Tonight the Tibet Fund throws itself a bash at Le Cirque—with the help of Eric Ripert. The chef of Le Bernardin (a venue that apparently was already booked!), and others like chef Laurent Manrique of Millesime and Jeremy McMillan, chef at friend-of-Tibet Richard Gere’s upstate eatery, are to cook five courses for guests. The whole Read More
On the morning of Wednesday, Sept. 20, the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, was hovering on a dais inside a Catskills conference center, wrapped in the swaddling robes of fame, love and audience expectations. In front of him, a throng of scientists and seeker types sat awed and silent—and in some cases praying—while the event’s Read More
At the risk of blowing a good thing—you know, like when The New York Times runs a feature on a restaurant or neighborhood, thereby increasing its visibility and making it difficult for the rest of us to enjoy a good meal or even live in New York City—I have to recommend a trip to the Read More
Today marked the historic first debate between the four Democratic candidates for Mayor.
Well, actually, there were only three candidates at the Hunter College event, as Freddy bagged it. And they just gave their stump speeches and answered questions. And, oh, Virginia didn’t actually give a speech.
There were, according to the official Read More
The actress Bai Ling was in town for three days to do a fashion shoot for Saks Fifth Avenue. She’s got a reputation as a party girl; people ask, “Exactly what does Bai Ling do ?” (For starters, she plays a lesbian fashion designer in Spike Lee’s new movie, She Hate Me , opening in Read More
Sunnyside, Queens, may be as remote as Tibet for the average Manhattanite, but for Tibetan exile Yungchen Lhamo, it’s the cozy center of life. For a woman born under the brutal, and ongoing, Chinese occupation of Tibet, Sunnyside offers security, economic prosperity and religious freedom-not to mention international acclaim for her singing. It was a Read More
Sometimes shock therapy is good for us. For 10 years, since
the Gulf War, the United States under the first George Bush and Bill Clinton
wandered in search of a foreign policy. Since we seemed to face no serious
threats, the quest had a frivolous air, as of a Talk magazine account of the travails Read More
Martin Scorsese’s Kundun needs no hype from me; a month after it opened, the lines still stretch around the corner at the neighborhood movie house where it is playing. It is a movie with the rare merit, for a film in a historical or exotic setting, of presenting a world that is authentically strange, not Read More
When foreign dictators are invited to Washington to enjoy the honor and prestige of a state visit, their arrival is usually preceded by the promotion of a geopolitical theory that soothes any moral concerns. That was how they did it in the bad old days of Ronald Reagan and Jeane Kirkpatrick, who drew careful distinctions Read More
A few weeks before Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Washington, I was talking with an old-style liberal anti-communist: a man who was a Democrat in domestic and social matters, but who had decried the Soviet Union all the years of the Cold War. I began to doubt it, though, when he warmed to his theme, Read More
