TVNewser has the scoop, as always, and wonders aloud: “When was the last time Bush granted a live interview?” Chalk one up for Karl Rove; this is, as usual, a PR masterstroke, and FAR safer than the White House press corps.

UPDATE: This? PR masterstroke, not so much.

UPDATE: Thanks to an eagle-eyed tipster I have corrected the approval rating. 38% was incorrect and reflected specifically the approval rating on Bush’s handling of Iraq, not his overall approval rating. Sorry, tipster. You know Fishbowl tries to be fair and balanced.

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This might be a good time to tee up your Fall by sending Loreal (the woman who decides what table you are assigned) a Baby Gift! We have heard that many people did, but if you haven’t yet, you still have time. The baby’s name is Sophia Grace Hazel Sherman. We urge you to heed our call and send cards, gifts, flowers, swag and what-not to: Michael’s Restaurant, 24 West 55th Street, New York, NY, 10036. Phone: 212-767-0555.

Feel free to correct us if we are wrong on anything by writing LaurelT AT mediabistro Dot Com.

Table 1: Phil Ramone, Billy Joel’s producer, with entertainment attorney big-wig Freddie Gershon, and a woman who arrived late, wearing a patterned blouse or dress.

2: Keith Kelly put out the red carpet for Bauer VP, Mark Pasetsky, who just happened to be quoted in the Post today on that very subject…

4: Literary agent Owen Laster, in the most wonderfully outrageous fuschia shirt, with Penguin’s Dan Conaway, in a decidedly staid beige suit.

5: Dan Rather with Gil Schwartz.

3: A team of high-powered headhunters from Bentley & Farrell Executive Search were with Christian Toksvig, head of the so-far wildly successful OK! Magazine. Lots of male bonding rituals performed at this table. Loud guffaws, bawdy jokes and shoulder slapping. OK! must be hiring up!

6: Anna Perez, head of corp comm for NBC Universal (formerly worked for Condi Rice and Barbara Bush), sitting with two other women, one in khaki pants, with a blue thing on her ankle, in from LA. Anna seems to know everyone, Rather, Rose, Tina, and on.

7: George Malkemus, of Manolo Blahnik, with colleagues, most of whom were female and blonde.

8: Brooke Duchin (wife of Peter Duchin) with New York Social Diary’s David Patrick Columbia.

11: Tina Brown, looking rested after some time abroad (Positano, England, etc.). She was in a beige, striped jacket (wearing a white t-shirt underneath. We approve!) and beige slacks by Michael Kors. Only Tina could be at a garden party chatting up the Queen “when alarms started going off everywhere!” It was the London bombing scare. Today, she was dining with Andrew Neil, formerly of the Financial Times, now at the Telegraph. No doubt doing research for her Princess Di book.

12: Shop etc. Publisher Cynthia Lewis, wearing very deep, brick-colored lipstick (we liked it) bemoaned the loss of Laurie when she sat down. Who Laurie is we don’t know. But we overheard her tell her guest, a woman in a dark blue dress or suit, with a spidery blue-crystaled pin, “Laurie’s leaving me…. Going to that woman we talked about!” Is Laurie her housekeeper? One of her sales execs? Tell us, if you know.
[This just in from a reader: "Laurie is likely Lori Rhodes, Executive Marketing Director (and a great lady)."]

continued…

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Even so, the scope really doesn’t compare, and the Tsunami-comparing backlash is gearing up, starting with Romenesko letters (again), as a Corey Pein writes in from Bangkok:

“The tsunami hit a whole region and killed hundreds of thousands of
people and came without leaving enough time to evacuate. The worst-hit places here in Thailand are still [messed] up, whole villages of shell-shocked people who lost their families and their livelihoods. It is possible to convey the scope of the disaster on the Gulf Coast without resorting to such hyperbole. From this perch, it only offers evidence to support the worst stereotypes about Americans, ie, that we only think of ourselves.”

E&P editor Greg Mitchell wades into the fray and writes:

“I’d like to add that I hope the media also doesn’t swallow and follow Gov. Barbour’s widely-published (front page of NY Times etc.) declaration that the Gulf Coast of Mississippi now seems like “Hiroshima.” The differences are monumental (in the degree of destruction, loss of life and, let’s not forget, horrid radiation effects). This is not to minimize the Mississippi tragedy; I just fear that to make such a comparison tends to minimize the utterly unique and must-be-avoided danger of nuclear weapons.”

Still, you try telling a floating corpse in Louisiana that Katrina doesn’t technically merit a comparison to another devastating tragedy. It’s pretty fucking brutal no matter how you slice it.

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This is interesting, really interesting: a letter to Romenesko off of this Boing Boing post notes that two identical pictures from hurricane-ravaged Louisiana featured white people “finding” groceries and a black person “looting” them. Ouch.

We don’t really know if there is more information that we don’t have but offhand it does seem a little telling. Still there is no doubt that there is a blurry area between what could be construed as “looting” and “finding” – on one hand there’s the Jean Valjean-esque taking of food because of absolute need, and on the other there is shooting at people for the sake of scoring TVs, VCRs, jeans and whatever else is being absconded with in the watery streets of New Orleans.

Amid all the stories of death and destruction it’s hit a defiite nerve: witness chatter on Technorati and our own MB boards, plus the immediate follow-up on by an Emerson j-school prof Jerry Lanson on Romenesko. Have to say it, eschewer of blogs though he is, Romenesko is good for tapping into things like this.

Writes Christina Pazzanese: “Should editors, in a rush to publish poignant or startling images, relax their standards or allow personal or regional biases creep into captions and stories?Perhaps these photos will stimulate a media “gut check” as we race to
tell the stories of the thousands who lost their lives and livelihoods.”

It’s an interesting topic, the “gut check” — in the swirl of Katrina reportage on air, on blog and on deadline it’s not surprising that something off-color would emerge with a blurt. We know there is looting; we know there must be finding. The gray area in the middle? Somewhere between black and white.

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Jeremy Blachman, the Harvard law student who blogged as beleagured white-shoe hiring partner Anonymous Lawyer, leaps to Haobsh’s defense* in today’s op-ed pages, agreeing that, yes, people can get fired for all sorts of stupid stuff but that weblogs ought to be protected, dammit. Otherwise how would people know to slather on Jergens for a natural yet reasonably-priced glow? Or what goes on inside a white-shoe law firm? (er, just a quick note on that: didn’t you make it all up? Not that it’s not hilarious satire – especially this entry and this one too – but it’s not, strictly speaking, the truth. Though as a former associate in a white-shoe firm I can definitely attest to the some-truth).

Blachman’s point is that the public interest in free-flowing information ought to trump the employer’s interest in not being outed as a vacation-ruining taskmaster or a spa-vacationing iPod-enjoying cosmetic-shilling SwagHag (did I just make that one up?). I’m actually not sure I agree; as much as I’m a fan of fighting the power and heeding the bloggy muse, I don’t think random employees should be able to blog willy-nilly about their employers with impunity. There are obvious dangers inherent in that, particularly with respect to bloggers less thoughtful than Haobsh or fictionalized like Blachman. This is not to say that I don’t think employers should be cool about anonablogs: after reading pretty much all of Jolie I didn’t think she had crossed any lines at all and thought the LHJ firing was uncalled for and the rescinding of the Seventeen offer appalling (nice message to send to your readers about speaking out, Atoosa). But there are lines, and when employees cross them it’s just as unfair to deny employers redress.

But don’t take our word for it, see what Blachman has to say – he must be pretty convincing, considering that he actually recieved a bunch of r&#233sum&#233s from law students wanting to work at his pretend slave-driver firm. Aw, kind of reminds me of how we got the Fishterns.

*It feels funny not to call you Jolie, Nadine. Sigh. But we all must grow up sometime. Fly, fly, fly, little bird.

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On the newsblogs, more reports of the devastation: The Daily Nightly has an account by NBC Correspondent Kerry Sanders who flew over New Orleans and Bay St. Louis, Miss. in a helicopter yesterday (video here) – he typed it in the air but couldn’t post it ’til today. Hardly pre-packaged news.

The newsies continue to fan out but still the scope is too gigantic to cover, even as they capture the personal moments (Jon Friedman feels a little voyeuristic being privy to such raw grief; Robin Roberts reports from her home state of Mississippi, voice shaking).

An emailer writes:

“It takes a lot of exposure to understand how this impacts people. You grow blas&#233 after seeing your hundredth house submerged, until you realize that it means you can’t live in the house. And your neighbor can’t live in his. And no one can live in any of theirs. And there’s nowhere to go. And the one place there was to go to is a hot, humid, football stadium with no plumbing or water and tons of trash. And people are looting and rioting on the dry parts, without any law enforcement. And the water’s rising, and every other city nearby is the exact same way.”

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Now I’m about a quarter-mile from the beach. Everything from here back down to shore is utter destruction. All the beachside houses are destroyed. There’s nothing left. The people in this neighborhood who did survive did so because they were on the second story or on rooftops of buildings that were farther inland…

One of the most horrifying stories in Biloxi is with an apartment building along the beach. This morning, I talked to a homeowner whose house was right next door to the complex. The homeowner came back and saw that his house was totally destroyed. He says the people in the complex tried to ride out the storm and haven’t been heard from again.

Read more here…

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But also, sometimes we don’t want to; because, though it was a mesmerizing segment in which yes, Jon did kind of hand Hitchens his heinie, it nonetheless wasn’t the kind of segment I like to see. Why? Because it’s supposed to be a dialogue and Hitch and Jon kept talking over each other! It irrirtated me that Hitch was being all Mary Poppins-patronizing with long intros and quips, and irritated me that Jon wouldn’t let him speak, dammit – especially after imploring him to “help me understand why I am wrong about Iraq” – and then not letting him. Because Hitch had a lot to say, and Jon should have let him say it, even if it wasn’t what he wanted to hear.

But, you go to air with the debate you have (HA) and this was obviously a good one, even if it wasn’t conducted in accordance with the Robert’s Rules for which I yearn. And though Hitch was indeed very authoritative, particularly about pointing out that Iraq had legitimately satisfied the four possible justifiable conditions under which a state’s sovreignty may be challenged:

“One is repeated aggression against neighboring states. One is fooling around with a non-proliferation treaty. One is harboring gangsters and known international terrorists. And one is genocide, which if you signed the convention means you have to act (Ed. – not that it’s enforced in reality, obviously). Iraq had broken all four, more than once.”

…that is nonetheless a separate issue from what is going on now – and it was right that Jon addressed that. Because there’s why the war was started, and then there’s how it’s been executed. And it’s on this front that the administration loves to obfuscate and wave around September 11th so that we won’t see the tinfoil-plated humvees. Here’s a bit more transcript, from an unusually moved Wonkette:

Stewart: You hear people saying a lot of stupid [bleep]… But there are reasonable disagreements in this country about the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people believing we should cut and run from the terrorists, or we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves…[cuts Hitch off] They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence.
Hitch: I’m sorry, sunshine… I just watched you ridicule the president for saying he wouldn’t give –
Stewart: No. You misunderstood why… That’s not why I ridiculed the president. He refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people needs to convince.
Hitch: You want me to believe you’re really secretly on the side of the Bush administration…
Stewart: I secretly need to believe he’s on my side. He’s too important and powerful a man not to be.

Hitch found out here that, at least when you’re on his set, it helps to have Jon on your side too. But I’d rather he be on my side and let me hear Hitch out so I could shoot him down myself. I know, I hold Jon up to ridiculously high standards. Is it my fault that he meets them so often?

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It’s been horrible. As I left tonight, darkness, of course, had fallen. And you can hear people yelling for help. You can hear the dogs yelping, all of them stranded, all of them hoping someone will come.

Meserve’s descriptions are far more graphic and horrifyingly detailed, but I couldn’t bring myself to post them. The transcript is here; his post prompted a huge response and Brian has since posted an MP3 version. If you start reading or listening, you won’t be able to stop. It is horrifying, and gripping.

My choice of title for this post was not flip; there could not be a more ironic association for all of this than the song “Walking on Sunshine” by the above-referenced band; trust me, it hasn’t stopped going through my head. It is, though, one of the most upbeat and optimistic songs I could probably ever think of, so hopefully the time will come, soon, when it will be appropriate to link it.

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Over at WWD, Sara James reports that Vaity Fair scribe and Dever City Magazine 5280 exec editor Maximillian Potter has returned from his two-and-a-half week embed in Iraq’s Al Anbar province, travelling with (and protected by) “the selfless men of the Marines’ Detachment 4 of the 5th Civil Affairs Group,” a unit that included his childhood friend Tim McMenamin, chief warrant officer second class.
Sounds like Potter’s pieces will be gritty must-reads (and possibly controversial since he cops to a more hawk-like stance now, telling James that “I am convinced that regardless of how the U. S. got to where it is in Iraq, we absolutely must stay until we get the training wheels of civilization screwed on that place”).

Whatever the conclusions, the important thing is for the stories to keep coming out – between the constitutional crisis, Saddam’s upcoming trial, the continued insurgency and the reality of the U.S. presence there, there’s really nothing about Iraq to be fatigued about, actually.

It’s worth remembering, too, especially now that we’ve officially reached a milestone, of sorts: more journalists killed in two years of the Iraq war than during the entire conflict in Vietnam.

We’re glad Potter and Ayres are back safely and are sharing their experiences – here’s hoping for the safe return of our other colleagues over there.

UPDATE: And while we’re worrying about them over there they’re worrying about things over here: Newsweek just sent out a story by correspondent Michael Hastings in Baghdad who reports on a batallion of National Guardmen from Louisiana, anxiously trying to get information on their Katrina-ravaged homes and families from Iraq (not surprisingly, they’re watching Fox). The men have only eight days remaining in their tour of duty – but who knows if they will even have homes to go to. It’s an interesting perspective on life over there, and over here; Hastings quotes a soldier with as good a closing line as any: “It’s the perfect f–ked-up ending to a perfect f–ked-up war.”

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The Nation’s two largest alternative newspaper publishers have been in intense negotiations over a merger that would create an 18-paper chain controlled to a significant extent by venture capitalists.

Tim Redmond, the terrier who has been sinking his teeth into this at the San Francisco Bay Guardian, had unearthed the proof: Village Voice Media indeed be merging with the New Times – and they’ve got the draft May 27, 2005 merger agreement to prove it.

The salient points:

• An 18-paper alternative press chain will be created

• Control will lie with the New Times: it will have 62 percent of the merged entity and Village Voice Media will have 38 percent
• This will be reflected in the Board as well: the New Times will have a 5-4 majority, including Mike Lacey and Jim Larkin, the executive editor and CEO of New Times respectively, and New Times chief financial officer Jed Brunst and two other New Times picks, including one New Times venture capitalist representative
• Village Voice Media CEO David Schneiderman will also sit on the board, along with seats representing his three investors
• Schneiderman will receive a $500,000 bonus for “his work on the merger”
• This will surely not make Robert Christgau and co. very happy
• The Village Voice union contracts (recently the subject of much squabble and dissention) – will be honored (presumably however cheaply “honored” may be defined). But according to SFBG, “other employees may not fare so well”: they have a source that says “I believe the rest of the VVM corporate staff (essentially finance people) will be let go.”
• The resulting company will represent 14.2% of the membership of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies “and would give one chain operation control of some of the biggest media markets in the country, including New York, Los Angeles, Miami, Denver, Seattle, Phoenix, and Houston”
• Closing is set for November 30, 2005

The only thing that’s surprising about this, of course, is the magnitude of the leak from the notoriously secretive parties – Redmond’s got a whole whack of documents along with the draft Merger Agreement, including a memo from Schneiderman worrying about the New Times dead weight and draft bylaws for the merged corporation. Still, it’s sad to think of what might be lost. Ah, well. Anyone who is not notoriously secretive and would like to drop us a tip, please do so at FISHBOWLNY@mediabistro.com.

Exclusive: Internal Village Voice documents detail plans to create 18-paper alt-press chain [SFBG]

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