How Chelsea Clinton Took Charge of Clintonworld

August 11, 2015August 11, 2015 Cory

After growing up in a scandal-rocked White House, Chelsea Clinton shunned the spotlight for close to a decade. But, at 35, she is helping run the family’s $2 billion foundation while controversy swirls around its funding and her mother’s second presidential campaign. Evgenia Peretz reports on the path to power of a former—and perhaps future—First Daughter.

She didn’t exactly set the stage on fire, but she was still, it seemed, the highlight of everyone’s day. In June, in Manhattan, 35-year-old Chelsea Clinton, vice-chair of the Clinton Foundation, looking understated-chic in a silk blouse, held court at the United Nations about the global problem of fathers’ being disengaged from their children. She used no notes and moved her gaze back and forth across a room full of rapt nonprofit leaders and policymakers as she shared her passion for numbers and data. “We often say at the foundation that data helps measure progress, but it also helps drive progress. And that’s why I think this report [State of the World’s Fathers] is so tremendously important.” She rattled off facts about the benefits of engaged fathers and introduced the audience to “Abenomics,” a recent Japanese theory for stimulating economic growth. In what has become customary in her public addresses, she brought the issue around to the personal, mentioning her then eight-month-old daughter, Charlotte, and her husband, 37-year-old hedge-fund manager Marc Mezvinsky: “I’m so grateful for his dedication, his support, his love, and the investments that he makes in our daughter every single day.”

The U.N. speech was no big deal for Chelsea, mind you. In the past few months she has accompanied her father and 20 wealthy foundation donors to Africa, capped off by a Clinton Global Initiative conference in Marrakech; visited Haiti; and hit the TV talk shows to tout the foundation’s “No Ceilings” project, an online report that gathered more than “a million data points” about the state of girls and women in the world. With Jimmy Kimmel she demonstrated not only her impressive grasp of the issue but also her new breezy rapport with friendly interviewers.

In addition, she spoke at a June tribute to the late fashion great Oscar de la Renta, referring to him “as my friend and as the man I would have chosen for my grandfather had God granted me such a gift.” In 2014 she received Glamour’s Woman of the Year award. During an interview with her following the ceremony, a beaming Katie Couric concluded that Chelsea was also, “I think it’s safe to say, probably a Mom of the Year.”

Gone is the Chelsea who tried to blend in as just another Stanford-educated grind. She has fully embraced being a Clinton and is now deliberately, willfully, on the road to greatness. She recently admitted that running for office one day is “absolutely” a possibility. Like every aspiring political-office holder, she found time in the busiest possible moment in life (in her case the first year of motherhood) to write a book: It’s Your World: Get Informed, Get Inspired & Get Going! And, most important, two and a half years ago she put her name alongside those of her parents at their foundation, which has raised some $2 billion since its inception and is now called the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation.

This was no vanity move. Those who work with her at the foundation attest to her almost daunting intelligence, her diligence, and her genuine dedication to the job. But the question of whether Chelsea can lead remains to be seen, and if ever there were a moment to show some creative vision, it would be now. Never before has the Clinton Foundation come under such scrutiny—for the donations from foreign governments it received while Hillary was secretary of state; for those it continues to receive as she runs for president; and for the extremely large speaking fees that both Bill (up to $1 million) and Hillary (up to $500,000) have been collecting from foreign governments, corporations, colleges, and even small charities. Whether or not our global policies have been shaped by who gave what to the Clinton Foundation is nearly impossible to prove, but nevertheless there’s a perception problem, and scrutiny of the foundation’s fund-raising practices will grow only more intense should Hillary become president.

The problem is now Chelsea’s too. And yet, despite her vaunted position, she has been shielded from having to answer. Her spokesman, Kamyl Bazbaz, guided Vanity Fair to sources for this article, but Chelsea declined to be interviewed. Questions put to the foundation about her position on the fund-raising issue were redirected. Her television appearances have been strictly in friendly venues. Interviews with print media have been limited to discreet, non-controversial topics, such as her initiative to stop elephant poaching. Recently, when ABC News anchor Juju Chang found a moment to ask her about the fund-raising allegations, she did so apologetically (“I would be remiss if I didn’t ask … ”) and allowed Chelsea to sidestep the question.

Except among members of right-wing media, the idea of making Chelsea Clinton uncomfortable feels wrong. Our national instinct is to protect and revere her—to treat her more like royal progeny than an adult who has taken on a position of global consequence. The coddling is not simply because she’s the daughter of two political superstars who are loved and feared and protected by their own omertà—although that’s certainly part of it. It’s also because we witnessed the public humiliation she went through as a teenager by virtue of being President Clinton’s daughter, and because, in spite of all that, she appears to have emerged as a decent, serious young woman. The resilience was moving. As Anne Hubert, a friend from Stanford and now a Viacom executive, puts it, “People are rooting for Chelsea. They want her to be doing well.”

Our national sympathy for Chelsea is rooted in our image of her as a kid who exuded natural decency and earnestness. She was inculcated at an early age with the importance of world engagement. Before she could read, her parents read to her from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. At the age of five, she wrote a letter to Ronald Reagan questioning his planned, much-disputed visit to a German military cemetery that contained some Nazi graves. Todd S. Purdum, who then covered President Clinton for The New York Times (and is now a Vanity Fair contributing editor), recalls Bill’s mother, Virginia Kelley, showing Chelsea’s letter to him. “Dear President Reagan, I have seen The Sound of Music. The Nazis don’t look very nice to me. Please don’t go to their cemetary [sic].”

Despite the Clintons’ wish for their daughter to have a normal childhood, their will to change the world superseded everything. They sought to prepare her for the ugly realities that would come with that. As Hillary revealed in her 1996 book, It Takes a Village, when Bill was running for his second term as governor of Arkansas, the family did role-playing exercises at dinner. Six-year-old Chelsea played Bill, and he hurled insults in her face about what a terrible person he was. She ended up in tears the first night, but “she gradually gained mastery over her emotions,” recalled Hillary. She would need that skill. When Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992, he requested that Chelsea remain off limits to the media. Most respected his wish, but she endured cruel barbs from Rush Limbaugh,Saturday Night Live, and John McCain that targeted her awkward teenage looks. Throughout, she remained a model of perfect manners. Purdum recalls a dinner in 1995 in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to celebrate the birthday of one of Hillary’s aides. “Someone from the Park Service gave Chelsea a commemorative Smokey Bear doll, and she was not going to leave that restaurant until she got the name and address of the person to whom she should send a thank-you note,” he recalls. “She also asked me what she owed for the pizza.”

But who could ever have imagined a more daunting challenge to filial steadfastness than her father’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky? Rumors about the president’s affair were brewing at the tail end of 1997, during Chelsea’s freshman year at Stanford. An observer recalls that Chelsea’s demeanor drastically changed—“from that friendly girl to being shut down and frozen.” After learning the truth, Chelsea was “confused and hurt,” wrote Hillary in Living History, and froze her father out for a time. Bill was tortured by the effect it had on her, and cried when he learned that she had read the Starr Report, which included sexual details of his dalliance. She relied on family friends and those at Stanford for support. Among them was her future husband, Marc Mezvinsky, a popular self-described “nerdy Jewish boy from Philly.” He, too, understood something about personal sacrifice for the Clintons’ greater good: His mother, Marjorie Margolies, had been a congresswoman when President Clinton’s controversial 1993 tax bill came up for a vote. The president made a personal plea to her, and she voted yes—going against promises made to her constituents and knowing it would likely cause her to lose her seat. Marc “was always someone Chelsea really turned to and leaned on,” recalls Hubert.

In the wake of the scandal, Chelsea did exactly what her parents had conditioned her to do: swallow the pain and soldier on. “She’s one of the strongest people I know,” says Elsa Collins, another Stanford friend, who is married to former N.B.A. player Jarron Collins. In the summer of that year, when the world wondered whether Bill and Hillary were headed for divorce, Chelsea played a key role in showing they would pull through. As they crossed the lawn to Marine One for the cameras, Bill walked with his head bowed; Hillary, wearing sunglasses, was erect and expressionless; Chelsea was in the middle holding their hands. She was the glue holding the family together and keeping the higher purpose alive. Her father’s gratitude was boundless. As a longtime Clinton associate puts it, “When you have an affair with the intern, you end up paying for it for the rest of your life.”

The first thing Chelsea wanted to do, understandably, was to get as far away from her parents’ psychodrama as possible. She “deliberately tried to lead a private life,” she recalled in a 2012 interview with Vogue. She headed to Oxford, where she earned a master’s degree in philosophy. When her father first tried to get her involved in his fledgling foundation, even in small ways—to put her name on invitations or show up at events—she rebuffed him, according to foundation sources. After graduating, in what she has described as an act of “rebellion,” she chose the least do-gooder job possible: management consultant at McKinsey & Company, infamous for advising corporations to fire large numbers of people. When that didn’t satisfy her, she tried out Wall Street, getting a job as an analyst at Avenue Capital Group, a hedge fund owned by Marc Lasry, who is worth $1.9 billion and has been a major financial backer of both President Clinton’s and Hillary’s. Ultimately, she left that too, explaining later that “[money] wasn’t the metric I wanted to judge my life by in a professional sense.” She went back to school—this time to get a master’s degree in public health from Columbia. Unlike most twentysomethings, she seemed not to be hamstrung by indecisiveness or self-doubt. “She never had any real angst about it,” says Elsa Collins. “I think she wanted to make sure that she explored all the avenues that were of interest to her.” At Columbia, she impressed Michael Sparer, the head of the department, who made her an adjunct professor. “She was extremely available to the students,” he says, “very unpretentious, very low-key.”

In late 2007, when Hillary was preparing for the primaries, 27-year-old Chelsea stepped into the national spotlight, speaking at campuses and town halls as a surrogate for her mother. Though she could hold her own onstage, those inside Clintonworld were insistent on protecting her, as if she were still a teenager in the White House: her mother’s campaign sent out the message to the press that they were not to talk to her. Those who defied it learned there were consequences.

In early 2008, David Shuster, then an MSNBC reporter, found himself near her at an event and tried to ask a few questions. He wasn’t surprised that she declined to speak with him—that was her prerogative. What did surprise him was getting warning calls 24 hours later from the campaign telling him Chelsea was off limits. Shuster recalls saying, “Look, she handled herself just fine. I respected her desire not to talk. But what’s wrong with you guys, feeling like you need to protect her or beat me up for asking questions?” The campaign responded that she was still the daughter of the president, and that was that.

But soon Shuster would find his job in peril. A few nights later he engaged in a typical breezy on-air exchange about Chelsea’s role in the campaign, and remarked that it seemed she’d been “pimped out” by the campaign. It was a terrible choice of words, to be sure. The campaign called for his head, making calls to Steve Capus, the head of NBC News, and to executives at General Electric (then NBC’s parent company), accusing Shuster of having called Chelsea a prostitute. Hillary issued a statement essentially demanding that Shuster be fired, and the campaign threatened to boycott an upcoming debate that was to air live on NBC. Under pressure from his bosses, Shuster wrote an e-mail apology and sent it to Howard Wolfson, Hillary’s communications director, to pass on to Chelsea. Shuster says he followed up with a call, in which Wolfson informed him that he had received the apology, but wouldn’t be forwarding it to Chelsea—no reason given. (Wolfson says he has no recollection of the call.) NBC suspended Shuster for two weeks and denied him any future Clinton stories. It was a warning to journalists: Chelsea needed to be handled with kid gloves.

More special privileges were in store—courtesy of a father who, some say, was still trying to make up for his sins. Her 2010 wedding to Mezvinsky (since graduation he had worked at Goldman Sachs and then at 3G Capital hedge fund) took place in upstate New York, in front of some 400 guests in a ceremony that reportedly cost $3 million. The next year Mezvinsky, along with two of his former Goldman Sachs colleagues, raised $400 million for their own hedge fund, Eaglevale, with significant investments coming from several longtime Clinton friends and supporters, including Lasry, British investment banker Jacob Rothschild, and Goldman Sachs C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein. According to a longtime Clinton associate, Mezvinsky has made the most of the events sponsored by the family’s foundation, such as “celebrity poker nights,” which are prime hunting ground for potential clients. In 2013, Bill and Hillary helped the couple buy a 5,000-square-foot apartment for $9.25 million in Manhattan’s Flatiron District, says a Clinton associate. (Chelsea Clinton’s publicist denies this.)

Under the circumstances it must have been easy not to care about money, as Chelsea claims not to. According to Anne Hubert, Chelsea and Marc’s social circle is “as broad and diverse as New York is a place” in that it includes people in finance, tech, media, law, the arts, and global health. Among the boldfaced names are Burberry designer Christopher Bailey, chef David Chang, and Ivanka Trump and her husband, New York Observer owner Jared Kushner. When Hubert is asked if the couple is friends with anyone poor or unemployed, she laughs as if the question must be a joke. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

In the view of the family matriarch—Chelsea’s late grandmother Dorothy Rodham, a spitfire from hardscrabble beginnings, whom Chelsea adored—having the last name and the perks weren’t enough, however. The family had a “responsibility gene” and it was time for Chelsea to take a seat at the table. Chelsea got to work, methodically trying to figure out how to become a public person with a purpose. She consulted with Hubert, whose Viacom division is aimed at millennials, about potential “platforms.”

Chelsea set her sights on two jobs that seemed totally at odds with what she’d wanted fresh out of college: board member of one of the Clinton Foundation’s initiatives, and network news correspondent. For the latter she landed, of all places, at NBC, where she was hired to do segments for NBC News and Brian Williams’s new television newsmagazine show, Rock Center. She would enter this public arena armed with personnel: a chief of staff, an assistant, and an outside P.R. team to craft her image and manage her social media. “She’s the most deliberate human being I know,” says a former colleague at the foundation. “Nothing is by accident”—not surprising, perhaps, when one recalls her family did polling about the name of their new dog. Those tasked with managing her public persona would face an uphill battle in making her sound less programmed and more authentic.

Her stint at NBC was a disaster, perhaps because it ran so contrary to her instincts. “Most of us were baffled [by the hire], because she never even spoke to the press,” says an NBC veteran. “She’d walk by with the imperial stare, looking forward, and interacted not at all.” The feeling inside NBC was that she had been hired to maintain access to and curry favor with the Clintons. When news broke that she had been getting paid $600,000—for a part-time job—NBC staffers were appalled. Most full-time correspondents were being paid far less. The big salary was predicated on the idea that she was already a star, and according to an insider, she started acting like one. Colleagues felt they couldn’t communicate with her directly. Instead, they had to go through her people. And she was hardly present in the office. “There was a joke inside the building that she was the ‘highest-paid ghost’ at NBC,” says a network source. It all might have been excused had she been any good. In the span of nearly three years, however, she filed only a handful of segments—all painfully stiff reports on global do-gooders, plus an attempted comic interview with the Geico Gecko. As the insider puts it, “NBC has made a lot of bad decisions in the last few years, but hiring Chelsea has to be very near the top.”

Getting the big title at the Clinton Foundation was viewed by many, naturally, as yet another unearned opportunity handed to Chelsea by virtue of her last name. But it was also a place where she could prove her grit. When she arrived, in 2011, her father’s prayers were answered. It was a sign, perhaps, that all was forgiven and that his legacy would be secured through his daughter. Says a former foundation employee, “People were very excited to see a succession plan take hold.” Like all things involving Bill Clinton, the foundation was both awe-inspiring and messy. What began at the end of his presidency as a modest nonprofit founded in Little Rock, Arkansas, was now a fund-raising juggernaut, thanks to the Clintons’ star power and ability to get heads of state, C.E.O.’s, leaders in philanthropy, and rock and movie stars to donate large sums to his foundation. Today there are nine initiatives (plus two associated projects) that target some of the most difficult problems around the globe. Among its most important has been providing affordable H.I.V. drugs to 9.9 million people in Africa.

But its very success created problems. The foundation grew so quickly it could hardly contain itself. By the time Chelsea arrived, there were more than 2,000 employees. There was no working infrastructure, no endowment or investment plan. Despite the large sums coming in, the foundation had reported an on-paper deficit of $40 million for 2007 and 2008, which Clinton later explained was a misleading accounting illusion. It was still being run by Clinton’s chief advisers from the White House days: Bruce Lindsey (the C.E.O.) and Ira Magaziner (vice-chair), and to some it still felt like the White House, with egos running amok and, according to a former colleague of Chelsea’s, “regular staffers who were not in the habit of challenging them.” There was intense concern about Doug Band, Clinton’s longtime “body man” and surrogate son, who’d come up with the idea for the Clinton Global Initiative (C.G.I.), the glamorous conference that became the centerpiece of the foundation. While still running C.G.I., Band co-founded Teneo, a corporate-consulting business, which came to be seen as too intertwined with and reliant on the president and his connections. The foundation was tarnished by some of the less attractive characters Band was bringing into its orbit, such as Raffaello Follieri—the Italian con man who was then dating Anne Hathaway.

Some control was clearly needed. And Chelsea started off with a McKinsey-esque bang—by helping to initiate an outside audit. “It was a very authoritarian action for someone who came in at day one,” says the former foundation employee. “The feeling was: we’re being audited—never a good word—because we’re doing something wrong. We wondered, Are our jobs at risk? That’s not a comfortable feeling for many people who’ve been dedicating their lives to the foundation.” The audit called for better management and budgeting policies. Lindsey was replaced as C.E.O. by Chelsea’s pick—Eric Braverman, with whom she had worked at McKinsey, and Magaziner’s job was greatly reduced. (Braverman left the foundation in January of this year over reported power struggles within the organization; Donna Shalala, Clinton’s secretary of health and human services, is now C.E.O.) Of the 13 financial-advisory firms that applied, the job of investing the foundation’s money went to Summit Rock, where Chelsea’s close friend Nicole Davison Fox is a managing director. (Her husband works with Mezvinsky.) It was felt in some quarters that Chelsea, who hadn’t paid her dues—by, say, spending real time in Africa, or cutting her teeth at one of the programs—was coming in and throwing her weight around. Lindsey and others complained to President Clinton but to no avail. “He has no ability to say no to her,” says a source familiar with the shake-ups.

For all the grumblings about nepotism, others believe that Chelsea is just the enforcer the foundation needed. Under her leadership, the various branches, once physically separated, were consolidated under one roof, and systems were put in place for the once disparate initiatives to communicate more effectively. The foundation rebuilt the board and started using data for measuring success. “We are now very conscientious about ensuring that we incorporate data, [that] we’re measuring, and that we’re actually making course adjustments based on that,” says Maura Pally, senior V.P. of programs. “The ethos that Chelsea has really helped instill here is that, as you evaluate, if the answer isn’t ‘This is a perfect program’ that’s not a failure but rather a learning opportunity.” Around the office, teeming with people in their 20s and 30s, Chelsea’s mastery of information spurs people to keep on their toes. Pally says, “I would spend tons of time trying to get myself up to speed on certain things, and Chelsea’s doing so many different things and yet would blow me out of the water with what she had read about somewhere and analyzed and synthesized and spit back out in a completely compelling, accessible way.” Julianne Guariglia, who works across all of the initiatives, attests to Chelsea’s compassion when she talks with victims and survivors.

While the reports about her leadership are mixed, the more pertinent questions, as her mother runs for president, concern the foundation’s fund-raising practices, which have come under intense scrutiny in the past few months. In 2008, when Hillary was offered the position of secretary of state, an agreement was reached between the Clintons and the Obama transition team that C.G.I. would cease accepting new donations from foreign governments and that the Clinton Foundation would report all donors on an annual basis. We now know those terms weren’t honored: for example, the Health Access Initiative failed to disclose its contributors. Making things murkier, the foundation continued accepting donations from foreign individuals, their foundations, and companies, including a member of the Saudi royal family and a Ukrainian oligarch—more than a dozen in total, which added up to between $34 million and $68 million during the years when Hillary was secretary of state, according to The Wall Street Journal. After Hillary stepped down, the board, which includes Chelsea, voted to resume accepting all foreign-government donations. (Now that Hillary has announced her candidacy, the foundation has limited the number of foreign governments from which it will accept money to six: Australia, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and the U.K., though all governments can participate in C.G.I.)

While these donations raise questions about foreign influence, the Clintons’ lucrative speaking careers have raised questions of simple good taste. Since 2001 the family has made more than $130 million in speaking engagements. Bill puts roughly a tenth of his fees into the foundation; Hillary, somewhat more. More than $11 million in speaking and appearance engagements have come from relatively small charities—the Happy Hearts Foundation, the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach, among others—which have discovered that having a Clinton in the house comes at a hefty price. Consider the case of model Petra Nemcova’s Happy Hearts Foundation, which rebuilds schools hit by natural disasters. Sue Veres Royal, the former executive director, recalls trying, at Nemcova’s behest, to book the president for the annual gala—it took more than a year. “Petra was told by the foundation that they don’t look at anything unless there’s money involved,” recalls Royal. The cost was $500,000 in the form of a donation to the Clinton Foundation for use in Haiti—a big chunk of Happy Hearts’ overall net assets of $3.9 million. But in this case the bet didn’t pay off—in part, says Royal, because “no attempt was made from anyone at the Clinton Foundation to invite anyone,” and she was asked to comp Clinton friends, such as billionaire Marc Lasry, who, according to Royal, never made a donation. (Lasry declined to comment.)

Fund-raising, Clinton-style, has always been a seamy subject, and it seems Chelsea’s team has tried to keep her out of dirty waters. When it comes to her speaking fees—which have spiked to the low six figures—she’s taken the high road and arranges for 100 percent to go to the foundation. (Neither she nor her father receives a salary from the foundation.) The larger question concerns the future: What happens if Hillary wins the presidency? Would the potential for conflicts of interest simply be too great for the foundation to sustain itself? According to foundation spokesman Craig Minassian, “We’re very focused on what we’re doing today and implementing the work.” In the opinion of Fred Wertheimer, a prominent activist for government integrity and head of the watchdog group Democracy 21, “If Hillary Clinton is elected president, all three Clintons should cut their ties with the foundation for as long as she’s president.”

It sounds Draconian. Then again, it’s almost impossible to imagine Chelsea forgoing the chance to have a major hand in her mother’s administration. As a source close to the Clintons points out, “The ultimate foundation is the U.S. government, so why would you toil with a foundation on the side?”

Lindsey Graham References Monica Lewinsky To Hit Hillary Clinton (VIDEO)

August 11, 2015August 11, 2015 Cory

ByCAITLIN MACNEALPublishedAUGUST 4, 2015, 6:57 AM EDT6173 Views

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Monday night took a hit at former President Bill Clinton while trying to attack Hillary Clinton’s credibility.

While discussing threats to the United States at a candidate forum in New Hampshire, Graham said that Hillary Clinton is “the last person in the world you want to send into the arena with the Russians.”

Lindsey Graham Takes A Jab At Bill Clinton

“As to the Clintons, I’ve been dealing with this crowd for twenty years. I’m fluent in Clinton-speak,” he continued before pivoting to an attack on the Clintons’ integrity.

“When Bill says, ‘I didn’t have sex with that woman,’ he did,” Graham said. “When she tells us, ‘Trust me, you’ve got all the emails you need,’ we haven’t even scratched the surface.”

Watch the clip courtesy of the Huffington Post. Graham mentions the Clintons at the four minute mark.

OWN’s YouTube Partnership Pays Off With Digital Series (Exclusive)

August 28, 2014August 28, 2014 Cory

4:29 PM PST 08/27/2014 by Natalie Jarvey

Courtesy of OWN

‘Who Am I’

Celebrity guests will ask the question “Who am I?”

The Oprah Winfrey Network has been working out of YouTube Space LA for more than six months to experiment with digital formats and online talent. The result of that partnership is a growing slate of digital programming.

OWN plans to debut a new web series on Aug. 28 that will feature interviews with celebrity guests about the qualities that define them. After the first two episodes of Who Am I premiere this Thursday, subsequent two- to three-minute episodes will become available each week. Guests will include Nicole Richie, beauty vlogger Michelle Phan, Brandy, former American Idol judge Randy Jackson andLa Toya Jackson.

Who Am I is the second digital series from OWN. #OWNSHOW, a daily series that features stories from the Oprah community, debuted in March with the relaunch of Oprah.com, a digital hub for the network,O, The Oprah Magazine and Harpo Studios.

OWN’s senior vp digital Glenn Kaino tells The Hollywood Reporter that Who Am I and #OWNSHOWare part of a larger digital effort at the cable network.

“This is just the beginning of a strategy that we’re embarking upon to extend our offering and expand the mission of what we’re trying to accomplish,” he says. “It began with the relaunch of the website and the launch of the #OWNSHOW. As these projects mature, we’ll have a lot more planned.”

OWN is one of a handful of traditional media players who have taken advantage of the residency program that YouTube offers at its production space in Playa Vista and will work out of that space through the end of the year. The residency offers use of the space’s studios and production facilities for long-term projects to creators with more than 100,000 subscribers.

Liam Collins, head of YouTube Space LA, says that he’s impressed by the ways that OWN has programmed its YouTube channel, which has more than 300,000 subscribers, with content from across Winfrey’s various media properties.

“They’ll be a great beacon to other media companies I hope that have just all kinds of content on the shelf that could be really relevant to this audience,” he says. “Having them here experimenting is great. The idea that they’re in the same environment as all of these emerging creators is what really makes it for me.”

Kaino adds that OWN was motivated to take up residency at YouTube not for the free studio space but for the opportunity to connect with the online video streamer and its content creators.

“It’s important for us to make an effort and connect with our viewers where they’re at,” he says. “As we were developing our original content strategies, connecting with YouTube was a big part of that.”

Watch the trailer for Who Am I here:

Don’t Want Me to Recline My Airline Seat? You Can Pay Me

August 28, 2014August 28, 2014 Cory

AUG. 27, 2014

I fly a lot. When I fly, I recline. I don’t feel guilty about it. And I’m going to keep doing it, unless you pay me to stop.

I bring this up because of a dispute you may have heard about: On Sunday, a United Airlines flight from Newark to Denver made an unscheduled stop in Chicago to discharge two passengers who had a dispute over seat reclining. According to The Associated Press, a man in a middle seat installed the Knee Defender, a $21.95 device that keeps a seat upright, on the seatback in front of him.

A flight attendant asked him to remove the device. He refused. The woman seated in front of him turned around and threw water at him. The pilot landed the plane and booted both passengers off the flight.

Obviously, it’s improper to throw water at another passenger on a flight, even if he deserves it. But I’ve seen a distressing amount of sympathy for Mr. Knee Defender, who wasn’t just instigating a fight but usurping his fellow passenger’s property rights. When you buy an airline ticket, one of the things you’re buying is the right to use your seat’s reclining function. If this passenger so badly wanted the passenger in front of him not to recline, he should have paid her to give up that right.

Tight quarters can lead to misery for airline passengers. CreditJoe Giron for The New York Times

I wrote an article to that effect in 2011, noting that airline seats are an excellent case study for the Coase Theorem. This is an economic theory holding that it doesn’t matter very much who is initially given a property right; so long as you clearly define it and transaction costs are low, people will trade the right so that it ends up in the hands of whoever values it most. That is, I own the right to recline, and if my reclining bothers you, you can pay me to stop. We could (but don’t) have an alternative system in which the passenger sitting behind me owns the reclining rights. In that circumstance, if I really care about being allowed to recline, I could pay him to let me.

Donald Marron, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office,agrees with this analysis, but with a caveat. Recline negotiations do involve some transaction costs — passengers don’t like bargaining over reclining positions with their neighbors, perhaps because that sometimes ends with water being thrown in someone’s face.

Mr. Marron says we ought to allocate the initial property right to the person likely to care most about reclining, in order to reduce the number of transactions that are necessary. He further argues that it’s probably the person sitting behind, as evidenced by the fact people routinely pay for extra-legroom seats.

Mr. Marron is wrong about this last point. I understand people don’t like negotiating with strangers, but in hundreds of flights I have taken, I have rarely had anyone complain to me about my seat recline, and nobody has ever offered me money, or anything else of value, in exchange for sitting upright.

A no-recline norm would also have troubling social justice implications —for short people. Complaints about knee room are not spread equally across our society. They are voiced mostly by the tall, a privileged group that already enjoys many advantages. I don’t just mean they can see well at concerts and reach high shelves. Tall people earn more money than short people, an average of $789 per inch per year, according to a 2004 paper in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

The economists Anne Case and Christina Paxson advanced the theory that tall people earn more because they have higher I.Q.s. Taller men on the dating website OkCupid receive more messages from women and have more sex partners than their short counterparts.

Instead of counting their blessings, or buying extra-legroom seats with some of their extra income, the tall have the gall to demand that the rules of flying be reconfigured to their advantage, just as everything else in life already has been. Sometimes — one Upshot editor who shall remain nameless included — they even use the Knee Defender to steal from their fellow passengers.

Now that’s just wrong.

Washington, D.C., the Most-est Place in the Country

May 6, 2014May 6, 2014 Cory

The nation’s capital: It’s the richest, gayest, most educated, most expensive and most economically optimistic place in America.

You’ve heard some of those superlatives, right? Take them with a big grain of skepticism.

When government agencies or private research groups release state-by-state information, they often include the District of Columbia. That makes sense. Citizens of the district are part of this country (albeit without the same democratic rights as other citizens).

Number 9 Bar in Washington, D.C., is popular with gay men. CreditVanessa Vick for The New York Times

But even if Washington deserves a place on national lists alongside the 50 states, it isn’t very similar to any of them. It’s a city. And cities are, by and large, richer, gayer, more educated, more expensive and more economically optimistic. Take education. The typical ranking of states makes Washington look to be by far the most educated place in the country. About 50 percent of its residents have at least a bachelor’s degree. No state exceeds 40 percent. But a ranking of cities looks different: Washington still does very well, but is in third place, not first. Seattle (56 percent) and San Francisco (51 percent) are both more educated.

I suspect the Washington superlatives make the rounds because they’re easy to make, because the city is filled with journalists and because the comparisons feed the irresistible storyline of Washington-as-bizarre. But before we pronounce Washington special, for good or ill, it’s worth asking whether we’re fooled ourselves.

(I tip my Washington Nationals cap to Byron Tau of Politico, who had a succinct tweet on this issue Wednesday.)

Matt Miller Leads Wendy Greuel in Hollywood $$ for California Congress Seat (Exclusive)

May 6, 2014May 6, 2014 Cory

Photo illustration by Rebecca Rosenberg

TheWrap analyzes election records to determine which Hollywood players are giving to which candidate in Congressional campaign

The primary election to fill Henry Waxman’s Congressional seat isn’t until June 3, but so far California Democrat Matt Miller is winning the race for Hollywood’s pocketbook.

The Democratic contender pulled in nearly $30,000 more in campaign contributions from Hollywood power players than his nearest rival, Wendy Greuel, in the first quarter of 2014, according to TheWrap‘s analysis of Federal Election Commission filings.

Greuel once worked for DreamWorks and was considered Hollywood’s favored candidate. She also has the benefit of name recognition due to her failed mayoral race against Eric Garcetti.

Miller, a political columnist and radio host, drew $67,900 from figures including A-list writer-producer Roberto Orci; former studio executive Sherry Lansing; and J.J. Abrams, who also donated a lesser amount to Greuel’s campaign.

Though Greuel received 60 percent of Miller’s Hollywood contributions — $41,000 — the former Los Angeles City Controller leads the Democratic race overall with $672,215 in non-loan donations.

Marianne Williamson, an Independent candidate, has so far appealed to Hollywood mainstays like Nancy Sinatra and actress Dana Delany to rank third in our analysis of Hollywood donations.

Rounding out the list is Ted Lieu, the California State Senator who received the official endorsement of the Democratic Party. Lieu’s donor list is populated with legal and medical professionals; the biggest entertainment name of note is an senior VP from Warner Bros., Howard Welinsky.

Our methodology included a line-by-line analysis of itemized receipts for the first quarter 2014, as listed on the FEC’s website. Though many individuals with direct or tangential relationships to the entertainment industry also made contributions, we focused on “power players” as defined by influential decision making authority or clout.

You can see exactly who we included on the charts below.

What Is Hillary Clinton Afraid Of?

May 1, 2014May 1, 2014 Cory

Over the 25 years Hillary Clinton has spent in the national spotlight, she’s been smeared and stereotyped, the subject of dozens of over-hyped or downright fictional stories and books alleging, among other things, that she is a lesbian, a Black Widow killer who offed Vincent Foster then led an unprecedented coverup, a pathological liar, a real estate swindler, a Commie, a harridan. Every aspect of her personal life has been ransacked; there’s no part of her 5-foot-7-inch body that hasn’t come under microscopic scrutiny, from her ankles to her neckline to her myopic blue eyes—not to mention the ever-changing parade of hairstyles that friends say reflects creative restlessness and enemies read as a symbol of somebody who doesn’t stand for anything.

Forget all that troubled history, and a Clinton run for president in 2016 seems like a no-brainer, an inevitable next step after the redemption of her past few years as a well-regarded, if not quite historic, secretary of state. But remember the record, and you’ll understand why Clinton, although rested, rich and seemingly ready, has yet to commit to a presidential race (people around her insist it’s not greater than a 50-50 proposition), even as she’s an overwhelming favorite.

If Clinton says yes, she’ll have access to a bottomless pool of Democratic political talent and cash to match all those hyperbolic pronouncements about her inevitability. If she doesn’t run, the single biggest factor holding her back will be the media, according to an informal survey of three dozen friends, allies and former aides interviewed for this article. As much as anything else, her ambivalence about the race, they told us, reflects her distaste for and apprehension of a rapacious, shallow and sometimes outright sexist national political press corps acting as enablers for her enemies on the right.

Clinton isn’t insane, and she’s not stupid. “When you get beat up so often, you just get very cautious,” says Mike McCurry, her husband’s former press secretary, who joined the White House team to find a first lady traumatized by the coverage of her failed Hillarycare initiative. “She [has] had a very practical view of the media. … ‘I have to be careful, I’m playing with fire.’”

And while the white-hot anger she once felt toward the media has since hardened into a pessimistic resignation (with a dash of self-pity), she’s convinced another campaign would inevitably invite more bruising scrutiny, as her recent comments suggest. Public life “gives you a sense of being kind of dehumanized as part of the experience,” she lamented a few weeks ago to a Portland, Ore., audience. “You really can’t ever feel like you’re just having a normal day.”

When asked why Clinton hasn’t done more to reach out to reporters over the years, one Clinton campaign veteran began to spin several theories. She was too busy, she was too prone to speaking her mind and the like—then abruptly cut to the chase:

“Look, she hates you. Period. That’s never going to change.”

A Gossip App Brought My High School to a Halt

May 1, 2014August 31, 2016 Cory

A Gossip App Brought My High School to a Halt

BY WILL HASKELL

M., a high school junior, was rushing to class last Thursday morning when a friend stopped to ask if she was okay. Taken by surprise, she laughed and answered that she was fine. Continuing down the hall, she was met by strange glances and similar inquiries. She was at a loss. What had she done to become a celebrity overnight? It wasn’t until she sat down for her first period class that someone finally told her about Yik Yak.

Yik Yak is an application that allows individuals to post comments anonymously, essentially operating as a Twitter without handles. Sitting at her desk, M. grabbed a friend’s phone and began scrolling through a feed of posts.

“L. M. is affiliated with Al Qaeda.”

“The cheer team couldn’t get uglier.”

“K. is a slut.”

“J. N. is a fag.”

“The fact that O. P. has diabetes makes me happy.”

“S. D. + 10 years = trailer park.”

“Nobody is taking H. to prom because nobody has a forklift.”

“J. T.’s gonna get lynched at SMU.”

“How long do we think before A. B. kills herself?”

“N. likes the taste of thick pussy and wheelchair pussy.”

“99% of guys have tits bigger than J.”

“I probably heard about 10–15 nasty things written about me, some of which I couldn’t even finish reading,” M. says. “M. will let anybody anally finger her.” “M. gave dome for $6.” She had come under more intense attack than most students, but her experience on Thursday was similar to those of dozens of students at Staples High School.

I’m a student at Staples, too. It’s a good, medium-sized public school in Westport, Connecticut. We don’t walk through metal detectors on our way to class, and the main job of our school “security force” is to hand out tickets when students’ Jeeps and Audis park in staff parking spaces. John Dodig, our genial and openly gay principal, greeted my freshman class in 2010 by welcoming us to a school that was “different,” a school that rose above petty high school malice. And as a senior, I’ve found Staples to be a happy, functional, though complexly hierarchical place. The three most popular senior girl groups are the Bots, the Bedfords, and Acrimonious. There are Albone and the Rowdies, both popular senior boy groups. There are the Amigos (popular junior girls), the Cool Asians (none of whom are actually Asian), the Fairies (the soccer team, not the theater kids), the Players (the theater kids, not the soccer team), and many others.

Yik Yak arrived at Staples from Fairfield, the neighboring town, by way of the Dominican Republic, where students from Staples joined students from Fairfield Warde High School on a service trip earlier this month. Fairfield had already been rocked by the app. Students described a scene of pandemonium that eventually resulted in legal action against some who were charged with cyber-bullying. After the service trip was over and the volunteers returned to Staples, word of Yik Yak spread fast.

When you watch stupid movies about teenagers in high school, you roll your eyes at the classic fallout scene in which the hallways are filled with whispering students all gossiping about the same thing. This was exactly what Thursday afternoon looked like at Staples. “Walking through the hallways, everyone was staring at their phones,” says one target. In the course of a few periods, the most private, deplorable thoughts of the Staples student body had been put into writing. And the worst part was that no one knew who was writing this stuff — maybe the asshole you’d expect it from, or maybe the quiet girl in the back of Spanish class.

In the period after lunch, everyone was waiting for the next post. Feeds were refreshed; new batches of unsigned obscenities entertained the student body. “I remember sitting there in class refreshing the page, waiting for someone to say something horrible and awful about me,” said one junior girl. Ms. S. was fully aware of the cause for her European History class’s distraction, as apparently many teachers had downloaded and perused the app during their lunch period. With each post, another girl left class to cry in the bathroom, vent to her guidance counselor, or drive home. “I was shocked, mortified, and embarrassed,” M. says. “I then called my mom and told her I was leaving school.”

During the last period of the day, a demoralized voice came over the loudspeaker: Principal Dodig had decided to address the school. Staples has dealt with social media explosions in the past, most notably the spread of Snapchat sexting and a Facebook cyber-bullying incident whose sexual depravity made high school boys blush. But I’ve never seen Principal Dodig as upset before. Between his sentences were heavy sighs and moments of reflection.

“To all the students in the school, I urge you at least not to look at the site,” he said. “I’ve heard several people today have read some things about them and they’re in tears. Don’t look at it. And if you don’t see it, it won’t bother you.”

His announcement gave Yik Yak new momentum.

“Mr. Dodig molested me with a weed wacker.”

“John Dodig touched my no-no parts.”

Yik Yak has been available for download since last November, and anonymity has existed since the dawn of the internet. So why did the app literally bring Staples to a halt last week? Maybe it was a form of emotional release for students who were beginning to relax after months of academic stress. Perhaps it was a way for students to get their bitterness out about their classmates, teachers, and administrators. Or perhaps it was simply the newest, must-have social media thing.

One student told Inklings, the school newspaper, that “kids are just mean these days, and they needed a new way to insult each other.” Maybe. I remember when Formspring and Honesty Box infiltrated my middle school hallways. But Yik Yak felt different. It wasn’t just a new tool for the school’s bullies; it was also an equalizer. No one was safe, regardless of his or her place on the social pyramid. Bots and Amigos were targeted just as much, if not more, than the gays, the fat kids, the nerds, the friendless. “K. sounds like she has a cock in her mouth 24/7,” went a typical attack on an Amigo. Staples Guidance counselor Victoria Capozzi says that one student, prior to finding himself the target of a homophobic post, was completely unaware that his peers even questioned his sexuality. Suddenly, the social 1 percent was subject to the same sort of cyber torment that had in the past been directed at the students at the bottom of the pyramid. Yik Yak gave everyone a chance to take down enemies, reveal secrets, or make shit up in order to obliterate reputations. You didn’t need internet popularity in order for your post to be seen; you just needed to be within a 1.5-mile radius of your target and your audience.

Over the weekend, targets turned to their friend groups for comfort. Group chats were flooded. A sample from one of the popular groups:

“Why am I getting ripped apart?”

“I feel like I’m in Mean Girls.”

“I was really rattled and red in school, I left for last period.”

“I cried.”

“H. will be forever known as the fat girl.”

M. still wasn’t in school on Friday. A senior girl who had also been attacked on Yik Yak told me over the weekend that she dreaded going back. “How do you look a classmate or teacher in the eye knowing that they might have read something about you? Or worse, they might have written something about you?”

Some students want to see the IP addresses of the authors identified. I would too, though I have the depressing suspicion that the students who wrote the worst posts don’t care about the lasting impact that they have had on peoples lives. In conversations with our teachers, guidance counselors, and parents, we constantly hear, “We didn’t have this when we were growing up.” Well, neither did we. Yik Yak and its capacity for anonymous, targeted destruction is new to all of us. By the end of the week Yik Yak had been blocked on Staples property, but it also had raised $1.5 million in funding. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a competitor to Yik Yak on everyone’s phones next week. Are we just supposed to ignore it? I see no solution in sight, and personally, I am thrilled to be graduating in a few weeks.

*Names have been anonymized, and one or two details have been altered slightly, to not make it even worse.

Leave Your Hangups at Home: Hump! Amateur Porn Fest Hits the Road

May 1, 2014May 1, 2014 Cory

APRIL 15, 2014 | 03:01PM PT

REARVIEW: Dan Savage’s amateur porn festival invites a completely different way of looking at movies — one without judgment

Peter Debruge

Chief International Film Critic@AskDebruge

You don’t have to go back very far in Variety’s history to discover that its film critics once had a very different job description — one that involved reviewing not just mainstream theatrical releases, but also pornography like “Deep Throat” and “The Devil and Miss Jones.”

Saturday night, a small posse and I drove down to Long Beach, Calif., to catch the “Best of Hump! Tour.” For the uninitiated, Hump is an exhibitionist extravaganza hosted every year by sex columnist-turned-dirty-movie emcee Dan Savage in which ordinary folks become weekend porn stars, shooting sexually explicit short films designed to arouse and entertain a room full of like-minded strangers. (It’s the same contest that inspires two straight guys to test their boundaries in 2009 mumblecore darling “Humpday.”) “Normal” people agree to participate, safe in the knowledge that their work will be destroyed on the final night of the festival — which means that for the tour, after picking his 15 favorites from the past decade, Savage had to track down their creators and ask permission to show their shorts in public again.

A quarter century back, Variety might have reviewed an event like this: At 86 minutes, the lineup runs as long as most features, it’s making the rounds of movie theaters all over the country (look for it in a city near you), and it’s on track to earn more than most indie films do these days. Instead, I decided to do something completely daring — though not nearly as daring as the amateur porn stars exposing themselves onscreen, or my friend, who intends to submit next year and wanted to scope out the competition. For once, I decided to turn off my “critic brain.” I left my notebook at home, silenced my inner nitpicker and embraced a completely nonjudgmental night at the movies.

As it happens, that mentality is precisely what the event aims to promote. No matter what your kink, at least one of the shorts is guaranteed to land outside your comfort zone. For example, if you like some hot man-on-man action, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re comfortable with knife play, and vice versa. Given the eclectic range of turn-ons on offer (some of them invented for the sake of the event, as in Ben Harris’ hilarious, stop-motion-embellished mock doc “Mythic Proportions,” wherein three women open up about their forbidden centaur fetish), the lineup demands a certain amount of open-mindedness, as spelled out by Savage in a taped video introduction.

By contrast with Lars von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac,” whose cast members have repeatedly insisted on its status as art cinema, the Hump event unapologetically qualifies as porn. The submissions are designed to stimulate, though they look nothing like the professional hardcore content so ubiquitous online — and not just because the bodies aren’t all plastic-surgery perfect. One entry, “Krutch,” offers eye-opening insight into how a disabled woman gets off, while another, the Christopher Guest-style “The Legend of Gabe Harding,” pays tribute to a plus-size fluffer.

Simply put, it’s refreshing to see erotic films in which there’s actual chemistry between sexual partners, where the couples (or groups, as in “Dungeons & Dragons Orgy’s” horned-up nerd herd) appear to be having fun, rather than working. It also underscores the importance of screenwriting, even when it comes to dirty movies. By taking the time to plan things out in advance, these incredibly creative teams manage to capture and hold our interest, even when the “action” isn’t necessarily to our liking — like “Pie Sluts,” in which a stern mistress splats her clients in the face with cream pies. This isn’t a real phenomenon any more than the viral “Cake Farts” video it may or may not be parodying, but it’s plenty entertaining all the same.

I clearly wasn’t the only one who had checked my hangups at the door either. It was an incredibly warm room, as we all applauded each and every short, no matter how “amateur” the effort. That’s the beauty of Hump, and the best-of tour in particular. When cruising for porn online, people naturally gravitate to what turns them on. By carefully curating an eclectic lineup, Savage manages to expand his crowd’s horizons. It’s not that audiences are likely to leave the event having discovered a new kink (though the self-explanatory “Fun With Fire” certainly lives up to its name). Rather, it’s yet another way of communicating the same sex-positive message he preaches in his podcast: As long as you’re not hurting anyone, embrace whatever makes you happy, and accept the fact that your neighbors might be into something different.

Sex columnist Dan Savage brings his amateur porn film festival to New York this weekend

May 1, 2014May 1, 2014 Cory

Dan Savage’s Hump Tour’ aims to portray a diverse range of human sexuality in a positive light. Not all smut is dirty, after all.

BY JUSTIN ROCKET SILVERMAN

Relationship columnist Dan Savage hosts "Hump," a series of amateur porn films that will screen this weekend in the Village. Savage says the goal is to get people talking about, and enjoying, their sex lives. — Relationship columnist Dan Savage hosts “Hump,” a series of amateur porn films that will screen this weekend in the Village. Savage says the goal is to get people talking about, and enjoying, their sex lives.

JUSTIN MORRISON AND KELLY O

Not all smut is dirty.

Nationally syndicated sex advice columnist Dan Savage will bring his annual porn film festival to New York this weekend with a mission that goes far beyond mere titillation.

A collection of 20 short films, “Dan Savage’s Hump Tour” is a mix of gay and straight, weird and traditional, funny and touching. But Savage only has one mandate: All films portray sex in a healthy and positive light.

“No poop, no animals, no children rule — but other than that, these films give a picture of just how diverse human sexual expression is,” Savage says of the series he began in 2005 in Seattle.

Don’t look for any professional porn stars at the 2014 “Hump” screening; all the films were made by amateurs who share a penchant for exhibitionism and a love of sexuality.

One of this year’s 20 shorts was actually made in New York, and features a disabled person using her crutch to take herself to new heights.

Another short is called “D&D Orgy” and graphically depicts what happens when Dungeons & Dragons players find a new way to roll their dice.

Be a porn star for the weekend, not the rest of your life.

Other titles include the obvious “Hot ‘n Saucy Pizza Boy,” the sci-fi sex taboo, “E.T. 2: Dark Territory,” and “Go F— Yourself,” about a man who travels through time to do just that.

And one short about a lusty centaur, “Mythical Proportions,” is even done in claymation.

None of the films is online or available anywhere but at an official “Hump” screening. Not even still images from the movies are being released. After the last screening in this nationwide tour, the DVDs will all be destroyed.

Dan Savage is based in Seattle. He started “Hump” in 2005.

This allows participants to “be a porn star for the weekend, not the rest of their lives,” Savage explains.

With this safety net in place, the writer predicts plenty of New Yorkers will be inspired to submit their own original work for next year’s festival — which confers $1,000 prizes on audience faves.

Savage will be on hand for a question-and-answer session after some screenings, but he believes the films speak for themselves as they allow audiences to step outside their own dirty comfort zone.

“Usually people only watch the porn that turns them on,” says Savage. “At ‘Hump,’ you end up with a room full of straight people cheering for gay porn, and gay people cheering for straight porn. It becomes a celebration of sex.”

“Dan Savage’s Hump Tour” at Village East Cinema, 181 Second Ave., between East 11th and 12th Sts., 212-529-6799. Various showtimes. Tickets $25 at humptour.strangertickets.com.