A MESSAGE FROM META

Inside, the grand ballroom and salons were exquisitely decorated with stunning white lighting, holiday bells dangling from red ribbons, and miniature silhouettes of dove-like creatures floating above us. It was beautiful: the Ralph Lauren-ized vision of America that we all hold somewhere inside of us, amid the official portraits of the officeholders and their spouses. The White House staff usually moves the artwork around, but I was able to spot the depictions of both Obamas, Lady Bird, Hillary, Bill, Eleanor, the famous image of Lincoln, and both portrayals of Kennedy—the one painted before that day in Dallas, and the subsequent one with his eyes askance. Mingling throughout were CNN anchors, NBC News stars, Washington Post columnists, Atlantic cover story artists, the founders of Axios, Puck cinematic universe fixture Sally Buzbee, my buddies from BPI, etcetera. It was a rare night in Washington, refreshingly devoid of cynicism and filled with the promise of citizenship. Everyone in that room, more or less, had vociferously criticized the president on their air or in their copy—for being selfish, for holding on too long, for pardoning Hunter, for effectively handing the people’s house back to Trump—and yet, they all wanted to gather to shake his hand a final time and wish him well on his journey back to private life. Meanwhile, the senescent president could have easily declined the event this year on account of his travels, the exigencies of winding down his administration, or some other passable white lie. (Trust me, social Washington was already aflutter with commentary about the fact that the Bidens were throwing fewer holiday parties this season…) Instead, he manned the rope line, greeting hundreds of well-wishers with a firm, if frail, handshake. As I prepared to disembark to the real world, I exchanged holiday greetings with Ben LaBolt, the affable and innovative White House communications director, who is seemingly off to the higher calling of the private sector. He had the look of a man at the end of a long journey—pensive, tired yet restless, slightly uncertain but filled with curiosity. What a nice way to greet the new year, I thought to myself. These sorts of passages are the true theme of Washington—and beyond. We’re in for a brave new world starting next month, and the plotlines are already being clearly delineated by my generationally talented partners at Puck. In a series of characteristically brilliant pieces, Lauren Sherman has already defined the new domestic theaters of intrigue in the fashion world: The Treaty of Versace outlines Capri C.E.O. John Idol’s desire to course-correct his conglomerate’s future amid the rubble of the failed Tapestry merger; in Calvin… Or Nothing, Lauren distills the essence of an American fashion icon’s second attempt to reestablish its runway status. Similarly, in Sotheby’s Christmas Retreat, Marion Maneker gets to the bottom of the controversy roiling the world’s oldest auction house—a risky new fee structure that backfired spectacularly. In SpinCo City, Bill Cohan explains the M&A chess moves available to both Brian Roberts at Comcast and David Zaslav at Warner Bros. Discovery. John Ourand documents a thrilling inflection in the sports media world via his incisive Netflix’s Next Step Toward World Domination. And in a story that is both electrifying and haunting, Matt Belloni’s epic Hollywood’s Villains of the Year Are the ‘It Ends With Us’ Publicists unravels the plot that promises to be the town’s biggest scandal of the year—or at least the quarter. But if you only have time to read one piece this weekend, I’d suggest Eriq Gardner’s truly excellent foreshadowing of a seismic legal battle that threatens to reset the culture. In Murdoch v. Prince Harry: “They’re Going to Try to Destroy Him,” Eriq wades into the nuanced drama playing out between the media mogul’s U.K. tabloid dynasty, the palace, and the exiled prince of Montecito. The stakes are enormous, financially, but also in terms of accountability. It’s one of the great stories of our time, and precisely what you should always expect from Puck.