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The New York Times lists Emmy winners. The AP has an overview story here.

New York Times: “Hvaldimir, a beluga whale who had captured the public’s imagination since 2019 after he was spotted wearing a harness seemingly designed for a camera, was found dead on Saturday in Norway, according to a nonprofit that worked to protect the whale.... [Hvaldimir] was wearing a harness that identified it as “equipment” from St. Petersburg. There also appeared to be a camera mount. Some wondered if the whale was on a Russian reconnaissance mission. Russia has never claimed ownership of the whale. If Hvaldimir was a spy, he was an exceptionally friendly one. The whale showed signs of domestication, and was comfortable around people. He remained in busier waters than are typical for belugas....” ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Oh, Lord, do not let Bobby Kennedy, Jr., near that carcass. ~~~

     ~~~ AP Update: “There’s no evidence that a well-known beluga whale that lived off Norway’s coast and whose harness ignited speculation it was a Russian spy was shot to death last month as claimed by animal rights groups, Norwegian police said Monday.... Police said that the Norwegian Veterinary Institute conducted a preliminary autopsy on the animal, which was become known as 'Hvaldimir,' combining the Norwegian word for whale — hval — and the first name of Russian President Vladimir Putin. 'There are no findings from the autopsy that indicate that Hvaldimir has been shot,' police said in a statement.”

New York Times: Botswana's “President Mokgweetsi Masisi grinned as he lifted the diamond, a 2,492-carat stone that is the biggest diamond unearthed in more than a century and the second-largest ever found, according to the Vancouver-based mining operator Lucara, which owns the mine where it was found. This exceptional discovery could bring back the luster of the natural diamond mining industry, mining companies and experts say. The diamond was discovered in the same relatively small mine in northeastern Botswana that has produced several of the largest such stones in living memory. Such gemstones typically surface as a result of volcanic activity.... The diamond will likely sell in the range of tens of millions of dollars....”

Click on photo to enlarge.

~~~ Guardian: "On a distant reef 16,000km from Paris, surfer Gabriel Medina has given Olympic viewers one of the most memorable images of the Games yet, with an airborne celebration so well poised it looked too good to be true. The Brazilian took off a thundering wave at Teahupo’o in Tahiti on Monday, emerging from a barrelling section before soaring into the air and appearing to settle on a Pacific cloud, pointing to the sky with biblical serenity, his movements mirrored precisely by his surfboard. The shot was taken by Agence France-Presse photographer Jérôme Brouillet, who said “the conditions were perfect, the waves were taller than we expected”. He took the photo while aboard a boat nearby, capturing the surreal image with such accuracy that at first some suspected Photoshop or AI." 

Washington Post: “'Mary Cassatt at Work' is a large and mostly satisfying exhibition devoted to the career of the great American artist beloved for her sensitive and often sentimental views of family life. The 'at work' in the title of the Philadelphia Museum of Art show references the curators’ interest in Cassatt’s pioneering effort to establish herself as a professional artist within a male-dominated field. Throughout the show, which includes some 130 paintings, pastels, prints and drawings, the wall text and the art on view stresses Cassatt’s fixation on art as a career rather than a pastime.... Mary Cassatt at Work is on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art through Sept. 8. philamuseum.org”

New York Times: “Bob Newhart, who died on Thursday at the age of 94, has been such a beloved giant of popular culture for so long that it’s easy to forget how unlikely it was that he became one of the founding fathers of stand-up comedy. Before basically inventing the hit stand-up special, with the 1960 Grammy-winning album 'The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart' — that doesn’t even count his pay-per-view event broadcast on Canadian television that some cite as the first filmed special — he was a soft-spoken accountant who had never done a set in a nightclub. That he made a classic with so little preparation is one of the great miracles in the history of comedy.... Bob Newhart holds up. In fact, it’s hard to think of a stand-up from that era who is a better argument against the commonplace idea that comedy does not age well.”

Washington Post: “An early Titian masterpiece — once looted by Napolean’s troops and a part of royal collections for centuries — caused a stir when it was stolen from the home of a British marquess in 1995. Seven years later, it was found inside an unassuming white and blue plastic bag at a bus stop in southwest London by an art detective, and returned. This week, the oil painting 'The Rest on the Flight into Egypt' sold for more than $22 million at Christie’s. It was a record for the Renaissance artist, whom museums describe as the greatest painter of 16th-century Venice. Ahead of the sale in April, the auction house billed it as 'the most important work by Titian to come to the auction market in more than a generation.'”

Washington Post: The Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C., which houses the world's largest collection of Shakespeare material, has undergone a major renovation. "The change to the building is pervasive, both subtle and transformational."

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Thursday
Feb102011

Rep. Lee Resigns over Craigslist Scandal

CW: I've moved this post up, as there are some updates.

Congressman Christopher Lee (R-NY) in his official photo & in the one he sent to the woman he contacted via Craigslist. Left: Congressional photo; right: photo by Chris Lee via Gawker."A Classy Guy." Maureen O'Connor of Gawker: "Rep. Christopher Lee is a married Republican congressman serving the 26th District of New York. But when he trolls Craigslist's 'Women Seeking Men' forum, he's Christopher Lee, 'divorced' 'lobbyist' and 'fit fun classy guy.' One object of his flirtation told [Gawker] her story.... By email, Lee identified himself as a 39-year-old divorced lobbyist and sent a PG picture to the woman from the ad. (In fact, Lee is married and has one son with his wife. He's also 46.) Read the whole story; Lee at first asserted his e-mail account had been hacked, but Gawker has him dead to rights. ...

     ... This story was going down the page in The Soaps till I read the update. Now it's news: "Three hours after his shirtless Craigslist antics appeared [in Gawker], Rep. Chris Lee (R-NY) announced his resignation from the U.S. House of Representatives."

Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post has some info on the political ramifications. Lee represents the 26th Congressional District -- between Rochester & Buffalo -- which went for McCain with 52% of the vote in 2008, the year Lee was first elected. He easily won re-election in 2010.

Jimmy Vielkind of the Albany Times Union runs down what happens next in the 26th Congressional District as best he can, inasmuch as there are lots of complications.

Raymond Hernandez of the New York Times just got an item up -- the story is running on the front page of the Times website, complete with the beefcake picture. I'm sure this schmuck always imagined himself on the front page of the Times, but probably not in just this context. Here's an expanded story by Hernandez that doesn't really cover any new ground. ...

Jill Terreri of the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle has some tidbits: "Conservative radio talk show host Bill Nojay described Lee as a rising star in the Republican Party, and a Boy Scout.... Here's a good one:

At the same time, responding to what may seem like a friendly e-mail or an appealing marketing offer can have serious consequences. Private information and images can so easily be transmitted to friends and strangers alike. -- Christopher Lee, 2009, in an opinion piece in support of an Internet safety bill he was sponsoring

Update. David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "House Speaker John Boehner on Thursday called the resignation of Rep. Chris Lee 'the right decision,' but declined to talk about whether he had advised Lee to go.... Boehner also deflected questions about a report in a Capitol Hill newspaper last year, which said he had advised a group of GOP legislators - including Lee - to curb inappropriate behavior with female lobbyists." ...

     ... What Fahrenthold is too delicate to mention is this National Enquirer story, which seems to have legs as it's been reported independently elsewhere. Here's a snippet from the online story; you have to buy the tabloid to read the full story:

Capitol Hill insiders and political bloggers have been buzzing about an upcoming New York Times probe -- detailing an alleged affair that  [John Boehner,] the 61-year-old married father of two, had with pretty Washington lobbyist Lisbeth Lyons. And an ENQUIRER investigation has uncovered a bedroom encounter that Boehner - second in line of succession to the presidency - allegedly had with Leigh LaMora, a 46-year-old former press secretary to ex-Colorado Congressman Joel Hefley.

Danielle Belton of TheLoop21 interviews the woman who outted Chris Lee. ...

     ... Update. The Washington Post's Reliable Source identifies the woman at the center of the scandal as Yesha Callahan, a faculty specialist for the University of Maryland and single mother of a preteen son.

Last year, Roll Call listed Lee among the 50 richest members of Congress:

The churn in the Lee family assets continued last year, and the New York Republican appears to come out a little better off than he was before. After his election in 2008, Lee — who had been an executive in his family’s mechanical parts business — sold numerous assets, and his apparent net worth dropped from a little more than $11 million to just more than $7 million.

Last year, Lee bought and sold dozens of mutual fund accounts in hundreds of transactions, and his reported minimum net worth increased more than $1 million.

Alan Bedenko of WNY News: "The sole member of the New York State congressional delegation to vote against guaranteeing health care and monitoring for the heroes of 9/11 was Chris Lee from NY-26. Lee’s objection? He can’t STAND the government having the job-killing audacity to expect companies making a profit in the United States to actually pay income taxes on those profits. Only the little people pay taxes."

K. Lee of the New York Examiner: Chris Lee was one of the sponsors of H.R. 3, the draconian bill designed to stop funding abortions except in cases of "forcible rape." (Republicans removed the adjective "forcible" from the bill after a public outcry, but the bill itself is wending its way through the House.) 

Brian Stelter of the New York Times argues that Gawker's new "news" format -- widely panned by the site's regulars -- helped drive the Chris Lee story by keeping it in a prominent position on Gawker's main page, wheras in the older blog format the story would have moved down the page as staff posted new stories.

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