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A
family plays in the snow in a parking lot on 28th and Park Avenue
South. 2:00 PM.
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The
Americans found Saddam Hussein this past Saturday
hiding in a hole in the ground outside his hometown of Tikrit.
The despot who ruled his people with a monstrous iron fist for
more than three decades came to an end every bit as desperate,
pathetic and humiliating as his foes, victims and enemies could
have wished for him. I thought of Hitler in his elaborate bunker
taking cyanide, as the Allied forces were making their way to
his door, in contrast to Saddam cowering in a makeshift dirt
hideout with a couple of bodyguards, a box of American currency,
two rifles and vermin who shared the space with him.
I was awakened by a phone call from a friend: Turn
on CNN, they’ve caught Saddam! Outside my windows
a driving snow was covering the streets and sidewalks.
I turned on CNN. After an hour of repetitive videos of
the medic examining Saddam's teeth, I turned it off.
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The
Christmas tree and the duo of harp and violin at
Bill Reilly's home
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The stormy snow
came down until about two-thirty when it stopped all together.
An hour later the rains came, washing away all of the snow.
Bill Reilly, the media tycoon who once ran MacMillan Publishers and
later Primedia and walked away from both ventures a centimillionaire,
held his annual holiday cocktail party last night at his East Side
mansion overlooking the East River. The house, which in another incarnation
in the 1950s when Rosita Winston entertained the
international smart set at her table, was given a spectacular makeover
by Mr. Reilly.
On this
night, with the beautiful Christmas tree and the duo of harp and
violin serenading the room with Chopin, Brahms and Schumann, with
the handsome young waiters in crisp white serving jackets passing
the canapés and champagne, and the nearby crackling of the
wood burning in the fireplace, it was like a scene from House & Garden’s
holiday issue: How New Yorkers live (when they’re fabulously
rich).
I met a man named Dave Richardson who does theatre reviews
on WOR. We talked about the grind of reviewing shows (my description,
not his). During the season most critics review seven, eight times
a week. That’s a lot of reviewing and it must be exhausting.
I asked him about some shows I’d heard about but hadn’t
seen. “Avenue Q.” Brilliant. “Taboo” which
was panned by most critics. He loved it and is going back to see
it again. His daughter had already turned him on to Boy George’s
music. The music, the performances, according to Mr. Richardson,
are brilliant. I asked him why it got such bad reviews. He said Clive
Barnes pointed it out at the end of his review of the show: Rosie
O’Donnell. Ms. O’Donnell, who a few years ago
was regarded far and wide with great public affection has somehow
managed to transform that public regard into alienation, at least
with the press.
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Joy
Ingham and Bill Reilly
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After
my conversation with Mr. Richardson, I turned to
a conversation with a well-known New York newsman discussing the
fates of Lord Black and Martha Stewart et
al. This man believes both parties may see jail time. Lord Black
he believed would see his huge fortune reduced to only 30 million
or so. Some “only” was all I could think. Both parties,
he added, treated the press with a supercilious attitude. Never
a good idea when you might be tried by a jury of your peers. He
said. Even if they’re not guilty? Even if they’re not
Rosie O’Donnell. Or Saddam.
Further media mumbo: The terrible side effects
of cell-phone-mania. Or: take your meds and stay off
the cell phone. A few months ago out amongst
the rarefied enclaves of the Hamptons one weekend night,
a very high profile media exec and his wife went to a
very hot-invite dinner of another high profile couple.
On the way to the party, the media exec and wife dropped
their child off for a sleep-over at the home of another
very prominent couple, the husband of which was away,
but the wife of which was also going to the same hot-invite
dinner. You still with me? Hope so, because now it gets
good.
Party over, the exec and his wife depart for
their house. The missus, however, gets on her cell to
call the house where their child is having a sleepover
to check on him. She gets the answering machine. Evidently
the hostess (also at the party, remember?) hadn’t
got home yet herself and no one was picking up. So the
exec wife (on her cell) leaves a brief message inquiring
about her child. Then she flip-closes her cell, forgetting — as
often happens with many of us and our cells — that
she hadn’t ended the call.
Then she proceeds to discuss
with her husband the hot-invite dinner party they’d
just left. And she wastes no
time laying waste on each and every guest, as well as
the host and hostess and a number of others in their
rarefied circle. Dish Dish Dish. Bigtime. Everybody she
thinks is a bitch and bastard and see-you-next-Tuesday
gets blown out of the water by the high profile exec’s
wife as she and hubby are driving home. But
then she stops long enough to realize that
she hadn’t turned off her cell and every single,
solitary, nasty-assed evisceration that passed through
her lips was still being recorded on the answering machine
of the woman at whose house their son was having a sleep
over. Get it?
So. What to do. Meanwhile, the woman herself gets home,
checks her answering machine and ... hears every single, solitary,
nasty-assed evisceration that passed through the lips of the mother
of the child who is having a sleep over in her house.
Shocked by the take-no-prisoners venom and vehemence, she
is about to go to bed when the phone rings. It’s the high profile
exec (husband of the wife with the mouth). He explains to the woman
with the answering machine that his wife had left a message, had
forgot to turn off her cell when she finished the call, and so as
a result ... there were things recorded on the answering machine
not meant for her ears, so would she just DELETE the message?
The woman, still stunned by what she’d heard said (about all
her friends) on her answering machine, agreed to DELETE it. So she
goes back downstairs to the machine, only to find who should be standing
there in her kitchen ... but the high profile exec! She screams,
realizing he’d actually just called her from inside her own
house.
“Is that your answering machine?” he
asked. She nodded. Whereupon he went over
to it and pressed the delete button. Mission accomplished,
he left (I don’t know if he took his child with
him).
By the following day, cell phones and old-fashioned bellphones were
ringing all over those rarefied enclaves in the Hamptons. The answering
machine lady, both shocked and angered, reported her experience and
what she’d heard to all those “friends” who'd been
eviscerated by the high profile exec’s wife.
And how did they take what they’d heard said about themselves?
Shocked and outraged, yes. And oddly understanding: the consensus
was that the exec’s wife, already regarded as problematic by
her peers, hadn’t been taking her “meds” lately
and just went out of control.
So everything’s back to air-kisses and Saturday night dinner
parties amongst the high profiled ones, including the media exec
and the wife who is presumably back on meds and off her cell. Although
they say, among the cognoscenti, that the exec’s profile has
begun to lose its high. |
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