State of the Union Dinner with One Hundred New Yorkers

State of the Union Dinner with One Hundred New Yorkers

Looking north along 8th Avenue from 13th street. 8:30 PM.

Last night in Manhattan. Celerie Kemble, Boykin Curry, Justin Smith and the Atlantic magazine hosted their annual “State of the Union Dinner with One Hundred New Yorkers” to watch and discuss President Bush’s State of the Union Address and a double celebration for the Re-Opening of the Plaza Hotel Ballroom and the Atlantic’s 150th anniversary.

First: the Plaza, which as the world must know by now, has been undergoing an enormous renovation and refurbishment turning much of it into very expensive (six and seven figure) condominiums along with a (smaller) hotel facility and public rooms, has been closed to the public for more than two and a half years.

The main entrance is still not ready for use, nor is the Central Park South Entrance We made our way through an entrance on West 58th Street that I don’t recall ever using. To get to the ballroom, there were three flights of the same marble staircase that was there before but with much of the reception rooms still closed off. However, on the third floor where the main ballroom was and is still located, everything was ready for us.

Nothing, it appeared, has been changed – which New Yorkers will be thankful for. The only thing that was different was seeing the ballroom occupied by only two long tables (accommodating fifty people each), accentuating the great size of the ballroom which retains its ivory and gilt décor, all of which looked very fresh.


Boykin and Celerie

This event attracts a lot of heady media and local citizenry, many of whom are associated in one way or another with politics or political causes. Recent participants have included Walter Cronkite, Governor Bill Weld, Governor Gaston Caperton, David Rockefeller Jr, Tina Brown, Harry Evans, Beverly Sills, Pete Peterson, Roger Hertog, Freddie Ferrer, Mayor Dinkins, Georgette Mosbacher, Andy Borowitz, President Judith Shapiro, Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, Congressman Herman Badillo, Senator Bob Kerrey, Mayor Cory Booker, Dick Gilder, Alan Patricof, Rich Lowry, Moby, and others. Several of the above mentioned were also present last night.

At one end of the room suspended in front of the orchestra stage was a large video screen. James Fallows, the Atlantic’s editor and once a State of the Union speechwriter (with Jimmy Carter) took the podium, talked about the different State of the Union addresses over the years, and then he explained the evening: we’d eat, then watch the SOU speech and then be asked some questions, as a group.

President Bush’s speech last night was significant because it would be the last State of the Union speech that he would give in his Presidency. Fallows pointed out others like that, such as the famous Eisenhower farewell speech which was not only surprising poetic in content and wording but also prescient (for the few who might noticed and were convinced) where he warned about the threat of the “military-industrial complex” — a term he coined for his speech.

Last night's "State of the Union Dinner with One Hundred New Yorkers” at the newly re-opened Plaza Hotel Ballroom.

Fallows talked about the various lengths of these speeches. From George Washington whose first SOU speech was a little more than a thousand words, the speeches grew longer and longer – Theodore Roosevelts got up to almost 30,000 words at times and Jimmy Carter got up to 33,000 words on one of his. Bill Clinton, surprisingly never went over 7500 words and George W. Bush gave his longest one last night: 5760 words.

Fallows also mentioned final speeches which were not designed as “farewell” speeches per se, and had not bene anticipated as such – such as Nixon’s in ’73, and Lyndon Johnson’s in ’68, or John F. Kennedy’s in ’63, or the first George Bush’s in 1992.


	James Fallows

The discussion after the Bush SOU speech was not very long. Most in the room (and it was definitely a bi-partisan group) were neither moved or inspired. In fact, it seemed to some like a mid-term SOU speech rather than a farewell. Many had left the room before it was finished.

It was a great New York turnout: Harry Evans and Tina Brown were there again last night. As was Andy Borowitz. Also: Philip Howard, Bob Colacello, Susan Hess, Steve and Cathy Graham, Boykin Curry’s parents Ravenal and Beth Curry; Richard Meier, Frederic Fekkai, Jonathan Cramer and Julia Stiles, Gil Friesen, Margaret Carlson, Jolie Hunt, Peggy Siegal, Ross Bleckner and Eric Freeman, Steve Adler and Lisa Grunwald, Ross Bleckner and Eric Freeman, Billy Wright, Mary and David Boies, Mayor Cory Booker and Bari Mattes, John Catsimatidis, Griffin Dunne and Anna Bingemann, designer Marc Ecko, Harold Ford, Jeff Greenfield, Steve Guttenberg, Mariska Hargitay and Peter Herman, former Congressman Rick Lazio, Jeff and Ashley McDermott, Peter Melhado, Sam Newhouse Jr. and Ellen Breslow-Newhouse, Alan and Susan Patricof, Betsy Perry, Richard Johnson of Page Six, Shelley and David Mortimer, Linda and Mort Janklow, Michael Rockefeller, Connie and Ted Roosevelt V, Charlie Rose, Jamie Rubin George Rush, Alexandra Kerry, Rebecca and Daniel MacDonald, Patrick McMullan, Georgette Mosbacher, Chuck Scarborough, Doug Schoen and Jennifer DePalo, Samantha Topping, Bronson VanWyck and Andrew Fry, Jacob Weisberg, Serena Torrey, Joe Versace, Jon Friedman and many many more who escaped my eye or ear.

A very special New York event in many ways.

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