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SEWELL,
N.J. (AP) — A New Jersey canine that was crowned the world's ugliest
dog in 2007 and later became the topic of a children's book preaching
acceptance has died. Elwood was 8.
His owner, Karen Quigley, says
the Chinese crested and Chihuahua mix died unexpectedly Thanksgiving
morning. The Sewell resident said Elwood had been dealing with some
heath issues in recent months but appeared to be doing well.
Elwood
was dark colored and hairless — save for a puff of white fur resembling
a Mohawk on his head. He was often referred to by fans as Yoda, or
E.T., for his resemblance to those famous science-fiction characters.
Elwood
won his crown at the annual ugly dog contest at the Sonoma-Marin County
Fair in California a year after he had finished second.
Quigley had rescued Elwood in 2005, when he was about nine months old.
"The breeder was going to euthanize him because she thought he was too ugly to sell," Quigley has said.
After
garnering the ugly dog title, Elwood became an online darling and
developed a worldwide fan base. During his life, he appeared at more
than 200 events that helped raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for
animal rescue groups and nonprofit animal organizations.
Inspired by her pet, Quigley wrote Everyone Loves Elwood,
a popular children's book that promoted a message that it's OK to be
different. Quigley said the book shares lessons of love, compassion and
perseverance and encourages readers to be kind to animals.
"He made people smile, he made them laugh and feel good. It was wonderful," Quigley said Saturday. "He will truly be missed."
"It's a pretty scary statue," says an archaeologist of one of the week's big finds: the three-headed watchdog of hell.
1. Guardians of 'Hell's Gate' unearthed in Turkey:
What's a "Gate to Hell" without a couple of scary guardians lurking
outside? Appropriately, archaeologists in Turkey have unearthed two
marble statues that once guarded the fabled portal to the underworld.
2. Brightest space-blast ever shocks scientists:
Notice a little white spot in the sky earlier this year? That may have
been the brightest gamma-ray explosion on record mixed with a powerful
supernova, a combination scientists had never seen before.
3. Big find 2.6K feet below Greenland ice sheet:
For the first time, researchers have discovered lakes underneath the
Greenland Ice Sheet. And while there are almost 400 known lakes beneath
the Antarctic ice sheets, these are different.
4. New Zealand quakes made Earth's crust weaker:
How nasty were the deadly quakes that hit New Zealand one after another
in 2010 and 2011? So bad that they appear to have seriously weakened
the Earth's crust, scientists reveal in a new study.
5. Buddha's birthday wrong by 200 years:
Experts: Buddha may have achieved enlightenment two centuries earlier
than experts believe — if an ancient timber shrine can be taken at face
value. For more discoveries, visit Newser,
a USA TODAY content partner providing general news, commentary and
coverage from around the Web. Its content is produced independently of
USA TODAY.
Of course Joe Lieberman, once again, turned out to be a lying sack of shit:
Lieberman said he is reviewing his options for his
post-Senate years. Asked by a reporter if he intends to become a
lobbyist, Lieberman said, "No, I'm not going to do that."
To translate from the Liebermanese, that actually meant, "Yes, I'm going to do exactly that":
That's an excerpt from a client engagement letter between Lieberman's law firm and one Basit Igtet, an aspiring Libyan politician, appended to a registration form
that D.C. lobbyists for foreign nationals are required to file with the
Department of Justice. And "government relations services" is just a
polite synonym for "lobbying."
Fortunately, since this is Daily Kos, we don't need to use any polite
synonyms to describe Joe Lieberman. Not that anyone would even want to.
Kate Moss will be the latest Playboy cover star (Picture: Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott/Playboy)
At the ripe old age of 39, Kate Moss has donned her bunny ears – and
only bunny ears – to pose naked to mark the 60th anniversary of Playboy.
She will appear in the January/February 2014 edition of the magazine
(available on December 17) – a sneak preview of her shoot was in this
month’s issue.
Moss follows a long line of celebrities who have appeared in Playboy,
going all the way back to a naked Marilyn Monroe in the very first
issue in December 1953. Unlike Moss, Monroe didn’t have a Playboy shoot –
her image came from a calendar shoot she did four years earlier when
she needed the money. But a savvy young journalist from Chicago called
Hugh Hefner bought the rights to the photo and slapped it in the middle
of his new magazine. Playboy was born.
Sixty years later, is the magazine doing Moss a favour
or is it the other way around? In August, the credit rating of Playboy
Enterprises was lowered by financial services company Standard &
Poor’s, amid fears the famous brand could be about to disappear.
At that time, the magazine was already in the midst of an editorial
reboot, prompted by research that suggested its most valuable assets
were the bunny logo, the mansion, founder Hefner and – no surprises here
– the bunnies.
Playboy was at its most successful 40 years ago – in 1972, seven
million issues were sold each month, which perhaps explains why the
magazine’s rescue attempt involved returning to its roots, albeit
carefully-selected ones.
An example is the July/August 2013 issue. The cover featured 25
synchronised swimmers forming the iconic rabbit head logo – an obvious
nod to the art-directed aesthetic of Playboy’s 1960s golden era. In the
same way, the models currently favoured by Playboy have more in common
with the bunnies from the first issues of the magazine. Double-D
surgically-enhanced models are a thing of the past. Quirkier cover stars
– Marge Simpson stripped off for a ‘shoot’ in 2009 – are more common. A rare first issue of Playboy magazine from December 1953, with Marilyn Monroe on the cover (Picture: PA)MORE: Marge Simpson poses naked for Playboy MORE: Marge Simpson recreates Kate Moss Playboy pose
Recent issues have included interviews with British actor Idris Elba,
a guide to creating the ultimate dinner party and an article offering
advice to women in long-distance relationships. The message is clear:
Playboy is no longer a magazine to be read under the bed sheets or
purchased by older brothers for younger siblings. One in five readers
are female and the average age of readers is 37.
Like it or hate it, Playboy is a brand that become part of the
culture – its bunny logo is instantly recognisable and the magazine
helped invent the phrase, ‘I buy it for the articles’.
But despite its recent attempts to adapt, sociology professor James
Beggan, from the University of Louisville in Kentucky, believes
magazines such as Playboy can, by their nature, never change their
spots. He said: ‘There is probably less stigma attached to Playboy than
there was years ago, but wherever there is nudity, there will be
embarrassed sniggers, because people generally seem to have trouble
talking about sex.’
Professor Steven Watts, an expert on American intellectual and
cultural history at the University of Missouri-Columbia, believes the
connotations thrown up by the magazine haven’t changed – they just exist
for different reasons.
‘The stigma is at about the same level,’ he said. ‘A big difference
was that, in the early days, religion was the primary barrier to buying
the magazine and now it tends to be feminism. In both cases, for
different reasons, the pressure was for “respectable” people not to buy
and read Playboy. But now, as then, for people who don’t feel subject to
such social pressures, getting the magazine is no big deal. But I doubt
that Playboy will ever be seen as a coffee table book – sex, morals,
gender roles and so on are just too much hot button issues for that to
ever take place.’
In an age where viewers of pornography get their fix online, you
could be forgiven for thinking that the magazine’s biggest threat is the
internet. However, the brand has had these bases covered for some
years. Playboy Enterprises holdings include a TV station, digital
network, online division, radio station and apparel and collectibles
lines, as well as nearly 30 international editions.
Pornography might well be easily accessible online, but the
perception of the magazine was obviously key to the success of Playboy
Enterprises as a whole. Today, about 1.25m copies are sold each month
and although that’s significantly less than the seven million copies in
the 1970s, the team behind the magazine are confident that the future is
bright, citing the coup of Moss as proof that it’s here to stay.
‘This is a massive global brand,’ said Playboy’s editorial director,
Jimmy Jellinek. ‘You need a global icon in order to celebrate that –
that was the impetus. You’re talking about the face of Burberry – the
biggest supermodel in the world – on the cover of Playboy. She’s the
perfect partner to help launch the next 60 years.’
And Moss’s reputation is unlikely to suffer as a result of her
decision to pose for the magazine, something which illustrates just how
accepted Playboy has become.
‘Getting mainstream models and actresses works more to enhance the
prestige of the magazine and does not really hurt those who appear on
the cover,’ said Prof Watts. ‘Examples are Cindy Crawford, Madonna and
Sharon Stone. Over the past 50 years, Playboy has become a lot more
mainstream. What it showed and advocated in the early days of the
magazine with regard to sexuality and lifestyle are now part of the
culture and really not that controversial.’ Marge does Moss (Picture: Alexsandro Palombo)Marge Simpson is no stranger to Playboy poses, having featured in the magazine in November 2009 (Picture: Reuters/Playboy)MORE: Hugh Hefner: I’ve slept with more than 1,000 women
Although Playboy may have ditched the surgically enhanced models, it
cannot possibly lower the ‘impossibly high – and often emotionally and
physically destructive – standards of beauty faced by women’, according
to Dr Adrienne Roberts, a lecturer in the school of social sciences at
the University of Manchester.
She added: ‘Women often impose these standards on themselves. They
are, after all, the main consumers of most fashion magazines, but this
has been conditioned by decades, if not centuries, of sexist advertising
and other structural gendered expectations.’
She doesn’t see Playboy as some kind of force for social change. ‘I’m
just not convinced that this great cultural shift can be brought about
by a magazine otherwise dedicated to objectifying and commodifying
women.’
Although it’s impossible to predict whether the magazine will still
be around in 60 years, Hefner, now 87, certainly won’t be. When the
ultimate playboy heads off to the Playboy Mansion in the sky, what will
happen to the magazine?
‘That depends on the brand’s work to create new products and
marketing strategies,’ said journalism professor Robert Jensen from the
University of Texas. ‘The corporation could easily be profitable without
him.’
Prof Beggan goes one step further and suggests that his death could
well see the creation of a new, more successful Playboy magazine. He
said: ‘I don’t think that the loss of Hefner would have that great an
effect, in that the image of Playboy would still exist as the
bachelor/hedonist lifestyle. I also feel that given Hefner’s current
lifestyle – the off-then-on marriage and the multiple blonde girlfriends
– he is seen as less credible as a businessman, editor, social change
agent and more of a caricature of his former self.’
Whenever ‘Hef’ does pass away, it will be some funeral – he owns the
burial plot in an LA cemetery beside the remains of – yes, you guessed
it – Marilyn Monroe.
What the Leaked J.D. Salinger Stories Reveal About the Author
Three
short stories by J.D. Salinger leaked over Thanksgiving against the
author’s wishes. But is that such a bad thing? What they reveal about
the icon.
On Thanksgiving morning, Nov. 28, three unpublished stories by the
late, great, reclusive author J.D. Salinger—"The Ocean Full of Bowling
Balls," "Paula," and "Birthday Boy"—leaked online after a paperback containing pirated copies of them sold on eBay.co.uk for £67.50.
The stories had been known to exist before; the first had been housed
for decades at Princeton University's Firestone Library, and the other
two had been under lock and key at the University of Texas, Austin. But
only registered, supervised researchers had ever been allowed to read
them.
Now that the whole world can, the assumption everyone seems to
be making is that Salinger would not have been very happy about the
leak. "The appearance of the stories would undoubtedly have enraged
Salinger, who died at 91 in 2010 and worked very hard during his
lifetime to prevent people from publishing anything he had written (or
conceived) that he didn’t want published," The New York Times. "The creator of Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye would not be pleased,"USA Today. “It’s hard not to feel a bit guilty when devouring something that he didn’t want the world to see,” concluded Buzzfeed’s Summer Anne Burton.
The peanut gallery has a point. Salinger famously refused to publish
anything after 1965, even though he continued to write—every day, by
some accounts—from his bunker in Cornish, N.H. Less famously, Salinger
also refused to release anything from his archives written before 1948
(such as the three leaked stories) or even to permit the republication
of any stories that had been published prior to that year. In 1974, for
instance, a renegade gang of Salinger fans located, transcribed, and
bound together 21 of the author's published but uncollected works,
creating an illegal two-volume anthology called The Complete Uncollected Short Stories of J.D. Salinger.
Salinger immediately threatened to sue. "I wrote [these stories] a long
time ago, and I never had any intention of publishing them," Salinger
toldThe New York Times.
"I wanted them to die a perfectly natural death. I'm not trying to hide
the gaucheries of my youth. I just don't think they're worthy of
publishing."
But is that accurate? Why write them at all, then? When I heard about
the latest Salinger leak, I decided to dig a little deeper. What I
discovered is that Salinger wasn’t being entirely honest when he said he
"never had any intention of publishing" these stories. The truth is,
Salinger did want to publish them at one point. The question now,
more than six decades later, is why he changed his mind—and what these
resurrected works reveal about an author who was obsessed with revealing
as little as he possibly could.
With "Paula," at least, the story itself was the problem. In late
1941, Salinger was still very young (22) and very unproven. He had
published four stories—the first, "Young Folks," had appeared in Story
only a year earlier—and written perhaps eight more. His dream was to see
his byline in The New Yorker, so he made several attempts at the sort
of sophisticated, cosmopolitan short fiction that Harold Ross's magazine
liked to publish. But "Lunch for Three," "I Went to School with Adolf
Hitler," and "Monologue for a Watery Highball," "The Long Debut of Lois
Taggett," "The Hang of It," and "The Heart of a Broken Story," were all
rejected (and some have since been lost).
“The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls”…stands entirely on its own as one of Salinger’s saddest, loveliest stories.
By
the time Salinger sat down to write a story titled "Mrs. Hincher," he
was deeply frustrated. He was working on another piece at the same
time—a thoughtful New Yorker-ish vignette about an Upper East
Side prep-school kid named Holden Morrisey Caulfield—but he didn't know
if Ross & Co. would accept it. So in the meantime Salinger decided
to try his hand at what he called "a horror story": a dark tale about an
apparently infertile woman, Paula Hincher, who suddenly tells her
husband Frank that she is pregnant and must stay in bed for the duration
of the pregnancy. After nine months, Mrs. Hincher locks herself in her
bedroom with the "baby," whom she will not let her husband see. When
Frank finally enters the room, he discovers his wife curled up in the
fetal position, naked in the crib.
"Mrs. Hincher" wasn't literature. It was commercial work designed to
get Salinger's name in print—an "experiment," according to biographer
Kenneth Slawenski, meant to "distinguish what was salable to various
magazines." Salinger retooled it, retitled it "Paula," and sold it to Stag, a middlebrow publication for men. And then, in October 1941, he received news that The New Yorker
had accepted his Caulfield story, "A Slight Rebellion off Madison."
Salinger was ecstatic, believing, as Slawenski puts it, that "he had
finally won the recognition he so frantically craved." In a letter,
Salinger wrote that "Paula" would be his "first and last" horror story.
"He would now concentrate on stories about Holden Caulfield instead,"
Slawenski explains. "'Slight Rebellion' had unlocked a path to
creativity that had altered his life."
When "Paula" stalled at Stag, Salinger must have been
relieved. The story was never published, Salinger never mentioned it
again, and in 1961, the magazine reported that it had "gone missing"
from its files. The version at the University of Texas—which is
presumably the one that leaked—is an incomplete draft that seems to
include fragments of both "Mrs. Hincher" and "Paula." It's an
interesting biographical footnote, a Hemingway-meets-Twilight Zone
curiosity—worth reading for a rough sense of what Salinger's oddest
story may have been like. But it's hardly essential. No wonder Salinger
never revived it.
"Birthday Boy" is more compelling. While serving in World War II,
Salinger witnessed the atrocities of D-Day, the Battle of the Bulge, and
a Dachau sub-camp; throughout the war, he continued to write stories
and work on his unpublished Caulfield novel. But as the battles wound
down in early 1945, Salinger's muse vanished, and for more than a year
he failed to complete a single story. It wasn't until he absconded to
Florida in July 1946, shortly after his wartime marriage to an alleged Gestapo informant dissolved,
that he managed to overcome his writer's block. The story that did the
trick, Salinger told a friend in a letter, was called "A Male Goodbye."
He added that it was "unlike anything I have done before."
"A Male Goodbye" is now lost, but Salinger scholars believe that
"Birthday Boy" may be an earlier version of the same story. It's a
simple tale. Ethel, a sweet, long-suffering young lady, visits her
fiance Ray, a taciturn, bitter, recovering alcoholic, in the hospital;
when she refuses to give him "a drop" of liquor, he calls her a "bitch"
and tells her to "get the hell out of here." Salinger's last line is
particularly devastating. "The elevator descended with a draft," he
writes, "chilling Ethel in all the damp spots."
The prose in "Birthday Boy" is signature Salinger: the spare,
chiseled descriptions; the lapidary, lifelike dialogue. It's too bad
that "A Male Goodbye"—perhaps the more polished version—is gone forever.
But it's not hard to see why the story was never published. As
Slawenski puts it, "Birthday Boy" "offers neither enlightenment nor
redemption. It is an expression of sheer sourness, a tart splatter of
forlorn rage."
In other words, “Birthday Boy” is barely a story at all. Instead,
it's Salinger finally confronting his own wartime trauma—his own pent-up
pain—and finding a way to control it on the page. It's a test. After
"Birthday Boy" and "A Male Goodbye," Salinger began to infuse all of his
work with this "hidden emotion"—this "fire between the words," as he
put it—and unleashed the streak of near-perfect New Yorker
stories that would make his reputation: "A Perfect Day for Bananafish,"
"Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut," "Just Before the War with the Eskimos,"
and so on. As the story that broke the logjam, "Birthday Boy" is a
fascinating read.
Best of all, however, is "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls.” Salinger
himself was not conflicted about the story; he tried for years to have
it published. First he included it on a list of 19 early stories meant
for The Young Folks, an anthology he assembled for Whit
Burnett's Story Press in 1945 or 1946. (So much for wanting “the
gaucheries of [his] youth” to “die a perfectly natural death.”)
Eventually, J.B. Lippincott Company rejected the book, and Burnett urged
Salinger to devote himself to the novel that became The Catcher in the Rye.
Yet even then Salinger didn't abandon “The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls.” In 1948, he sold the story to Woman's Home Companion,
but the magazine's publisher found it too "downbeat" and refused to
print it. A year later, Salinger likely submitted another version
(titled "A Summer Accident") to The New Yorker, and when The New Yorker
also passed, he took it to Collier's. This was an unusual move for
Salinger. "He had abandoned the slicks by 1949, and if a story was
rejected by The New Yorker, he generally refused to submit it
elsewhere," Slawenski writes. "Yet he made a rare exception for 'Ocean,'
confirming his attachment to it." Unfortunately, the same man who had
turned down "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" at Woman's Home Companion was now employed by Collier's—and he objected once again. Salinger reclaimed his story and never sent it anywhere else.
It's clear why Salinger was so attached to "The Ocean Full of Bowling
Balls." Written in late 1944 or early 1945, just before the writer's
block set in, the story is a pivotal entry in the Caulfield family saga;
it depicts the last day in the life of Kenneth Caulfield (who is
rechristened Allie in The Catcher in the Rye). All of the
ingredients of Salinger's mature work are here: the preppy setting (in
this case, Cape Cod); the enlightened child (the red-headed 12-year-old
Kenneth); the siblings arguing about literature ("The Bowler," a story
about infidelity written by Vincent, the 18-year-old narrator); and a
traumatic death in the family (at the end of the story Kenneth, struck
by a wave, succumbs to "the severest kind of heart trouble" after an
impromptu swim in the ocean.) Holden Caulfield himself makes an inspired
cameo, and there are early flashes of the Glass Family in the brothers'
dynamic. And yet "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls" doesn't require this
kind of foreshadowing to work. It stands entirely on its own as one of
Salinger's saddest, loveliest stories.
After The New Yorker rejected "The Ocean Full of Bowling
Balls," Salinger returned to the novel that he had been slaving over for
the better part of a decade—the one about the prep-school boy. By the
time Collier's turned "Ocean" down, Salinger's book was pretty much
complete. Now Kenneth was Allie; his "heart troubles" were leukemia; he
died at 11, not 12. You can imagine why, at this point, Salinger decided
to bury "Ocean" in the vault: releasing it would complicate a narrative
that had now become Holden Caulfield's instead of Kenneth's. But even
in The Catcher in the Rye, one heartbreaking detail from
“Ocean” remains: the southpaw first-baseman's mitt onto which Kenneth
"copied down lines of poetry in India ink"—lines "he liked to read when
he wasn't at bat or when nothing special was going on in the field."
According to Salinger's terms, "The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls"
cannot be legally published until 50 years after his death. "Birthday
Boy" and "Paula" cannot be published at all. And yet each of these
stories helps us better understand Salinger's life and fiction, and one
of them ranks among his finest work. There's little doubt that Salinger
would not be giving thanks if he were still alive today. But history
shows that he didn't always object quite so strongly. Neither should we.
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s Gatsby, Master Spy
Prince
Bandar bin Sultan, once famous in Washington for his cigars, parties
and charm, is now Saudi Arabia’s point man, fighting Iran in Syria and
denouncing the Obama administration.
When the prince was the
ambassador he was the toast of Washington, and plenty of toasts there
were. Bandar bin Sultan smoked fine cigars and drank finer Cognac. For
almost 30 years as Saudi Arabia’s regal messenger, lobbyist, and envoy,
he told amazing stories about politicians and potentates, some of which,
surprisingly, were true. Washington journalists loved him. Nobody had
better access to more powerful people in higher places, or came with so
much money, so quietly and massively distributed, to help out his
friends.
Over the years, Bandar arranged to lower global oil
prices in the service of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and both the
Bushes. At the behest of the CIA’s Bill Casey, and behind the back of
Congress, Bandar arranged for the Saudis to bankroll anti-Communist wars
in Nicaragua, Angola and Afghanistan. He was thick with Dick Cheney,
and he was so tight with the George H.W. Bush clan—the father, the
mother, the sons, the daughters—that they just called him “Bandar Bush.”
Now, the prince is a spy, or, more precisely, the master spy of the
Middle East. He is the point man for a vast Saudi program of covert
action and conspicuous spending that helped overthrow the elected Muslim
Brotherhood government in Egypt and is attempting to forge a new “Army of Islam”
in Syria. Without understanding the man and his mission, there’s no
way, truly, to understand what’s happening in the world’s most troubled
region right now.
Bandar’s goal is to undermine Iranian power: strip away Tehran’s
allies like Assad and Hezbollah; stop the Shiite mullahs from acquiring
nuclear weapons; roll back their regional designs; and push them out of
office if there’s any way to do that.
While there may be much to fault in Obama’s policy, it’s not as if Bandar and the Saudis have been innocent bystanders.
At
the same time, he aims to crush the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni
organization that pays lip service to democracy and is fundamentally
anti-monarchy.
The Bandar program makes for some interesting
alliances. Never mind that there’s no peace treaty between Saudi Arabia
and Israel, in these parts, as they say too often, the enemy of my enemy
is my friend, and Bandar has become the de facto anti-Iran ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu. They are “curiously united,” says historian Robert Lacey, author of Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists, and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia. Bandar has always been inclined to defy conventions and bend rules. “Bandar is a man with chutzpah,” says Lacey.
In
recent months, echoing Bibi, Bandar has let it be known that one of the
biggest obstacles to his goals is U.S. President Barack Obama. And
Bandar reportedly
told European diplomats last month that Saudi Arabia would make a
“major shift” away from its longstanding alliance with the United
States.
Some of Bandar’s Saudi associates say he was just blowing
off steam. But those who’ve followed his career closely suspect that as
part of the shift he’s talking about he may be trying to forge an
ever-closer relationship with nuclear-armed Pakistan.
The recently
elected prime minister there, Nawaz Sharif, lived under royal
protection in Saudi Arabia for much of the last decade. Journalist and
scholar David Ottaway, author of the up-close Bandar biography The King's Messenger,
predicted in 2009 that “if Iran did become a nuclear power and
threatened the Kingdom, Pakistan could well become its principal
defender rather than the United States.” In October, Yezid Sayigh of the
Carnegie Middle East Center reported that the Saudis have been trying to coax the Pakistanis into a major training program for Syrian rebels.
President
George H. Bush meets with Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan, Saudi
Ambassador to the United States in the Oval Office on Thursday, March 1,
1991 of the White House in Washington. (Ron Edmonds/AP)
Of
course a lot of this can be attributed to Saudi frustration with Obama.
But Bandar’s bigger problem may be Bandar. He has put the resources and
prestige of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on the line again and again in
recent years, and with very little to show for it. Syria remains a
blood-drenched disaster practically on the Saudi doorstep. Iraq is
sliding every deeper into a new sectarian civil war between Shiites
(more or less supported by Iran), and Sunnis (more or less supported by
Saudi Arabia). Egypt’s continuing civil strife and economic implosion
are turning the country into a black hole for billions of Saudi dollars.
And while there may be much to fault in Obama’s policy, it’s not as if
Bandar and the Saudis have been innocent bystanders.
King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, who is at least 90 years old, has spent
his lifetime and countless billions of dollars trying to promote
stability in the region. But he’s not getting what he paid for. The Arab
Spring stunned the Saudis, the chaos that followed terrified them, and
they haven’t found any effective way to restore calm.
Even in
little Lebanon, the Saudis and their men have been outmaneuvered time
and again by the Iranians and their Hezbollah allies. When Bandar gave
up his post as ambassador in Washington 2005, he took on the ill-defined
job of national security advisor to the king. And one of his first
acts, in 2006, was to offer behind-the-scenes encouragement to the
Israelis in their ferocious war on Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. Then
Hezbollah fought them to a draw, emerging bloodied but unbowed, and with
more credibility than ever.
So weirdly skewed is Bandar’s vision of Lebanon at this point that for a while he promoted Samir Geagea,
the semi-mystical former commander of a savage Maronite Christian
militia, to be the next president of the country. Other warlords who’ve
worked with Bandar complain they can no longer get the Saudi
intelligence chief on the phone. He supposedly disappears for days at a
time. Saudi King Abdullah, it’s said in Beirut, doesn’t even want the
word “Lebanon” spoken in his presence.
“Saudi Arabia is not doing
well, and the measure of this is the panic of the Kingdom about the
American-Iranian rapprochement,” says a Lebanese source, who is close to
many backroom negotiations in the region and who asked not to be
identified.
The “major shift” in the American relationship has not
come because Bandar, or for that matter, King Abdullah, decided to
shake things up. Saudi Arabia just isn’t quite as vital to the United
States as it once was. The last 10 years have seen tectonic shifts in
world energy supplies. The Kingdom and the once-feared Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) have nothing like the power they
wielded 40 years ago. Thanks largely to fracking, the United States is
now the world’s biggest producer of hydrocarbons (oil and natural gas),
and non-OPEC supplies around the world far outstrip those of the old cartel.
Back
in 1973, Saudi King Faisal could declare an oil embargo against the
West that shook the United States to its economic foundations and
transformed the global economy. Today, the Saudis vent their anger with
fits of forgettable diplomatic rage. It’s doubtful most of the world
even noticed when they declined to speak at the United Nations General
Assembly in September, or announced a few weeks ago that they would turn
down one of the rotating seats on the U.N. Security Council.
“Of course the Saudis are unhappy,” says Lacey. “But this nothing like 1973.”
Bandar,
truly, must wish for the good old days. During the 22 years he served
as ambassador in Washington, and even before that, he operated at the
deep core of world events.
Despite his title and his late father’s
position as longtime defense minister and potential heir to the throne,
when the young Prince Bandar was in Riyadh he was not really part of
upper-crust Saudi society. His mother had been a black-skinned servant
(by some accounts, a slave) impregnated by his father when she was 16.
So Bandar enjoyed none of the prestige or the clout that well-connected
mothers bring to their sons in the Kingdom. But he was very bright, a
brilliant English speaker, and an accomplished fighter pilot who knew
his way around American military men.
Bandar played a key role in the late 1970s persuading the U.S.
Congress over strenuous Israeli objections that the United States should
sell billions of dollars worth of jet fighters to Saudi Arabia. After
that, he became a trusted messenger carrying communications back and
forth between President Jimmy Carter and Crown Prince Fahd, Saudi
Arabia’s de facto ruler at the time.
Fahd recognized only too well
the essential contradictions in the relationship between the Land of
the Free and the House of Saud. The United States might be the biggest
energy consumer in the world, and the Saudis the biggest energy
producers, but beyond that fact few interests converged. “The United
States is the most dangerous thing to us,” Fahd told the young Bandar,
as recounted by Patrick Tyler in his superb history, A World of Trouble: The White House and the Middle East—from the Cold War to the War on Terror.
“We have no cultural connection with them … no ethnic connection to
them … no religious connection … no language connection … no political
connection.”
Close personal relations and major favors would be
the key to sustaining close ties, and Bandar was the man who would make
it all work. His Washington soirées were legendary, like those of an
“Arabian Gatsby,” says Tyler. And behind the scenes, it seemed, there
was almost nothing he would not do to cement the Riyadh-Washington axis.
The big payoff came when the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein invaded
Kuwait in 1990, looming as an enormous threat to Saudi Arabia as well.
Bandar smoothed the way for the United States to pour troops into his
country and mount Operation Desert Storm, driving Saddam out of Kuwait
and eliminating the menace to the Kingdom.
Just over a decade
later, in the summer of 2001, Bandar was the emissary for then Crown
Prince Abdullah, telling the recently inaugurated President George W.
Bush that it was time for another major initiative: recognition of the
Palestinians’ right to a state of their own, and an end to the slaughter
in the Holy Land. If not, Bandar told Bush, things were going to get
very ugly.
Once again there was talk that Riyadh might use “the
oil weapon.” Bush agreed to endorse the eventual establishment of a
separate and viable Palestinian state. But just as the White House and
State Department were drafting the announcement, 19 terrorists flew
planes into the Twin Towers of New York’s World Trade Center, the
Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania— and 15 of them, “the muscle”
terrifying passengers on the planes— turned out to be Saudis.
I saw Bandar soon afterward at his mansion in Neuilly-sur-Seine, just
outside of Paris (one of his many residences around the world), and he
was putting on a brave act. But he clearly did not know what to say. The
evidence that Saudi citizens were involved was irrefutable, and the
Saudi security services had missed it.
Then the Bush administration started preparing for a new war with
Iraq. Bandar warned against it. The Saudis knew the end result of
Saddam’s ouster would be to strengthen Iran, and so it did. Once again,
they increased oil supplies so the price of gas at the American pump
wouldn’t spike too badly: a vital political favor to Bush. But “if 9/11
took the special out of the U.S.-Saudi ‘special relationship,’ the U.S.
invasion of Iraq killed it stone dead,” says Lacey.
Even after Bandar left as ambassador to Washington in 2005, he
continued to carry messages back and forth from Riyadh. It was
increasingly clear, however, that the world and his world had changed.
With chronic back pain from a crash landing when he was a pilot, and
other health problems as well, the hitherto indefatigable Bandar was
fatigued indeed. Although only in his early 60s, he now appears much
older.
Last year, according to Saudi sources who’ve worked closely
with Bandar, he told King Abdullah that he could solve the Syria
situation in a matter of months. The previous intelligence chief,
Abdullah’s half brother Prince Muqrin, had not been able to make much
headway. But Bandar, as it turns out, has not been much of an
improvement.
“His job requires being able to work 18 hours a day
and he cannot,” says a Saudi who has collaborated closely with Bandar.
He is frustrated and angry and anxious to show off to the world his
ability to achieve the seemingly impossible, as he did in the past. But
as the same Saudi points out, “being angry is not good in the
intelligence business.” And in today’s Middle East, chutzpah just isn’t
enough.
Maybe you like brunch, or maybe you're a terrible person who has no friends
-- either way, if you're gonna do brunch, it damn sure better include
bottomless boozing. To wit: we found SIXTY-SIX never-ending drinking
deals around the city, tried all of them, took a nap, and then
conveniently organized them neighborhood-by-neighborhood below.
Cafe Cortadito
210 East 3rd St
The Deal: An entree, plus 1.5hrs of drinking your choice of tropical
mimosas, red or white sangria, Champagne mojitos, Champagne margaritas,
Bloody Marys, and house beer, runs you $25.95.
Casimir
103 Avenue B
The Deal: $19.95 gets you unlimited mimosas and Bloodys with your entree.
Poco
33 Avenue B
The Deal: An entree and bottomless white/red sangria, mimosas, or Bloodys for 1.5hrs runs you $26.95.
Yerba Buena
23 Avenue A
The Deal: $15 for all-you-can-drink fancy, Latin cocktails, plus standard brunch 'tails for 1hr.
Verde on Smith
216 Smith St
The Deal: $16.95 added to your meal gets you bottomless Champagne,
mimosas, bellinis (peach, mango, raspberry, strawberry) screwdrivers, or
Bloody Marys for 2hrs.
Harry's Cafe & Steak
1 Hanover Square
The Deal: You get unlimited Champagne brunch with the purchase of an entree -- it's $7 for 1.5L of juice to make it a mimosa.
Harry's Italian Pizza Bar
2 Gold Street
The Deal: $17.95 for any item, plus unlimited Bloodys or mimosas for 2hrs.
Barbounia
250 Park Avenue
The Deal: $18.95 for unlimited Champagne cocktails, bellinis, and other brunch 'tails 'til 4p.
Millesime
92 Madison Avenue
The Deal: Their "punch brunch" is $29 for a bowl and gives you an entree and your choice of bottomless apple tequila or vodka-cranberry punch -- Sundays only.
Amity Hall
80 W 3rd St
The Deal: You can add $14 to your meal for unlimited Bloody Marys and mimosas.
Cuba
222 Thompson St
The Deal: From 11a-4p you can add $10.95 to your entree for unlimited mojitos or sangria for 2hrs.
Miss Lily's
132 West Houston
The Deal: $30 for one brunch entree and 2hrs of unlimited mimosas and Bloodys.
The Half Pint
76 W 3rd St
The Deal: $14 for Bloodys, mimosas, or brunch punch for the entire
duration of your meal. Bonus: they have a Bloody called "Mary's Got
Back" that's maple-bacon flavored.
West 3rd Common
1 W 3rd St
The Deal: $30 for a brunch item and unlimited Bloody Marys, mimosas, and screwdrivers from noon-4p.
5 and Diamond
2072 Frederick Douglass Boulevard
The Deal: $30 prix-fixe menu with unlimited mimosas from 11a-330p
Saturday, and 11a-4p Sunday. Plus, for an extra $2, you can turn those
mimosas into bourbon-Champagne cocktails for 1hr only.
Hudson River Cafe
697 W 133rd
The Deal: $25 for prix-fixe menu that includes one brunch item plus unlimited brunch cocktails for 1.5hrs.
Lido Harlem
2168 Frederick Douglass Blvd
The Deal: Bottomless mimosas for $13.
Epstein's Bar
82 Stanton Street
The Deal: From 11a-2p you get unlimited Bloodys, mimosas, screwdrivers, greyhounds, and an entree for $15.95.
La Flaca
384 Grand Street
The Deal: An entree and endless frozen margaritas, mimosas, sangria,
Marys, and La Flaca Amber Ale for 2hrs for $22 from noon-4p, every day
of the week.
Libation
137 Ludlow St
The Deal: $29 for unlimited Bloodys and mimosas, plus an entree, from noon-4p.
Macondo
157 East Houston
The Deal: $13 for bottomless mimosas in three flavors: blackberry mint, orange vanilla, and elderflower melon.
Preserve24
177 East Houston
The Deal: Add $15 to your meal for bottomless sangria, 11a-5p.
Rayuela
165 Allen Street
The Deal: $15 for bottomless sangria and punch. Also: they've got a DJ!!!
San Marzano
71 Clinton St
The Deal: An entree, coffee, and unlimited mimosas for $18.
The Sixth Ward
191 Orchard St
The Deal: For $15 you get unlimited Bloodys or mimosas for 2hrs.
Lasagna Ristorante
941 2nd Avenue
The Deal: $13 for an entree with an extra $10 for unlimited mimosas, bellinis, screwdrivers, or Bloodys from noon-4p.
Arte Cafe
106 W 73rd St
The Deal: $20 for unlimited mimosas, Champagne, screwdrivers, Bloodys,
strawberry sangria, or bellinis; available from from 11a-4p on weekends.
Calle Ocho
45 W 81st St
The Deal: Complimentary sangria is served throughout your brunch, but
they kindly ask you don't sit for an excessive amount of time, which is
apparently somewhere around 3hrs.
Jalapeno
185 Columbus Ave
The Deal: Complimentary unlimited sangria, Prosecco, mimosas, or Bloodys are served with a brunch item.
Regional
2607 Broadway
The Deal: If you buy a brunch item and one mimosa or Bloody Mary, you get refills on it fo' free.
Agave
140 7th Avenue South
The Deal: They've got a prix-fixe menu for $24.95 that includes 2hrs of unlimited margaritas, mimosas, or wine.
Diablo Royale
189 W 10th St
The Deal: $26 for unlimited mimosas or Bloodys, and your entree is included.
Garage Restaurant and Cafe
99 7th Avenue S
The Deal: $22.95 for a brunch entree and infinity mimosas, Bloodys, and
screwdrivers, BUT everyone in your party has to do it, and there's a 1hr
time limit.
Gusto Ristorante
60 Greenwich Avenue
The Deal: $22 for all-you-can-drink mimosas, bellinis, & Bloody Marys for 1hr.
Havana Alma de Cuba
94 Christopher St
The Deal: $10.95 gets you unlimited Spanish-style cocktails for 2hrs, available from 11a-4p.
La Camelia
64 Downing St
The Deal: $25 gets you your choice of entree and never-stop-pouring bellinis, house wine, or mimosas.
La Carbonara
202 W 14th St
The Deal: 2hrs unlimited Bloodys, screwdrivers, mimosas, or Champagne for $16.95.
Philip Marie
569 Hudson St
The Deal: $24.95 scores you your meal along with unlimited mimosas or Bloodys for 1.5hrs.
Sotto 13
140 W 13th St
The Deal: If everyone at the table gets the deal, you get two tapas and
one side plate OR a wood-fired pizza, with your 1.5hrs of unlimited
brunch cocktails for $29. Totally simple, right?
Supercore
305 Bedford Avenue
The Deal: $20 gets you an entree and bottomless drinks like sake Bloody
Marys, Sapporo with lemon/ginger, and honey sake mimosas.
