4.19.10: Responsibility, authority, and accountability

Responsibility, authority, and accountability

Looking northwest across Central Park from 72nd Street and Fifth Avenue. 3:20 PM. Photo: JH.

April 19, 2010. Beautiful Spring weekend in New York, but often overcast, with chilly winds near the river, burning many of the tulip petals planted around the trees on Gracie Square.

Looking north from Fifth Avenue at 73rd Street (following the Greek parade). 5:30 PM.

Looking north from East End Avenue at 83rd Street, 7:30 PM.

After an early dinner at Swifty's last night, I couldn't resist getting a shot of the shop windows next door -- Lexington Gardens (flowers) and John Rosselli (table setting).

“There comes a point in everybody’s life where responsibility, authority and accountability, intercept.”

Those words were said to me about twenty years ago in an interview I was doing with a man named Tex McCrary. Tex, who was in his late 70s then, had had a long and successful career as a public relations executive and radio personality. He and his wife, Jinx Falkenberg, were famous in America of the 1940s and 1950s as “Tex and Jinx” on morning WOR radio show “Hi Jinx.”

Tex made the remark in reference to something he was saying about the Presidency of George H.W. Bush, who was at that time going to be running for re-election. Tex, who was always a Republican and a very early supporter and promoter of Eisenhower for President, was not optimistic about Bush’s chance for re-election.

I’ve thought about that particular quote (which Tex McCrary made very offhandedly over a lunch at “21”) many times in relationship to my own life and of the lives around me.


	John Paulson

I thought of it again over the weekend when so much of the talk that has been burning up the phone lines has been about Goldman Sachs. And John Paulson. And Wall Street in general.

I was talking recently with a friend of mine who was seriously hurt financially by these past two years. He’s a guy who’s also been in the investment business (very successfully) for a long time. When things around him started to collapse, like Bear and then Lehman and then Merrill, and AIG, and WaMu, etc., even he was shocked by the information that was surfacing.

Now two years later, still trying to piece it all together for himself, “to make sense of it,” he told me he discovered a lot of the people in charge, running these big pools of money were “actually stupid.” He was still dumfounded to have realized this. He repeated the words, as if let it sink in: “actually stupid.”

The situation is beginning to look more and more like we’re further and further from cleaning up after this credit conflagration which has gripped this country (and the world) for the past decade and a half. It’s beginning to look like The Unknown is upon us. The Icelandic volcano could almost be seen as God’s Metaphor. Someone told me over the weekend about a major Wall Street figure who had recently hired nine bodyguards to protect him and his family. From what, we are left to wonder.

In the midst of this, the NYSD’s very own financial guru and blossoming novelist – also financially related, Alexandra Lebenthal, was inspired over the weekend to set her thoughts about it all down on paper in a short roman a clef about the psychology of the personality that has been driving the behemoth. It’s today’s Social History.

Alexandra comes to the subject genetically, and is the third generation – founded by her grandmother – in the financial advisory business.

Coincidentally, when she sent in the photos she wanted to illustrate her piece, she unknowingly chose a house that belongs to Madoff investor, Walter Noel, on Lake Agawam in Southampton.

Coincidentally, and completely unbeknownst to Alexandra: right next door to the Noel property is the estate of John Paulson.

Katherine Heigl was honored by the ASPCA this past Thursday night at their 13th Annual Bergh Ball fundraising gala at the Plaza. Miss Heigl is an animal-lover and lives with her husband her daughter and seven dogs. Rescued.

Spirit the Dog.

Angelica Compagno's clutch.

I went to this ball last year and came home with a new dog, the 8- or 9-year-old Jenny. Jenny was a very quiet, timid shih-tzu who obviously had been kept either caged or isolated from everybody and everything. Almost a year later in her new home, she's got used to a cage-less home life with other dogs and her personality has blossomed with her freedom. Watching that transformation is the most inspiring gift an adopted pet can bring into your life.

Ed Sayres (President of the ASPCA), Katherine Heigl, Isaac Mizrahi, and Philly the Dog

Amy Cosman and Steve Tanger

Anisha Lakhani, Kimberly Guilfoyle, and Maggie Rizer

Anne Baker, Melissa Berkelhammer, and Lauren Mason

Angelica Compagno and Liliana Cavendish

Arnold Rosenshein and Cornelia Bregman

Drayton Wyatt Harris, Liz Walker, and Jay Sullivan

Katherine Heigl

Adam Maher and Jeff Pfeifle

Cena Hackler Jackson

Anthony Barwacz and Meredith Belden

Chele Chiavacci and Jonathan Farkas

Adam Zucker and Arielle Greenberg

Allison Aston and Alexandra Lind Rose

Benjamin and Linda Lambert

Barbara Regna, Peter Regna, and Stephanie Kamfar

Betsey Ruprecht and Melanie Wambold

Cynthia and Dan Lufkin

Diane Passage

Elke Gazzara, Jean Shafiroff, and Margo Langenberg

Chuck and Ellen Scarborough

Kimberly Ovitz, Randy Levine, and Mindy Levine

Francine LeFrak and Rick Friedberg

Hunt Slonem, Margo McNabb Nederlander, and Hugh Hildesley

Jay Aston, Melanie Fascitelli, John Auerbach, and Andrew Black

Julie Kasle and Michael Gilbane

Claudia and William Walters

Denise Wohl

EdMundo Huerta and Carolina Portago

Jonathan and Somers Farkas

Joanna Baker, Peter de Neufville, and Phaedra Chrousos

Jennifer Kennedy and Michelle Gradin

Kurt Wolfgruber and Kim White

Jaimee and Matt Bloom

Margo McNabb Nederlander and Melanie Wambold

Laura Barket and Michael the Dog

Meredith Belden

Lucy and Phil Suarez

Marcia Levine and Pierre Levai

Jay Sullivan and Sara Gilbane Sullivan

Kris Zdyb and Melissa Foss

Martin and Mary Puris

Melissa and Chappy Morris

Martin and Jean Shafiroff

Mia McDonald and Angelica Compagno

Marsha Perelman

Hoyle Jones

Raymond and Amy Cosman

Mindy Levine and Steve Roth

Nancy Corzine and Richard Kirschenbaum

Ron Delsener and Linda Lambert

Sydney Oliver and Steve Tanger

Tamie Peters Thomas and Rich Thomas

SOFA New York 2010 opened this past Thursday night at the Park Avenue Armory. the Sculpture Objects & Functional Art fair is the nation's premier fair for contemporary decorative arts and design and runs through today, April 19.