- Spitzer’s fate lies with opposing legal teams – March 16, 2008
- Murdoch’s Daughter Throws Obama Bash – April 2, 2008
- Environmental alliance has big hitters and big bucks – October 14, 2007
- Paterson will become New York’s first black governor – March 12, 2008
- Gambino family caught in mob sweep – February 7, 2008
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