Word: galas
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This year's Al Smith Dinner - the annual gala that raises funds for the Archdiocese of New York and has become an essential social ticket for the city's political and media class - will be remembered as a rare cease-fire moment in the heated 2008 presidential campaign. Exchanging rolled-up shirt sleeves for white ties, John McCain and Barack Obama cracked each other up on topics that usually result in outraged press statements when raised on the campaign trail. "I got my name, Barack, from my father," deadpanned Obama, "and I got my middle name from somebody who obviously...
...civilization: the invention of gunpowder and movable type, the building of the Great Wall. The overriding message, though delivered, admittedly, with the earnest phraseology of Chinese officialdom, was clear. "Imbued with the finest element of Eastern flavor," stated Liu Qi, the president of the Beijing Organizing Committee, "this grand gala will act as a showcase of a 5,000-year-old civilization...
Even by her own standards, the black-tie gala that Houston socialite Becca Cason Thrash organized in Paris on June 10 was exceptional. The 272 guests, who paid up to $10,000 each to attend, included a smattering of European royalty, Bianca Jagger, Wall Street grandees Wilbur Ross and Stephen Schwarzman and the cream of Houston high society. Cason Thrash flew her Los Angeles decorator in and says she was so nervous about the arrangements that "by 6 p.m., I was looking for a cyanide capsule." This wasn't any old fund raiser: it was held for the Louvre...
...time. ''You go out so many times, you sort of feel like, 'What can I do that will make me a little different?'' she says. At a recent awards ceremony, she turned heads with a glittering turquoise outfit, complete with matching wig. This month at a celebrity ''epicurean gala'' in Los Angeles benefiting cancer research, she fried up a batch of her mother-in-law's sesame chicken, complete with ''beer, spices and everything that is bad for you.'' Since she was freshly shorn for a fashion-modeling assignment, she also took the occasion to show off another...
...wealthy U.S. publishing family, to start up the American Friends of the Louvre at a time when France and the U.S. were sparring over Iraq. The organization has taken off and has just given birth to the International Friends of the Louvre. Among the guests at the June gala were the billionaire Mexican art collector Eugenio Lopez, Malaysian tycoon Francis Yeoh and Dasha Zhukova, the girlfriend of Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich. There's also money to be found in France: as well as campaigning vigorously to convince major French companies to contribute, Loyrette has created a circle of young donors...