Social Diary 8/8/05 - Weekend in the Hamptons

Hamptons Weekend

A meadow in Sagaponack. Photo: JH.

Weekend. “Lunch with the FT” is an interview feature in the Financial Times every weekend. This feature alone is worth the price of a subscription to the paper: it is excellent, always diverse, enlightening and stimulating. Each week’s column has a different writer. This past Saturday’s, titled “Sacred Freedom” was an interview by Ian Buruma with Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali born Dutch politician who lives under permanent police protection because of death threats against her. Ms. Hirsi Ali wrote the film script about Islamic women, the director of which, Theo van Gogh, was assassinated by a religious fanatic for making the picture.

Despite the continuing threats on her life, Ms. Hirsi Ali’s views on radical Islam and many other things remain unguarded. You can find it online by going to: http://news.ft.com/artsandweekend.

Southampton. Friday afternoon we went out East, stopping first in Quogue at the beachfront house of Joe and Nazee Moinian who were hosting a late afternoon fund-raiser for Senator Hillary Clinton. Iranian-born but now New Yorkers and American citizens, the Moinians are parents of two teen-age boys and twin girls. Joe is in the real estate business. Nazee has a retail business in partnership with her two sisters — Melonie de France — in which they sell artificial flowers, dried flowers, pottery and table accessories, scented candles and vaporisateurs. Most if not all of the products are Provencal. They have a shop on East 60th, another in the New York Hilton and two others in Atlantic City and Las Vegas. Nazee is also currently attending Columbia University for a graduate degree in political science, and therein lies the focus of her deepest interests outside of her family.

Joe and Nazee Moinian with Senator Hillary Clinton

When we arrived Mrs. Clinton was posing for pictures with the guests. Evidently this process is typical at fund-raisers – the contributor gets a personal picture with the politico.

She looked younger and radiant (I’ve seen her when she’s looked like she’s had a very long day – although her mood is always up). She was wearing a bright lemon yellow pants suit. I’d guess it was an Oscar de la Renta since he’s been a fashion adviser to her since the White House years. I read somewhere that she took his advice although she tended to wear the simple black suit more frequently than the bright colors he suggested. Assuming she was following his advice on Friday, it did the trick: she looked bright, refreshed, summery and even glamorous.

I’ve seen her a number of times now at both charity events and fund-raisers. She has a manner about her that makes me feel as if I’m seeing an old friend whom I haven’t seen in awhile. It may be a matter of flattery but her eye-to-eye recognition makes it very personal and personable.

Whatever it is, there’s something about this that makes me feel very comfortable in her company. This is unusual most times in the presence of national figures, celebrities or high-ranking politicians. I won’t name names but many, if not most, come off like they’re standing on glassed-in pedestals, or simply tolerating the time (seconds) they have to spend with you. I also know several people who have worked with Hillary Clinton or have friendships with her and they all talk about her as someone who is as accessible and down to earth as she seems during these brief encounters.

Whenever I write about her, however, we get mail from people stating that they hate her, as well as mail stating other things meant to be unflattering and even vile. I also know not a few people who fall into that category. A few months ago at a lunch her name came into the conversation and someone stated the predictable, outright “I hate her.” My friend Peter Rogers who is a man of few uncertain opinions and has no problems saying what he thinks, and who as far as I know, has never voted for her, turned to our lunch partner and asked: “Have you ever met her?”

"No” was the answer.

“Well,” he continued, “I used to feel the way you do and then I met her. There’s nothing to hate – she’s a warm, friendly, bright woman.”

Mitchell Moinian, Ashley Patterson, and Matthew Moinian

Nazee Moinian with her daughter Morgan

Tolly Travis and Robert Zimmerman

After the photo session, Mrs. Clinton spoke to the group for about fifteen or twenty minutes. She then took questions for another twenty minutes or so. The subjects covered included the deficit, funding for research and development of scientific projects, stem cell research, Roe V. Wade and the new nominee for the Supreme Court — a matter about which she said she was reserving her judgment at this time.

The subject of Iraq never came into the room. Neither Mrs. Clinton nor anyone else mentioned it. I thought of bringing it up but decided that I had attended to observe, period. Sitting there listening and observing the back-and-forth, I was thinking about Viet Nam, having lived through that long nightmare. I know many who do not see the similarities (and I know there are great differences) but the matter was, for me, as it is everyday, the elephant in the living room at the Moinians’.

Hillary fielding questions

When it was over, JH and I were the first ones out the door for we were going on to Water Mill where Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff and Jane and Jimmy Buffett were hosting Picnic for ParentCorps, a dinner for the NYU Child Study Center.

Cocktails and hors d’oeuvres were being served on the back patio of the sprawling Rosenthal/Hatkoff shingled cottage. In the crowd: Matt Lauer, Bob and Suzanne Cochran and family, Sen. Jon Corzine, Dr. Ruth, Allen and Debby Grubman; Ben Lambert; Beth Rudin DeWoody with Howard Blum, Joanne Cassullo, Lloyd Blankfein, Steve and Heather Mnuchin, Byron Wien, Rob Wiesenthal, Perri Peltz, Steve Rubenstein, Anne Keating, Eugene Greene, Stewart Lane and Bonnie Comley, Alexandra Wade; NYU Child Study Center Board members; Brooke and Daniel Neidich, Alice and Thomas Tisch, Lisa Pevaroff Cohn and Gary Cohn, Thomas H. Lee and Ann Tenenbaum, Ellen and Howard Katz, and Jill and Robert Smith as well as Dr. Harold Koplewicz and Dr. Laurie Miller Brotman of the Child Study Center.

Brooke Neidich told me the Center was started eight years ago and since then they’ve raised $54 million to fund it. Now they are very excited about Laurie Brotman’s program that decreases aggressive behavior in preschoolers, preventing behavior problems before they become ingrained causing irreparable consequences for the child and society at large. The many of us who grew up in abusive homes know the great, even many times insurmountable difficulty in breaking the chain of abuse. Laurie Brotman’s program sounds like a revolutionary process. I mentioned this to a very attractive young woman during the cocktail hour and she volunteered that she knew how important it was because she’d spent her life breaking that chain of abuse.

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From there, after sunset, we moved down to a tent set up by the pool for dinner. At the dinner Dr. Koplewicz told the crowd of 125 that in New York City alone, there are 10,000 students suspended from school each year, mostly for aggressive or violent behaviors. Children with behavioral problems are more likely to drop out of school, to abuse drugs and to go to jail. And make a lot of problems for the rest of us. ParentCorps is doing something about that.

Koplewicz recounted the first time he met Jon Corzine was when Corzine was at Goldman Sachs. The doctor had heard that Corzine didn’t spend much time listening to the pitch for philanthropic funds, and that, lo, after three or four minutes, he told the doctor that he’d give him $500,000 for his project.

“But how can you decide without hearing the whole story?” the dumfounded Dr. Koplewicz asked. Mr. Corzine told him he made his judgment on the need, the soundness of the idea and the difference it could make in the world, adding, “and when you’ve spent that, come back and see me.”

After dinner Jimmy Buffett and his group performed. The last time I saw Buffett perform was a year ago at a dinner at Versailles (see NYSD 6/16/04). He was wearing black tie and flip-flops and everybody had the best time listening, singing along and dancing to his music. Friday night he was just in an orange shirt and white pants and barefoot, having the same ole good time and spreadin’ it around the tent.

They raised $150,000 for the NYU Child Study Center.