My Rental! My Sublet! My Rental! My Sublet! (II)

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

More slop on the Faye Dunaway rent-control rumpus in Manhattan housing court:

Actress Says She Can’t Be Evicted Because She Moved Out

The day after court records revealed that Faye Dunaway would be joining the masses of New Yorkers braving housing court for a landlord-tenant showdown, it was time for the Oscar-winning actress to share her side of the story.

Ms. Dunaway, a Florida native, spoke with the inflection of a trained actor and the imperiousness of a seasoned celebrity as she staunchly denied that the landlord of the Upper East Side apartment that she began renting in 1995 had ordered her to leave.

“I have not been evicted,” she said in one of three voice mail messages for a reporter with The New York Times in response to phone messages and a Times article on Wednesday about a lawsuit seeking to evict her from a rent-stabilized apartment. “I have chosen to leave because of the state of the apartment, and also because I am spending less and less time in New York.”

So, to review:

Ms. Dunaway is not being evicted from an East 78th Street tenement building she does not live in.

Still unresolved: Whether Ms. Dunaway’s son, Liam Dunaway O’Neill, is a subtenant in the apartment, as the suit alleges according to a previous Times piece.

Act III, no doubt, soon to follow.

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Dr. Ads Presents ‘The Baggies’

Posted on August 5, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

From the Wayback Machine:

The good doctor hands out the least-coveted awards in the ad business.

(Originally posted on SneakADtack.com)

 

 

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Mitt Romney’s ‘Secret Campaign Cash’

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

NBC News (via Mediaite) is reporting that a Boston-based “mystery company” gave a pro-Romney political committee a drive-by $1 million donation, then disappeared.

A mystery company that pumped $1 million into a political committee backing Mitt Romney has been dissolved just months after it was formed, leaving few clues as to who was behind one of the biggest contributions yet of the 2012 presidential campaign.

The existence of the million-dollar donation — as gleaned from campaign and corporate records obtained by NBC News — provides a vivid example of how secret campaign cash is being funneled in ever more circuitous ways into the political system.

The company, W Spann LLC, was formed in March by a Boston lawyer who specializes in estate tax planning for “high net worth individuals,” according to corporate records and the lawyer’s bio on her firm’s website.

The Boston lawyer is Cameron Casey of Ropes & Gray. The political committee is Restore Our Future, a “super-PAC” that, according to NBC, “[lists] its address as being in a midtown Manhattan office building that has no record of such a tenant.”

More mystery!

You’ll find Restore Our Future’s website here, although it’s just a tarted-up CONTRIBUTE button.

The whole scheme is right in keeping with Romney’s other PAC-Man games, like using state-level political action committees (which can accept unlimited contributions) to funnel money to his national PAC (Mother Jones explainer here).

It’s not just NBC reporting this story – it’s popping all over the place. Ropes & Gray might want to batten down the hatches.

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Olbermann & Rich: Rupert Payboch

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

The Global Worldwide Headquarters of Campaign Outsider has been swamped with compare-and-contrast exercises lately (see here and here and here).

Here’s another one: Keith Olbermann (in The Guardian) and Frank Rich (in New York) whacking their former employer Rupert Murdoch.

Rich worked as a film critic for the New York Post in the mid-’70s, shortly after Murdoch had purchased/rescued the tabloid. But Murdoch’s “corruption had seeped quickly even into my own soft-news beat. I left the Post soon after a newly installed Murdoch underling informed me that I had to ‘take the views of our advertisers into consideration’ when reviewing movies.”

Rich’s current view in his link-rich New York piece:

The real transgressions of the Murdoch empire are not its outré partisanship, its tabloid sleaze, its Washington lobbying, or even what liberals most love to hate, the bogus “fair and balanced” propaganda masquerading as journalism at Fox News. In fact, these misdemeanors are red herrings—distractions from the real News Corp. corruption that now threatens to bring down its management and radically reconfigure and reduce its international corporate footprint. The bigger story is this: An otherwise archetypal media colossus, with apolitical TV shows (American Idol), movies (Avatar), and cable channels (FX) like any other, is controlled by a family (and its tight coterie of made men and women, exemplified by the recently departed Rebekah Brooks) that countenances the intimidation and silencing of politicians, regulators, competitors, journalists, and even ordinary citizens to maximize its profits and power and to punish perceived corporate, political, and personal enemies.

Cue current Current TV savior and Murdoch arch-nemesis Keith Olbermann, whose pique-rich Guardian piece details his hiring – and firing – from Fox Sports by the House of Murdoch ten years ago after he aired a critical report on the Murdoch-owned Los Angeles Dodgers:

Nobody ever offered any explanation … that is, until seven years later, when Rupert Murdoch claimed personal responsibility for firing me. From my vantage point, the most important fact remains that, after my exit, Rupert had to keep paying me not to have to work for him: $800,000 over the next eight months.

It was the best job I ever had.

Optimal Keith Olbermann: Not on the air.

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Chewing The Scenery So Hard They Need To Floss

Posted on August 4, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

From Terry Teachout’s About Last Night blog (via ArtsJournal):

TT: Just because

Charles Laughton, Marlene Dietrich, Tyrone Power, and Elsa Lanchester in the denouement of Witness for the Prosecution, Billy Wilder’s film version of Agatha Christie’s play:

The hardworking staff loves this movie, despite its obvious flaws (Tyrone Power should have been shot in the first reel – no jury in the world would have convicted).

But Charles Laughton is great, and Elsa Lanchester is even greater.

Thanks, Terry. Just because.

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It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Albert Haynesworth Edition II)

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Today brings another compare and contrast exercise regarding the questionable character of new Patriot Albert Haynesworth (who’ll go on trial in Washington, D.C. later this month on a sexual abuse charge), and questionable judgment of the team in acquiring him.

Bob Ryan’s Boston Globe column recounts Haynesworth’s all-the-right-answers performance in front of the press yesterday. But the jury’s still out for Ryan:

It all sounded very nice, and it almost made us forget there was a reason the Redskins were so happy to rid themselves of such an immense talent and why he was available for a paltry fifth-round draft choice. It was entirely predictable that many would invoke the name “Myra Kraft,’’ as in, “Myra Kraft would never have stood for this.’’

And even if you choose not to go that far, the fact remains that when a man has such an extreme history of professional deviance within a team structure and utter lawlessness in his down time (his high-speed driving habits have led to a man being paralyzed), he becomes a very hard man to root for.

But this is an opportunity for Albert Haynesworth to reform himself. This man could lead them to a Super Bowl, or he could become a colossal embarrassment.

Check back in a year.

By contrast, Karen Guregian’s Boston Herald column pretty much gives Haynesworth a pass. And when she does add a critical word, it’s more about his on-field transgressions than his off-field ones:

Now, it should be noted this is the same man who lied down and took a powder when the Redskins asked him to switch from a 4-3 to a 3-4.

This is the same man who quit on his team when things didn’t go his way, and he didn’t get along with the coach. And we haven’t even discussed the off-field issues,which are troubling to say the least. But right here and right now, he’s willing to do whatever is asked.

“Troubling to say the least”? Geez, that’s kind of troubling.

To say the least.

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It’s Good To Live In A Two-Daily Town (Albert Haynesworth Edition)

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Compare and contrast in clear idiomatic English:

Boston Herald Inside Track item on freshly minted New England Patriot Albert Haynesworth:

NBC football analyst Cris Collinsworth likens the New England Patriots [team stats]’ re-education of new tackle and NFL badboy Albert Haynesworth to “The Taming of the Shrew!”

The “Sunday Night Football” host, during a chat with TV critics in La-La the other day, said Fat Albert, who bears little resemblance to Shakespeare’s disobedient wife, Katherina, is an “interesting character” and a “unique talent” who, he believes, will fall in line with the Belichick Drill.

“When I was a kid there was a play called ‘The Taming of the Shrew’ that I had to watch,” he said. “This will be a little bit of ‘Taming of the Shrew.’ Let’s see how it works out.”

There’s small choice in rotten apples, Cris …

Boston Globe columnist Joan Vennochi’s piece on Albert Haynesworth:

Patriots’ bad call

Is the team missing Myra Kraft’s moral compass?

IT DIDN’T take long for the New England Patriots to walk away from Myra Kraft’s legacy.

The wife of New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft – who died of cancer on July 20 – embraced a quaint idea. She believed that character, integrity, and respect for women are more important than yards gained on a football field.

Back in 1996, Myra Kraft’s values led her husband to reverse a decision to draft a University of Nebraska lineman who had been convicted of sexual assault. At the time, the Patriots’ change of heart regarding Christian Peter sent a strong message about what mattered to the organization.

Fast forward to 2011. In the same month that Myra Kraft was lovingly memorialized by family, friends, and assorted Patriots, Coach Bill Belichick began the process of acquiring Albert Haynesworth, a player with an upcoming trial date for a misdemeanor sexual assault charge. That allegation is just the tip of a very large and ugly iceberg.

Much uglier in the Globe, as it turns out.

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My Rental! My Sublet! My Rental! My Sublet!

Posted on August 3, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

New York rent control politics are even more vicious than academic (because the stakes are so small) politics.

In the Big Town, it’s only the apartments that are small.

Latest case in point (via the New York Times):

For Faye Dunaway, Real-Life Role in Housing Court

She was a brazen bank robber in “Bonnie and Clyde,” the mysterious Evelyn Mulwray in “Chinatown“ and a scheming television executive in “Network,” for which she won an Oscar.

Now Faye Dunaway is a defendant in case No. 76667/11 in Manhattan housing court, just another rent-stabilized tenant facing eviction.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, her landlord claims that Ms. Dunaway, who pays $1,048.72 a month for a one-bedroom walk-up apartment in a century-old tenement building on East 78th Street, does not actually live there, but rather lives in California. The suit also names her son, Liam Dunaway O’Neill, whose father is the photographer Terry O’Neill, as a subtenant in the apartment.

Dunaway apparently resides in West Hollywood, but “does not appear to be living glamorously. The home in California is a nice but not flashy house on which she still carries a mortgage, according to the lawsuit. Her car is a 2007 Toyota Corolla.”

Many more dishy details in the Times piece. One question:

Maybe she should move to Chinatown?

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Bob Ryan v. Jason Gay On Pats v. Jets

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

Compare and contrast in clear idiomatic English:

Bob Ryan’s Boston Globe column on the New England Patriots-New York Jets rivalry:

It rivals anything we’ve seen

Excerpt:

Now while we can’t see Coach Bill and Regal Rex wrestling at the 50 either before or after a game, we know there is a genuine feeling of enmity between the two organizations that dates from the instant Bill Parcells switched sides to set off what he laughingly labeled “The Border War.’’ Oh, and he took Curtis Martin with him.

Bill Belichick turned up the flame the day he decided he really didn’t want to be the “HC of the NYJ.’’ And here are two words for you: “Eric’’ and “Mangini.’’ Can’t forget Mo Lewis blasting Drew Bledsoe, which turned out to be a pivotal day in both Patriots and NFL history.

But nothing has so enhanced the rivalry as the presence of Rex Ryan, who established his position by declaring that he had not come to New York in order to kiss Coach Bill’s rings. Meanwhile, though everyone had a good yuk with the 45-3 regular-season triumph last December, which team played longer in each of the last two years? And which team has not won a playoff game since New York (Giants) 17, New England 14 in Super Bowl XLII?

Jason Gay’s Wall Street Journal column on  the Pats-Jets rivalry:

The Patriots and Jets Will Save Your Soul

Excerpt:

The Patriots, an idyllic facility in the woods of Foxborough, Mass., are pro football’s classiest image rehabilitation center, having made a Super Bowl champion out of the dyspeptic running back Corey Dillon and transformed me-first receiver Randy Moss into an unselfish sensation (until Cranky Randy resurfaced, and he was catapulted to Minnesota.) . . .

When you hear a sports analyst discuss the Patriots, they almost always use an affected, hushed tone, the way an unctuous dinner guest does when whispering about Harvard, the Vineyard, or El Bulli. It’s effusive reverence for a team that has won three Super Bowls, but none since 2004, and got a giant playoff wedgie from Rex Ryan last January.

Don’t miss Gay’s Charlie Sheen reference, or his description of Bill Belichick as “the taciturn Kenobi in a hoodie.”

Great fun, both pieces.

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Let The $4 Billion Rumpus Begin! (Rick Perry Edition)

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Campaign Outsider

There’s so much money pouring into the 2012 presidential campaign, ads are now running for candidates who haven’t even entered the race.

Exhibit $: Super PAC Jobs for Iowa has launched a two-week flight of TV spots promoting the presidential campaign of Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R-Nothing Succeeds Like Secession), who – not to get technical about it – has failed to start running for president.

Via The Daily Caller:

What if there were a well-funded group pushing for a Rick Perry candidacy? It turns out there is.

On Monday, the super PAC Jobs for Iowa released an ad aimed at the first-in-the country state. The spot, “What If,” touts Perry’s time in Texas, in which the governor was actually present when jobs were created. It also mentions that Texas has “no deficit” and a “decade of balanced budgets.”

The ad ends with its own question and answer:

What if we had a better option for President? We do. Rick Perry.

Not to get technical about it, but we don’t. At least not yet.

Regardless, here’s the ad:

You can fact-check the Perry record here and here.

Perry on.

 

 

 

 

 

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