Ruffled Russell sounds off
Wednesday night's celeb-glutted strategy session at the Society of Ethical Culture was rife with earnest PowerPoint presentations concerning precisely how the Democrats are going to take back the White House.
The A-list audience of around 500 included George Soros, Tina Brown, Graydon Carter, Jann Wenner, Harvey Weinstein, Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, Nora Ephron and Nick Pileggi, Meryl Streep, Glenn Close, Anne Cox Chambers, Chad Lowe, Kyra Sedgewick and Alex von Furstenberg.
But leave it to Russell Simmons to drop a bomb and then flee the scene, where a roomful of white liberals rolled their eyes and shook their heads.
"The s-- y'all doing is corny!" the hip-hop impresario declared after arriving an hour late and rushing up to the microphone to "ask" the first question. "You have to at least include people. We are not included!"
Simmons, who was accompanied by fellow rap mogul Damon Dash, ranted for around five minutes, claiming that the event's sponsor, Victory Campaign 2004, had ignored the Hip Hop Summit's requests for voter registration funding.
"Why are you not responding to us?" Simmons demanded. "We need to bring everyone together. There should be a war on poverty and ignorance too, and I feel like we are not as much a part of the plan as we could be. I'm spending my own money. We've sent you proposals, we've called, but we've not gotten a positive response."
Then Simmons and Dash stalked out of the room, and the meeting petered to an end a few minutes later. Afterward Simmons complained: "A room of 700 people and almost everyone was white! The Republicans would look more inclusive."
Yesterday, event organizer Laurie David, wife of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" star Larry David, tried to be diplomatic.
"My only thought was, it's great Russell Simmons is here and I'm pleased to see him," she told me, adding that she has been playing phone tag with Simmons for several weeks. As for the substance of his remarks, "I didn't really understand what he was talking about," David said. "I was pretty clueless at the beginning of his diatribe and clueless at the end of it. But the goal of this organization is to include everybody."
Democratic strategist Harold Ickes, one of the featured speakers, dismissed Simmons' outburst as "sort of typical New York theater within theater. ... I don't know what his theatrics were about other than trying to get some attention for himself."
Al Franken quipped: "He said we were 'corny,' which is a terrible insult. That really hit me hard."
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