In case you missed this, my colleague Michael Calderone stopped by a party last night in Manhattan hosted by News Corp, where Michael Bloomberg presidential buzz was in the air.

From Newsweek senior editor Lally Weymouth's introduction:

“Everybody in New York that I know thinks he’s a brilliant mayor, and everyone thinks he would be a brilliant president.”

But the line of the night unquestionably goes to Fox News executive Roger Ailes, who is upset that the Democrats won't participate in a presidential debate co-sponsored by Fox.

“The candidates that can’t face Fox, can’t face Al Qaeda,” he said. “And that’s what’s coming.”

Hillary pulled ahead of Rudy Giuliani and John McCain in a Newsweek poll.

The Washington Post takes a lengthy look at Giuilani's presidential bid.

Alan Hevesi's lawyers are in negotiations with the Albany County District Attorney.

Joe Mahoney reports that the indictment could come today.

And Herman Badillo said that education is not a high priority in the Hispanic Community.

Obama has a lot of potential but remains something of a mystery, according to New York magazine.

John Edwards is still the front-runner in Iowa.

Bloomberg is the Daily News's New Yorker of the Year.

Rudy Giuliani will headline a political event in California in February.

There is talk of Randi Weingarten possibly heading the national teacher's union.

Hillary is meeting with New York Democrats to talk about 2008.

Some people wonder if Hillary can win in 2008.

John McCain's counter-intuitive call for more troops in Iraq may be "reminding independents of the maverick they fell in love with in 2000," according to Newsweek.

The Democrats' secret weapon of 2006 is revealed: Blake Zeff.

Some Times reporters are reportedly banned from reading Manhattan weekly newspapers.

And could wikis and blogs prevent the next 9/11?

The mayor has better relations with minorities than during the police shooting of Amadou Diallo seven years ago.

Two Council members have called on the police commissioner to resign.

An advocacy group wants congestion pricing in the city.

Political parties can now spend money during primaries in New York.

Eliot Spitzer will get to fill at least two upcoming vacancies on the state's highest court.

Al Gore told Time magazine that despite traveling by jet to promote his global warming lecture, he does live eco-friendly.

Time magazine simply asks whether a Mormon can be president.

"Under his rule, Iraqis were shot, tortured, and lived in constant fear. Bringing the dictator back would sound cruel if it weren't for the fact that all those things are also happening now, probably on a wider scale."

And Andrew Cuomo told Page Six that he asked Louis Freeh, a Clinton foe, to be on his transition team because of his legal expertise, not because of politics.

• New noodle shop spills onto the Lower East Side.
[Voice]
• Listen in on the Association of Realtors' convention.
[Newsweek]
• Hotel-condo turning office tower on 53rd Street.
[NY Post]
• Office tower plans for 55th Street and Eighth Avenue.
[NY Post]
• Union Square bank building going condo. [2nd item]
[NY Post]
• Parents protest Columbia's plans for Harlem charter school.
[NY Post]
• Renters sweat Second Avenue subway changes.
[NY Post]
• Citigroup may not be good for Mets stadium.
[NY Times]
• Security concerns may delay trade center site arts center.
[Daily News]
• Anger festers over Diamond District tower plan.
[Daily News]
• Apartments heading for former Upper West Side stables.
[NY Sun]

Did we miss any New York City real estate news this morning? Please send along tips and links.

]]> http://www.observer.com/node/35364#comments Real Estate Sports New York City New York Mets Newsweek Inc. The New York Times Company Wed, 15 Nov 2006 02:46:39 -0500 Observer Staff 35364 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/node/32551 Annie Leibovitz, the grand dame of Vogue, Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone covers, was the one facing flashbulbs. The other morning she gave a private press tour of her new show at the Brooklyn Museum.

"Walk slowly. Watch your cameras," she said. Microphone booms swung through the air, nearly knocking the photos off the wall. "Careful, we have lots of time," she said as she was followed.

Ms. Leibovitz has recently been profiled in Newsweek, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She has a new book, "Annie Leibovitz: A Photographers Life, 1990-2005," and a retrospective of her work that will travel the world.

"It was time to look back at my work," Ms. Leibovitz said. She wore a faded black button-up shirt, tapered black jeans, and heavy work boots. "It was like being on an archeological dig finding these pictures," she said.

One entire wall was snapshots of her family at the beach, her parents in bed, her children wet with afterbirth in the delivery room, and hotel rooms with rumpled bed sheets, Susan Sontag included.

On another wall Donald Trump sat in a sports car and a hugely pregnant Ivana sported a gold lame bikini on the stairs of a gigantic jet. A portrait of Colin Powell in full military regalia hung near the Clintons on election night.

Ms. Leibovitz said the idea for the exhibit "came out of a moment," when she faced the deaths of Sontag and her father, plus the birth of her twins, by a surrogate mother.

On one wall Sontag battles cancer in a hospital bed, another shows her being wheeled on a gurney to a private plane in Seattle to be air-evacuated to a hospital in New York. A small print in a corner shows Sontag's corpse at a funeral home. She is dressed in Italian silk.

In "On Photography," Sontag had written: "To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have.""

With every photo, regardless of the narrative, it's clear that sometimes Ms. Leibovitz was an intruder in her own life. The exhibit, which gives such a remarkable window into Ms. Leibovitz's private world, also shows the limits of that view.

Ms. Leibovitz said that she enjoys how her magazine assignments create a sense of history, but that her personal work is her strongest work, in fact because she is know to her subjects.

"Most people don't like to have their picture taken," Ms. Leibovitz said. "They have to confront themselves." Every photo involves problem solving. "It's never easy."

And with that, Ms. Leibovitz left the room, accompanied by two women in black suits. "I mean, you wouldn't expect anything less," said a reporter, who wore a sticker that read Panarama. "She's a living legend." — Kaija Helmetag]]> http://www.observer.com/node/32551#comments O2 Annie Leibovitz Newsweek Inc. Susan Sontag Vanity Fair Magazine Sun, 29 Oct 2006 18:21:34 -0500 Observer Staff 32551 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/node/33397 I thought Lamont won, but then I'm crazed about Iraq. My wife and Imus both said that Lieberman won. He seemed far more rounded as a person. Imus called Lamont a pencil-neck.

But if Lieberman won, he damaged himself among the engaged, like myself. As Howard Fineman of Newsweek said on Imus, Lieberman seemed angry and rattled. He's in real trouble, and knows it.

Fineman also made a revealing statement: Lieberman had shown "courage" in voting for the Iraq war. This is the conventional wisdom now in Washington, where as Paul Krugman said so beautifully, To be credible on national security, you have to have been wrong about Iraq.

Why is it the conventional wisdom? Because all the columnists were for this war and they're still covering their asses now that even blockheads are questioning their judgment. As Fineman said in his role as a cheerleader in 2003 (per FAIR): "We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back." Well, I remember disunity. I remember people saying, Not in my name.

Courage wasn't going along with a foolish idea that would alienate the Arab world and turn Iraq into a terrorist-breeding hellhole, it was opposing it. Ned Lamont's riding that wave.]]> http://www.observer.com/node/33397#comments Ned Lamont Newsweek Inc. Paul Krugman Fri, 07 Jul 2006 09:33:26 -0400 Observer Staff 33397 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/node/33157 One of the chapters left out of yesterday's Times obit of Rosenthal was his treatment of gay staff members when he was managing editor and executive editor. Gay people say he was oppressive.

"It was the presumption of everyone at the Times that in order to have any possibility of being promoted or getting anywhere if you were gay you had to stay in the closet," says Charles Kaiser, a former clerk to Rosenthal.

In his book, The Gay Metropolis (and in his obit for the Observer), Kaiser reported that Rosenthal had blocked Walter Clemons from becoming a daily book critic at the Times in 1971 after conducting an informal investigation of his homosexuality. (Clemons went to Newsweek). Another writer whose career he damaged was Richard Meislin, a former favorite. Meislin was a foreign correspondent in Mexico City when Rosenthal learned that he was gay. (By one report, Meislin had brought his Mexican boyfriend into the newsroom on a visit home. Rosenthal asked others who the man was. Ka-boom!)

Michelangelo Signorile wrote in the Advocate in 1992:

Staffers say he chastised two editors for not telling him previously that Meislin was a homosexual. Rosenthal apparently decided that Meislin, as a homosexual, shouldn't represent the Times in Mexico and eventually pulled him back, though Meislin was doing what some editors consider to be exemplary work.

Meislin was not assigned another foreign post or sent to Washington, D.C., which would be a usual next step. Instead, he was brought back to the New York newsroom to do a job he hated. "What kept me from leaving the paper," says Meislin, "was that one of the [other] editors took me in his office and said, 'We know you've been screwed, but don't do anything rash. You have a long career ahead of you, and Rosenthal will be leaving soon.'"

Meislin declines to comment. Though he himself wrote about Rosenthal in a piece about the late Doug Schmalz published inthe Media Studies Journal:

Like most gay people whose careers overlapped A.M. Rosenthal's tenure as the Times' top editor, Schmalz had hidden his sexual orientation from most of his superiors as he rose for nearly two decades through the newsroom ranks.

Kaiser notes that when he criticized the Times in a piece he wrote for Newsweek (about the Times protecting Rosenthal's friend Jerzy Kosinski during a fabrication scandal), Rosenthal lashed out at him everywhere, virtually outing him. "He said I had written the piece because I was gay, and that all my sources must have been gay. As a matter of fact none of my sources was gay, but at a meeting he said that he was going to summon every gay employee at the paper to find out whether they had been my source. He didn't do so. But half the world then knew I was gay. My stance then was, 'Don't ask, don't tell.' I was furious at the time, but looking back on it, he did me a big favor. Once you're out, it's a lot easier."

As soon as Rosenthal left, the paper's culture changed. When Max Frankel succeeded Rosenthal, he had an understanding with Times publisher Arthur M. Sulzberger Jr. to change the climate for gays. "It was the most important thing Max did," Kaiser says. "The Times went from being the most homophobic major institution in America to being the most gay friendly major institution in America." In his memoir, Frankel writes proudly of finally getting the word "gay" into the Times after years in which Rosenthal had forbidden its use.]]> http://www.observer.com/node/33157#comments A.M. Rosenthal Doug Schmalz Newsweek Inc. Richard Meislin Fri, 12 May 2006 11:31:40 -0400 Observer Staff 33157 at http://www.observer.com http://www.observer.com/node/33079 This morning on Meet the Press, Tim Russert had a table of religious experts and at the end said they just had enough time for each of them to give a twenty second message for people on Easter. Well, then the pastor on the remote said something about Jesus, Professor Seyed Hossein Nasr said something about common religious values the world over, Rabbi Michael Lerner said something about getting past nationalistic ideas of faith, Sister Joan Chittister said a few inspiring words about Growing with god, and then the Rev. Richard John Neuhaus, a neoconservative, rattled on and on about God giving up his only son Jesus and what this means to all religions... He went on for a long time, over 30 seconds. So when Russert turned to the last guy on the panel, Jon Meacham of Newsweek, he had to apologize, but they were out of time.

Neuhaus had left out a basic spiritual value, unselfishness.

]]> http://www.observer.com/node/33079#comments Joan Chittister Jon Meacham Newsweek Inc. Tim Russert Mon, 17 Apr 2006 00:15:23 -0400 Observer Staff 33079 at http://www.observer.com