A Champion Against Cancer, Now Under Siege

AUSTIN, Tex. — Barry Bonds. Marion Jones. Alex Rodriguez. Roger Clemens. There is no shortage of athletes who have fallen from grace, their achievements on the playing field and their public stature compromised by accusations of cheating or revelations of criminal or otherwise repugnant behavior.

The case of Lance Armstrong is far more complex. Having survived testicular cancer that metastasized to his lungs and his brain, Mr. Armstrong — who went on to win a record seven Tour de France titles — has become a powerful symbol of the possibilities of life after the disease. He has also become a world-class philanthropist, his Livestrong foundation doling out $31 million last year on behalf of cancer patients.

But now that he and his former team are subjects of a federal investigation into doping activities, those in the interdependent circles of his world are concerned that the inquiry will tarnish or erode all he has built.

“There are just so many unknowns at this point,” Doug Ulman, the chief executive of Livestrong and a cancer survivor, said in an interview at the foundation’s airy new headquarters here. “That’s the most frustrating thing.”

To Dr. John R. Seffrin, the chief executive of the American Cancer Society, the investigation should be irrelevant. Whatever Mr. Armstrong’s transgressions as an athlete, he said, they pale in comparison with the good he has done.

“Lance Armstrong has done more to destigmatize cancer than anyone,” Dr. Seffrin said.

Few would dispute that Mr. Armstrong is a splendid athlete, gifted and dedicated, or that he is a magnificent publicist for his cause. Since 2004, when Livestrong and its corporate partner Nike gave the world the yellow bracelet to signify that the wearer had been touched by cancer, more than 70 million have been distributed.

But his competitive side is also compelling. A power-wielding, polarizing figure in cycling, Mr. Armstrong, who turns 39 next month, has a reputation for being a brutal competitor and an aggressive self-promoter. A day after spending three weeks as his teammate at the 2009 Tour, the winner, Alberto Contador, who has supplanted Mr. Armstrong as the world’s best rider, said in Spanish: “He is a great rider and did a great Tour. Another thing is on a personal level, where I have never admired him and never will.”

Mr. Armstrong has long fended off suspicions that his Tour titles were tainted by performance-enhancers, and he has never officially tested positive for any illegal substances. (At the 1999 Tour, he failed a test for a corticosteroid but produced a doctor’s note for it.)

Through one of his lawyers, Mr. Armstrong declined to be interviewed for this article.

During the Tour de France in July, he issued perhaps his most forceful statement on the issue: “As long as I live, I will deny it. There was absolutely no way I forced people, encouraged people, told people, helped people, facilitated. Absolutely not. One hundred percent.”

But Mr. Armstrong’s vehement claims of innocence amid the acknowledged widespread cheating in professional cycling strike many as far-fetched.

In cycling, he is also known as a control freak, an intense micromanager of his image and of the complicated apparatus that is a professional cycling team.

“He’s the most binary guy I’ve ever met,” said Bill Strickland, a cyclist and writer who has known Mr. Armstrong since 1994 and whose recent book “Tour de Lance” followed Mr. Armstrong as he prepared for the 2009 Tour after a three-year hiatus from the event. “He told me his motto is Win/lose, live/die. He equates winning with living and losing with dying. Every moment you’re around him, he wants to win. You can be in a conversation with him and he’ll try to get the upper hand. It never lets down.”

Cycling teams are built to focus on and nurture one star whom the other riders, known by the French word domestiques, support by blocking the wind, for instance, and ferrying water. And in his book, Mr. Strickland described a telling incident from the 2003 Tour.

Early in the race, Victor Hugo Peña, a domestique for Mr. Armstrong’s United States Postal Service team, briefly moved ahead of Mr. Armstrong in the standings and wore the yellow jersey signifying the overall leader. But Mr. Armstrong insisted that Mr. Peña continue to perform the chores of a domestique, a flagrant usurpation of Tour tradition, an embarrassment to Mr. Peña and a purposeful reminder of cycling’s social order.

“That was so typical of who he is,” Mr. Strickland said. “To those of us who saw that, it was criminal. And so perfectly Lance.”

At races, Mr. Armstrong is a titillating presence, always at the center of a throng. Fans, some living with cancer, gather several deep around his team bus, hoping to glimpse or touch him. “It’s like being at Lourdes,” Mr. Strickland said.

Some of what makes Mr. Armstrong’s character difficult to parse is the blinding sheen of his celebrity. Between his divorce from Kristin Richard, with whom he had three children, and his relationship with Anna Hansen, who is expecting their second child, his string of girlfriends included the singer Sheryl Crow, the actress Kate Hudson and the fashion designer Tory Burch.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/sports/cycling/22armstrong.html?ref=sports

As Mission Shifts in Iraq, Risks Linger for Obama

WASHINGTON — The official end of America’s combat mission in Iraq next week will fulfill the campaign promise that helped vault President Obama to the White House, but it also presents profound risks as he seeks to claim credit without issuing a premature declaration of victory.

As columns of vehicles crossed the border and troops arrived to happy homecomings last week, Mr. Obama released a restrained written statement and made a one-sentence reference at a pair of fund-raisers. While some called it the end of the seven-year war, Mr. Obama sought to avoid the sort of “mission accomplished” moment that haunted his predecessor.

But the White House wants to find a way to mark the moment and remind voters just two months before midterm elections that he delivered on his vow to pull out combat forces. Mr. Obama plans to make a high-profile speech on the drawdown next week, and aides are discussing whether to have him meet with returning troops. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. will address the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Indianapolis on Monday.

The symbolism of the departing troops that played out on network television masked the more complex reality on the ground. Even as the last designated combat forces leave and the mission formally changes on Aug. 31 to a support role, 50,000 American “advise and assist” troops will remain in the country for 16 months more, still in harm’s way and still armed for combat if necessary. What’s more, Iraq’s future remains fraught with challenges amid a stubborn political impasse and a continuing low-grade insurgency.

“Political posturing is the norm in Washington, and claiming victory and an end to a war is far more popular than bearing the burden of leadership and dealing with reality,” Anthony H. Cordesman, a military specialist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, wrote on the center’s Web site on Friday. “The Iraq war is not over and it is not ‘won.’ In fact, it is at as critical a stage as at any time since 2003.”

Denis R. McDonough, chief of staff of the National Security Council, said the administration had no illusions.

“Does anybody believe the violence is going to stop entirely and the opponents to stability and progress in Iraq are going to stand down? No,” he said. “But we do know that the Iraqi security forces are in a position to take that role on themselves increasingly.”

The official transition from Operation Iraqi Freedom to Operation New Dawn is as much a change in labels as it is a change in mission. With violence far below its peak in 2006 and 2007, American forces have increasingly taken a back seat to the Iraqi security units they trained.

But after seven years of a war started by President George W. Bush on the basis of false intelligence, the desire for finality, and perhaps closure, has focused attention on this moment and provoked a fresh discussion in Washington about what it all has meant.

After hundreds of billions of dollars, more than 4,400 American military deaths and at least 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths and perhaps many more, was it worth it? Did toppling a dictator and nursing a fledgling if flawed democracy make a difference? And did the United States salvage credibility by sticking it out and finally stabilizing Iraq even if not winning the clear-cut victory originally envisioned?

“If we can’t have a victory parade, we at least ought to be able to make some definitive conclusions,” said Andrew J. Bacevich, a military specialist at Boston University who lost a son in Iraq and has written a new book, “Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War.” “And it just doesn’t seem that we are going to do so. We want to just move on, sadly.”

In part, that owes to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, where Mr. Obama is sending more troops, as well as the fragile economy at home, where millions of Americans are looking for work. And so while his opposition to the Iraq war animated his early candidacy, it seems almost a secondary issue these days.

During a fund-raising speech in Ohio last week, for instance, Mr. Obama mentioned the Iraq transition only in passing. “We are keeping the promise I made when I began my campaign for the presidency: by the end of this month, we will have removed 100,000 troops from Iraq, and our combat mission will be over in Iraq,” he said, a line he later repeated at a fund-raiser in Miami.

As they mark the moment, Democrats generally make no mention of the troop buildup and strategy change ordered by Mr. Bush in 2007, which many credit with turning around the war and making it possible to end combat now. By the time Mr. Bush left office, he had sealed an agreement with Iraq to withdraw all American troops by the end of 2011. After taking office, Mr. Obama ordered an intermediary deadline of drawing down to 50,000 by the end of this month.

Mr. Bush showed up unannounced at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport earlier this month to greet troops returning from Iraq. While no news media were invited, video posted on YouTube by troop supporters showed him in casual clothes shaking hands and posing for pictures with troops as they entered the terminal one by one.

Mr. Bush has declined to discuss the mission change, but former advisers see it as a validation that after all the pain and the blood, Iraq may finally be in a better place, governed by a freer, more democratic system that could yet serve as a model in an otherwise largely authoritarian Middle East.

“We can take a certain measure of satisfaction from the success in Iraq,” L. Paul Bremer III, the former Iraqi occupation administrator, said in an interview. “It’s not a complete success yet, obviously, but building democracy takes time.”

He added that “a successful Arab-Muslim democracy basically puts the lie to the Islamic extremists” who maintain that democracy is anathema to Islam and advocate a harsh form of rule.

Stephen J. Hadley, who was Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, said the current transition was due to the surge ordered by the former president and opposed by Mr. Obama when he was a senator. But he said he was glad that Mr. Obama’s team “has gone through a transition” and that it seemed to be taking pride in accomplishments in Iraq. He said he hoped that the administration would see the task through.

“If they do, they can rightly claim some measure of credit, and I would be the first to give them credit,” Mr. Hadley said. “But they need to stay focused and stay engaged.”

For Mr. Obama, this moment is a reminder of the lesson his predecessor learned after declaring the end of major combat operations on an aircraft carrier in front of a “Mission Accomplished” banner in 2003. Iraq was a messy war with no tidy end. “There will be no surrender ceremony on the deck of a battleship,” Mr. Bush later concluded.

Mr. Obama has come to the same realization, in almost the exact same words.

“There will be no simple moment of surrender to mark the journey’s end,” he declared last spring.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/us/politics/22obama.html?ref=politics

Nonprofit Fund Faces Questions About Conflicts and Selection Procedures

In late July, the Social Innovation Fund, a new $50 million federal program aimed at financing the replication of nonprofit programs that work, made its first grants.

But what was supposed to have been an emblem of the administration’s commitment to nonprofit groups has become instead a messy controversy over potential conflicts of interest and the process used to select the grantees.

Several of the 48 independent reviewers who vetted the initial 54 applications for the grants were surprised by some of the winners because they had awarded them mediocre scores.

Critics noted that the executive director of the fund, Paul Carttar, had worked at New Profit Inc., a nonprofit group that helps promising social programs. New Profit Inc. received a $5 million grant from the fund.

Similarly, Patrick Corvington, the official who oversees the Corporation for National and Community Service, where the fund resides, previously worked for a foundation that financed a program operated by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, better known as LISC. The foundation won a $4.2 million grant.

Marta Urquilla, senior adviser to the fund, said Mr. Carttar and Mr. Corvington played no role in selecting the winners. “We knew the things people are saying now would be said,” Ms. Urquilla said, “and so we made sure each application got its fair chance and stood on its own merits.”

But the fund has not disclosed who reviewed the grants — or who applied for them or the ratings the applicants received, information that often is provided by many other government agencies that make grants.

In soliciting applications, the fund published a detailed set of criteria it would use to evaluate them, but the process by which they would be vetted was unclear. Last week, it disclosed more information about the procedures, including that the applications went through four stages, as well as the number of organizations culled after each.

“The bare minimum would be to release the names of the peer reviewers, the names of the applicants and the score they each received,” said Dean Zerbe, a former tax counsel to Senator Charles E. Grassley, an Iowa Republican who has persistently scrutinized the Corporation for National and Community Service’s grants and programs.

The fund was created with the passage of the SERVE America Act last year and quickly became one of the hottest topics for discussion in the nonprofit sector, which saw it as a means of getting government financing for young but promising programs at a time when the economy has crippled much fund-raising and hobbled many endowments.

The 11 winners effectively serve as conduits to channel the grant money to other nonprofit organizations that operate successful programs that can be expanded to serve more people in more areas. The winners must match the government’s money, which also must be matched by the final recipients, potentially trebling the fund’s financial effect.

The broader goal, Ms. Urquilla said, is to develop a network of intermediaries like the grant winners that can identify promising programs and connect them to donors and other sources of financing to allow them to expand.

The criticism has led the fund to decide to publish redacted versions of the winning applications in the coming weeks, together with the ratings they were given by various panels and how those compare with applications that did not win. “We fully embrace open government and the trend toward greater transparency,” Ms. Urquilla said. “We just want to make sure we do it in a deliberative and responsive way.”

The disclosures may not satisfy the critics, though.

Ruth McCambridge, editor of the Nonprofit Quarterly magazine, said that she may file a request for all the applications under the Freedom of Information Act. “This is supposed to be a learning process,” Ms. McCambridge said. “That’s the way the people at the fund have billed it, and applicants for the next round of funding, if there is one, might find it useful to see what didn’t work the first time around.”

She questioned why the fund would not release the names of the applicants or the peer reviewers and why it asked the reviewers to shred their work when it was finished.

Steven Goldberg, one of the reviewers, a consultant and author of “Billions of Drops in Millions of Buckets: Why Philanthropy Doesn’t Advance Social Progress,” said he had no problem with destroying the paperwork related to the review — “as a lapsed lawyer, I can see that you don’t want people to be looking too much at how the sausage gets made”— but thought it would be a good idea to publish the names of the reviewers and applicants.

“My impression over all is that it was a very conscientiously designed and managed process, and they probably overcompensated to make sure it’s all done scientifically,” said Mr. Goldberg, who on Friday wrote a lengthy riposte to Nonprofit Quarterly’s coverage of the issue.

Other reviewers, though, questioned the secrecy surrounding the selection process, particularly since it was being imposed by an administration that has pledged to greatly increase transparency.

“This is not a private, grant-making institution, it’s the federal government,” said Paul C. Light, a professor at New York University who has served as a reviewer for other federal grants and contracts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/us/22nonprofit.html?ref=politics

In the Berkshires, Dinner’s Not Far Away

IT’S hard to dismiss the current locavore boom in the Berkshires as mere fashion. In fact, the national enthusiasm for eating farm-to-table has roots in western Massachusetts. The nation’s first agricultural fair was held in Berkshire County in the early 19th century, and in 1986, when the country’s first two community-supported agriculture farms were established, one was in the southern Berkshires.

Such farms, which offer a share of their harvest in exchange for a seasonal financial commitment, are now a mainstay of the farm-to-table movement. But it’s no surprise that the idea found such fertile ground in the Berkshires, said Barbara Zheutlin, director of Berkshire Grown, an organization dedicated to the region’s agriculture. Her group is another legacy of the vibrant, community-oriented food activism that was well under way by the mid-1980s.

This quiet history has no better modern incarnation than Susan Sellew, 60, maker of Monterey Chevre. Ms. Sellew, a native of New Marlborough, laughingly traces her skills to an affliction of “Old MacDonald” syndrome in the 1960s and ’70s. Determined not to buy anything she could learn to make herself, she was soon preparing her own honey, maple syrup, sausages and soap.

Goats were a source of food, but Ms. Sellew fell in love with their mischievous nature and obvious intelligence.

“They’re like cats,” she said. “They believe everything they do is just perfect.” Making cheese from their milk was an afterthought, “the perfect justification to keep more goats,” she said.

Three decades ago, Ms. Sellew returned to her grandfather’s forested land in Monterey. She and her husband at the time, Wayne Dunlop, spent months clearing fields and building a barn from the lumber they cut. They named it Rawson Brook Farm.

Ms. Sellew has 50 animals and does not want more, so that she can follow personalities and physical traits from generation to generation. But flourishing demand for her cheese, and her policy of never refusing a local customer, means that it may be hard to find in urban markets. Nevertheless, look for Monterey Chevre in Zabar’s in New York.

Better yet, stop by the farm (185 New Marlboro Road, Monterey; 413-528-2138), where the goats are named for constellations and Julia Roberts characters, and the rotating milking table, hand-fashioned by Ms. Sellew from a truck axle, bears an admonition to “Honor the Udder.”

(Slide shows of Rawson Brook and other Berkshire farms are at berkshirefoodjournal.com.)

Ms. Sellew isn’t immune to trends — the goats occasionally snack on kelp — but she’s also been around long enough to understand that back-to-the-farm movements come and go. She sees the current round as different, especially in the Berkshires, where longstanding activism is supplemented by increasingly food-savvy tourists.

Frances Duncan, a locavore blogger, agrees.

“The Berkshires are really on the cusp of breaking into a more sustainable economy, via local foods and agriculture,” she said. The result is not just an invigorated farming industry, she added, but an explosion of small, upscale producers.

Assembling a picnic is the best way to sample this bounty. If the most famous instance of Berkshires alfresco dining was the mountaintop luncheon of Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne in 1850, the modern, hike-free version is an evening repast on Tanglewood’s music-lapped lawns.

For more than a quarter-century, Berkshire food lovers have bought many of their provisions at Guido’s in Pittsfield (1020 South Street; 413-442-9912, guidosfreshmarketplace.com). This year there’s another option in the city’s resurgent downtown: the Market, a trendy, cleanly designed deli (391 North Street; 413-395-9766; themarketpittsfield.com). In addition to sandwiches, the Market sells artisanal ice cream, jams, cheeses and hot dogs of grass-fed beef — all made in the region. Flying off the shelves with particular speed is Ooma Tesoro’s marinara sauce, perfect on pasta or pizza and a storybook tale of small-business triumph. Then there’s Berkshire Bark, a tiny chocolate producer founded in 2006. Just glancing at its Pretzelogical concoction probably costs half an hour on the treadmill, but it’s worth every step.

White wine is the typical accompaniment to most starlit Tanglewood spreads. But some music may demand something stronger, in which case the buzz is all about Chris Weld at Berkshire Mountain Distillers in Sheffield.

Returning home from California in 2004, Mr. Weld searched for an innovation-friendly agricultural community and soon found an overgrown apple orchard on the site of a 19th-century spa. A biochemist, he thought of distilling, and by 2008 he was marketing a small collection of gin, vodka and rum to quick national acclaim.

More than a century ago, water from the spa on his property was sold as a curative in New York. Now spirits produced on the same soil are being sold at the Oyster Bar in Grand Central Terminal, and at modern speakeasies like PDT in the East Village. Mr. Weld’s spirits are sold at restaurants in the Berkshires and also at Nejaime’s Wine, which has three locations (800-946-3988; nejaimeswine.com).

Restaurants across the region are offering more opportunities to enjoy a locavore gin and tonic while someone else does the cooking. One of the best is Allium in Great Barrington (42/44 Railroad Street; 413-528-2118; alliumberkshires.com), where the friendliness of the servers seems uncompromised by their devotional knowledge of the entire menu’s provenance. As this year’s harvest rolls in, try dishes like heirloom tomatoes with raspberries and housemade ricotta.

The Berkshires’ latest culinary hit, though, is Nudel, in Lenox (37 Church Street; 413-551-7183; nudelrestaurant.com), which Bjorn Somlo opened last fall.

Mr. Somlo, who previously cooked in New York, takes full advantage of his locale, often stopping by farms in the morning to choose ingredients for the evening menu. He’s particularly keen to serve meat from nearby farms, so when a farmer offered lamb necks, Mr. Somlo turned them into dinner. More traditional cuts come from across the Berkshires and from Northeast Family Farms, an organization that links chefs to family-run farms.

The presumption on Nudel’s menu is that everything is fresh: if a vegetable arrived frozen, it’s labeled as such. Mr. Somlo’s emphasis on openness is reflected in the architecture of his tiny restaurant, where diners can sit at a bar overlooking the kitchen.

In winter, of course, options for regional ingredients are more limited. Nudel’s slogan is “seasonally inspired,” and in the off season Mr. Somlo obtains whatever he can nearby, “while accepting the truth of where we are.” For après-ski, try his beef shank stew with Overmeade beets.

Even warmer months can bring some notoriously fickle weather in this part of the country (as Melville and Hawthorne found out when a thunderstorm interrupted their picnic).

Mr. Somlo has the versatility to roll with most meteorological punches. But such in-the-moment cooking doesn’t preclude the occasional bout of nostalgia, most recently for this spring’s asparagus, which was available for just 10 days before weather ruined the crop.

“That asparagus, it was awesome,” he said with a sigh. “And then it was gone.”

http://travel.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/travel/22journeys.html?hp

For Imam in Muslim Center Furor, a Hard Balancing Act

Not everyone in the Cairo lecture hall last February was buying the imam Feisal Abdul Rauf’s message. As he talked of reconciliation between America and Middle Eastern Muslims — his voice soft, almost New Agey — some questioners were so suspicious that he felt the need to declare that he was not an American agent.

Investors withdrew a staggering $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual funds in the first seven months of this year, according to the Investment Company Institute, the mutual fund industry trade group. Now many are choosing investments they deem safer, like bonds.

If that pace continues, more money will be pulled out of these mutual funds in 2010 than in any year since the 1980s, with the exception of 2008, when the global financial crisis peaked.

Small investors are “losing their appetite for risk,” a Credit Suisse analyst, Doug Cliggott, said in a report to investors on Friday.

One of the phenomena of the last several decades has been the rise of the individual investor. As Americans have become more responsible for their own retirement, they have poured money into stocks with such faith that half of the country’s households now own shares directly or through mutual funds, which are by far the most popular way Americans invest in stocks. So the turnabout is striking.

So is the timing. After past recessions, ordinary investors have typically regained their enthusiasm for stocks, hoping to profit as the economy recovered. This time, even as corporate earnings have improved, Americans have become more guarded with their investments.

“At this stage in the economic cycle, $10 to $20 billion would normally be flowing into domestic equity funds” rather than the billions that are flowing out, said Brian K. Reid, chief economist of the investment institute. He added, “This is very unusual.”

The notion that stocks tend to be safe and profitable investments over time seems to have been dented in much the same way that a decline in home values and in job stability the last few years has altered Americans’ sense of financial security.

It may take many years before it is clear whether this becomes a long-term shift in psychology. After technology and dot-com shares crashed in the early 2000s, for example, investors were quick to re-enter the stock market. Yet bigger economic calamities like the Great Depression affected people’s attitudes toward money for decades.

For now, though, mixed economic data is presenting a picture of an economy that is recovering feebly from recession.

“For a lot of ordinary people, the economic recovery does not feel real,” said Loren Fox, a senior analyst at Strategic Insight, a New York research and data firm. “People are not going to rush toward the stock market on a sustained basis until they feel more confident of employment growth and the sustainability of the economic recovery.”

One investor who has restructured his portfolio is Gary Olsen, 51, from Dallas. Over the past four years, he has adjusted the proportion of his investments from 65 percent equities and 35 percent bonds so that the $1.1 million he has invested is now evenly balanced.

He had worked as a portfolio liquidity manager for the local Federal Home Loan Bank and retired four years ago.

“Like everyone, I lost” during the recent market declines, he said. “I needed to have a more conservative allocation.”

To be sure, a lot of money is still flowing into the stock market from small investors, pension funds and other big institutional investors. But ordinary investors are reallocating their 401(k) retirement plans, according to Hewitt Associates, a consulting firm that tracks pension plans.

Until two years ago, 70 percent of the money in 401(k) accounts it tracks was invested in stock funds; that proportion fell to 49 percent by the start of 2009 as people rebalanced their portfolios toward bond investments following the financial crisis in the fall of 2008. It is now back at 57 percent, but almost all of that can be attributed to the rising price of stocks in recent years. People are still staying with bonds.

Another force at work is the aging of the baby-boomer generation. As they approach retirement, Americans are shifting some of their investments away from stocks to provide regular guaranteed income for the years when they are no longer working.

And the flight from stocks may also be driven by households that are no longer able to tap into home equity for cash and may simply need the money to pay for ordinary expenses.

On Friday, Fidelity Investments reported that a record number of people took so-called hardship withdrawals from their retirement accounts in the second quarter. These are early withdrawals intended to pay for needs like medical expenses.

According to the Investment Company Institute, which surveys 4,000 households annually, the appetite for stock market risk among American investors of all ages has been declining steadily since it peaked around 2001, and the change is most pronounced in the under-35 age group.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/22/business/22invest.html?_r=1&hp

Australia PM Gillard says election 'too close to call'

Australia's PM Julia Gillard has said the result of the general election is "too close to call".

She told supporters in Melbourne it could be days before the result was known and that independents could play a part in the next administration.

The BBC's Phil Mercer, in Sydney, says there is a strong possibility of the first hung parliament since 1940.

Projections by ABC indicate neither of the two main rivals will win the 76 seats needed for outright victory.

Ms Gillard is battling Tony Abbott of the conservative opposition coalition to become PM.

The election comes two months after Ms Gillard ousted Kevin Rudd in a controversial leadership challenge.

Voting is compulsory in Australia, with 14 million registered voters.

Marginal seats

Unofficial counts by ABC have given Ms Gillard's Labor party and Tony Abbott's coalition about 70 seats each.

Deputy Prime Minister Wayne Swan said the result was "very close" and that it might take days before it became clear who could form a government.

Foreign Minister Stephen Smith told ABC the election would be decided by "30 or more marginal seats throughout the country".

Initial counting had given Labor a marginal lead over Mr Abbott's coalition - but other results have suggested heavy swings against Labor, in particular in the key states of Queensland and New South Wales.

Politicians and analysts say the prospect of a hung parliament is becoming more and more likely.

Earlier, Mr Abbott, the Liberal party leader, declared that it was "a day when we can vote out a bad government".

"It's a day when we can vote in favour of a competent stable government which respects the tax payer's dollar," he said while casting his vote in Sydney.

Ms Gillard voted near her home in suburban Melbourne. "This is a tough, tight, close contest," she said.

Mr Abbott worked through the final night of the campaign.

Correspondents say he has tried to exploit the Labor party's divisions after the departure of Mr Rudd, trying to portray his coalition as a stable answer to a government beset by in-fighting.

In his campaign he has pledged to tighten immigration and has hit out at government spending. He has also toned down his well-known climate change scepticism.

Ms Gillard, a former lawyer who called a snap election shortly after coming to office, is hoping to be rewarded for the government's handling of the economy, which weathered the global recession remarkably well.

That Labor is locked into such a tight election race represents a turnaround in its fortunes since the start of the year.

Missteps by Kevin Rudd on climate change and a controversial mining tax caused his support - previously high - to fall sharply.

Ms Gillard won a leadership race in June but, despite her success, her support has fallen in the two months she has been in office.

]http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11037486

Biden Urges D.N.C. to Reject Grim Election Forecast

ST. LOUIS — Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. admonished Democrats on Friday to shake away their pessimism about the fall elections, arguing that the prospect of historic losses would be minimized because the Republican Party has been overtaken by extreme candidates and stale ideas.

“The reports of the death of the Democratic Party have been greatly exaggerated,” Mr. Biden said, paraphrasing Mark Twain as he addressed party leaders here. “The day after the election, there will be a Democratic majority in the House and a Democratic majority in the Senate. If it weren’t illegal, I’d make book on it.”

As the Democratic National Committee gathered for its summer meeting at Union Station in St. Louis, anxiety marked a stark change for a party that had reveled in back-to-back election cycles that produced control of Congress and the White House. Democrats acknowledged the difficult political climate, but they said that their candidates could benefit from Republican shortcomings.

“The choice is not between Democrats and the Almighty. It’s between Democrats and the Republican Tea Party,” Mr. Biden said, suggesting that most American voters would not tune into the election until after Labor Day. “Voters are going to look at what the Republican Party is really offering — more of the past, but on steroids.”

With 75 days remaining in a midterm campaign that will determine whether Republicans will win control of Congress, the White House dispatched the vice president here to boost the spirits of Democrats who are bracing for the prospect of deep losses in House, Senate and governors’ races. Republicans must pick up 39 seats in the House and 10 in the Senate to gain a majority.

Democrats conceded they are not only fighting against tides of history — only twice in the last 75 years has the president’s party not lost seats in a midterm election — but a bleak economy and an unemployment rate that remains close to 10 percent. To win over voters, Democrats are searching for a balance between trumpeting their legislative achievements and reminding voters they inherited the economic problems.

“We can get in the bunker. We can say, it’s not our fault, it’s the economy,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri. “Or we can remember what it felt like two years ago when we were on the verge of something special in this country. We need to remember that sense of purpose.”

Tim Kaine, the Democratic national chairman, announced that the party raised $11.5 million in July, the second-highest monthly figure of the election cycle. The party had $10.8 million in the bank, he said, which would be used to create an aggressive get-out-the-vote operation aimed at core Democrats and first-time voters who supported President Obama two years ago.

He said Democrats held important structural advantages over Republicans, particularly the strength of their political organization in states across the country.

“There’s a lot of gloom and doom, but I think we’re going to do a lot better than people think,” said Mr. Kaine, delivering a raw partisan speech to a ballroom filled with Democrats, many of whom leapt to their feet as he dismissed Republicans as “easy streeters and country clubbers.”

The Republican National Committee, which has struggled to raise money this year, was still tabulating its July fund-raising figures. Two weeks ago, when members of the Republican committee gathered for their summer meeting in Kansas City, Mo., party leaders conceded that they were worried about the fund-raising disparity with Democrats.

But Republicans believe the political environment will overcome any campaign shortcomings.

Not long after the vice president delivered his speech on Friday, the Republican National Committee issued a statement criticizing him and other Democrats for being out of touch, particularly given the number of people seeking unemployment benefits reached the half-million mark for the first time this year.

“Joe Biden is still desperately trying to convince Democrats that the economy is on the right track,” said Bill Riggs, a Republican spokesman. “It’s clear that Barack Obama and Joe Biden are completely out of touch.”

In addition to the vice president, the administration also sent Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services, to address the Democratic gathering. She said the landmark health care law, which will be implemented in phases, is among the reasons voters elected Democrats and should be a central part of the party’s argument.

“We passed a transformational health care bill in spite of daunting odds,” said Ms. Sebelius, a former Democratic governor of Kansas. “The more people understand this bill, the more they’re going to like it.”

A poll released Friday by CNN showed that 56 percent of Americans oppose the health care bill, while 40 percent support it. The sentiment has barely changed over the last five months.

The Democratic National Committee also voted to approve the 2012 presidential primary nominating calendar, setting the date of the Iowa caucuses for Feb. 6, 2012, and the New Hampshire primary on Feb. 14. The contests in Nevada and South Carolina will follow over the next two weeks, with other states beginning their voting after March 6.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/us/politics/21dems.html?ref=politics

Blackwater Reaches Deal on U.S. Export Violations

WASHINGTON — The private security company formerly called Blackwater Worldwide, long plagued by accusations of impropriety, has reached an agreement with the State Department for the company to pay $42 million in fines for hundreds of violations of United States export control regulations.

The violations included illegal weapons exports to Afghanistan, making unauthorized proposals to train troops in south Sudan and providing sniper training for Taiwanese police officers, according to company and government officials familiar with the deal.

The settlement, which has not yet been publicly announced, follows lengthy talks between Blackwater, now called Xe Services, and the State Department that dealt with the violations as an administrative matter, allowing the firm to avoid criminal charges. A company spokeswoman confirmed Friday that a settlement had been reached. The State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said he could not immediately comment.

The settlement with the State Department does not resolve other legal troubles still facing Blackwater and its former executives and other personnel. Those include the indictments of five former executives, including Blackwater’s former president, on weapons and obstruction charges; a federal investigation into evidence that Blackwater officials sought to bribe Iraqi government officials; and the arrest of two former Blackwater guards on federal murder charges stemming from the killing of two Afghans last year.

But by paying fines rather than facing criminal charges on the export violations, Blackwater will be able to continue to obtain government contracts. While the company lost its largest federal contract last year to provide diplomatic security for United States Embassy personnel in Baghdad, where the Iraqi government was incensed by killings of Iraqis in one highly publicized case, it still has contracts to provide security for the State Department and the C.I.A. in Afghanistan.

Blackwater, its reputation tainted in part because of the excessive use of force by some of its personnel in Baghdad, sought for years to extend its reach far beyond the war zones of Iraq and Afghanistan.

For a time, the company’s founder, Erik Prince, had ambitions to turn Blackwater into an informal arm of the American foreign policy and national security apparatus, and proposed to the C.I.A. to create a “quick reaction force” that could handle paramilitary operations for the spy agency around the world. He had hopes that Blackwater’s military prowess could be an influential force in regional conflicts around the world.

Mr. Prince, a former Navy Seals member and the heir to an auto parts fortune, took an interest in Africa, particularly Sudan, and he is said to have wanted Blackwater to step in to help the rebels in southern Sudan, which is predominantly Christian and animist, fight the Sudanese government and the Muslim north, despite United States economic sanctions.

Blackwater’s ambitions in Sudan were described in detail by McClatchy newspapers in June.

The settlement with the State Department, involving practices from the days before Blackwater was rebranded as Xe Services, comes as Mr. Prince is trying to shed his ties to Blackwater and its past activities.

He overhauled the company’s management in 2009, changed its name, and has now put the privately held company up for sale. He has just moved with his family to Abu Dhabi from the United States, a move that colleagues say was a result of his deep anger and frustration over the intense scrutiny he and his firm have received in recent years.

The State Department export controls require government approval for the transfer of certain types of military technology or knowledge from the United States to other countries. But Blackwater began to seek training contracts from foreign governments and other foreign organizations without adhering closely to American regulations.

The company also shipped automatic weapons and other military equipment for use by its personnel in Iraq and Afghanistan in violation of export controls, and in some cases sought to hide its actions, according to the government. In one incident, Blackwater shipped weapons to Iraq hidden inside containers of dog food.

A federal investigation into the company’s weapons shipments to Iraq led to guilty pleas on criminal charges by two former Blackwater employees who are believed to have cooperated with a broader federal inquiry.

Investigators reportedly looked into whether some of the weapons that were shipped to Iraq were sold on the black market and ended up in the hands of a Kurdish rebel group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., which Turkey considers a terrorist organization. Turkish officials reportedly complained to the United States about American weapons seized from the group.

In 2008, after a federal investigation of Blackwater’s actions was begun, the company admitted “numerous mistakes” in its adherence to export laws and created an outside board of experts to supervise the firm’s compliance.

Current and former government officials say that the government’s inquiry into some of Blackwater’s export control violations began as part of a federal grand jury investigation in North Carolina, where Blackwater is based. But the matter was apparently shifted to the State Department when the criminal investigation in North Carolina narrowed its focus.

That grand jury handed down the indictments of the five former Blackwater executives earlier this year. That indictment includes charges that Blackwater executives sought to hide evidence that they had given weapons as gifts to King Abdullah of Jordan.

Despite the fines and investigations that have plagued Blackwater, the firm has continued to win contracts from the State Department and the C.I.A.

In June, the State Department awarded Blackwater a $120 million contract to provide security at its regional offices in Afghanistan, while the C.I.A. renewed the firm’s $100 million security contract for its station in Kabul. At the time, the C.I.A. director, Leon E. Panetta, defended the decision, saying that the company had offered the lowest bid and had “cleaned up its act.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/world/21blackwater.html?hp

Afghanistan: Duke of Lancaster's Regiment soldier dies

A UK soldier has been shot dead in Afghanistan, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) has confirmed.

The serviceman, from 1st Battalion The Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, died in southern Afghanistan on Saturday, an MoD spokesman said.

The soldier's next of kin have been informed.

The latest death brings the number of British military personnel killed on operations in Afghanistan since 2001 to 332.

The soldier died after insurgent forces opened fire in southern Nad-e Ali.

UK troops returned fire during the incident.

Task Force Helmand spokesman Lt Col James Carr-Smith said: "He was part of a security cordon that was providing protection to enable a meeting to take place between local elders and Afghan troops when he was killed by small arms fire.

"He died in the course of his duty. He will be sorely missed and his actions will not be forgotten."

Lt Col Carr-Smith added: "We will remember him."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11048083

Facebook Feels Unfriendly Toward Film It Inspired

LOS ANGELES — At the New York Film Festival next month, Hollywood will unleash “The Social Network,” a biting tale of the Silicon Valley giant FacebookMark Zuckerberg. and its founder

Now Facebook must decide whether to bite back.

After fretting for months over how to respond, the company appears to have decided that its best bet is to largely ignore the movie and hope that audiences do the same — that “The Social Network” will be another failed attempt to bottle a generation, like “Less Than Zero,” and not culturally defining, as it aspires to be, in the way of “Wall Street” or “The Big Chill.”

Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Zuckerberg and his colleagues have been locked in a tense standoff with the filmmakers, who portray Facebook as founded on a series of betrayals, then fueled by the unappeasable craving of almost everyone for “friends” — the Facebook term for those who connect on its online pages — that they will never really have.

Mr. Zuckerberg, at 26 a billionaire, and his associates are wary of damage from a picture whose story begins with the intimacy of a date night at Harvard seven years ago and depicts the birth of a Web phenomenon in his dorm room.

By his account, and that of many others, much in the film is simply not true. It is based on a fictionalized book once described by its publicist not as “reportage” but as “big juicy fun.”

“It’s crazy because all of a sudden Mark becomes this person who created Facebook to get girls or to gain power,” said Chris Hughes, a Facebook co-founder who left in 2007 to join the Obama presidential campaign. “That’s not what was going on. It was a little more boring and quotidian than that.”

Scott Rudin, a producer of “The Social Network,” said two top Facebook executives, Elliot Schrage, the vice president of communications, and Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer, “saw the movie a while ago, and they do not like it.”

Mr. Rudin described months of backdoor contacts during which he tried to ease relations with Mr. Zuckerberg by letting colleagues of the Facebook chief read the script, and even by accommodating them with small changes. Facebook had insisted on bigger changes, which the producers declined to make. In the end, Mr. Rudin said, “We made exactly the movie we wanted to make.”

Mr. Zuckerberg declined to be interviewed for this article. In a recent onstage interview, he said, “Honestly, I wish that when people try to do journalism or write stuff about Facebook that they at least try to get it right.” He later added, “The movie is fiction.”

But Mr. Rudin said the movie was about conflicting truths, as recalled by Mr. Zuckerberg and his associates, largely in a pair of court cases that ended in settlements. “There is no such thing as the truth,” Mr. Rudin said.

In a statement, Facebook acknowledged that “it’s a sign of Facebook’s impact that we’re the subject of a movie — even one that’s fiction.”

“The Social Network” is being rushed into awards contention by a pair of Hollywood’s most powerful filmmakers, the director David Fincher and the writer Aaron Sorkin. The two worked without acquiring the rights from Mr. Zuckerberg and other subjects, relying instead on the journalist Ben Mezrich’s book, “The Accidental Billionaires,” and on the legal protection provided to free speech, along with Mr. Rudin’s diplomacy. The book drew heavily on interviews with Eduardo Saverin, a co-founder of Facebook and a former friend of Mr. Zuckerberg’s, who later felt that he was unfairly sidelined.

For months, Mr. Rudin said, he talked with Mr. Schrage and others about a collaboration that would have involved incorporating work from David Kirkpatrick, who was writing a separate book about Facebook. Eventually, it became clear “that we were not going to be working together,” Mr. Rudin said, though he maintained contact long enough to screen a nearly finished film for Mr. Schrage and Ms. Sandberg.

Filmmakers often elect not to buy rights for people who figure only marginally in a picture. That is also the case for television movies that adhere closely to the public record. But studios like to lock down the rights to their principal living subjects, if only so they will not be bound to literal truth in their portrayals.

Mr. Rudin said rights were unnecessary in this case, partly because of the extensive legal record.

Among the undisputed facts in Mr. Sorkin’s script, a version of which has long been posted online, is that Mr. Zuckerberg, as a 19-year-old college student, became deeply involved in the creation of an online social network that grew from a few hundred users in 2004 to perhaps half a billion today.

The film, which is set for release by Sony Pictures on Oct. 1, clearly aspires to importance. “Want a perfect body, want a perfect soul,” chants a chorus of voices over the part of the movie trailer that shows Mr. Zuckerberg, portrayed by Jesse Eisenberg, rising to prominence like an Internet Sammy Glick.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/business/media/21facebook.html?hp

In Mideast Talks, Scant Hopes From the Beginning

JERUSALEM — The American invitation on Friday to the Israelis and Palestinians to start direct peace talks in two weeks in Washington was immediately accepted by both governments. But just below the surface there was an almost audible shrug. There is little confidence — close to none — on either side that the Obama administration’s goal of reaching a comprehensive deal in one year can be met.

Instead, there is a resigned fatalism in the air. Most analysts view the talks as pairing the unwilling with the unable — a strong right-wing Israeli coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with no desire to reach an agreement against a relatively moderate Palestinian leadership that is too weak and divided to do so.

“These direct negotiations are the option of the crippled and the helpless,” remarked Zakaria al-Qaq, vice president of Al Quds University and a Palestinian moderate, when asked his view of the development. “It is an act of self-deception that will lead nowhere.”

And Nahum Barnea, Israel’s pre-eminent political columnist, said in a phone interview: “Most Israelis have decided that nothing is going to come out of it, that it will have no bearing on their lives. So why should they care?”

That such a dismissive tone comes not from the known rejectionists — the Islamists of Hamas who rule in Gaza and the leadership of the Israeli settler community in the West Bank — but from mainstream thinkers is telling of the mood.

Some Israelis who have spent their professional lives on peace talks with the Palestinians were upset by the fear that failed talks could prove worse than no talks. Yossi Beilin, for example, who left politics in 2008 after years as a leftist member of Parliament and government minister, said Friday that the Obama administration was wrong to set a one-year goal without consequences.

“I think this is a huge mistake by the U.S. administration,” he said by telephone. “There is not a chance in the world that in a year — or two or three — peace can be achieved. The gap between the sides is too big. Netanyahu did not come to power to divide Jerusalem or find a solution to the Palestinian refugees.”

The Obama administration says that while talks may be risky, the current drift is even riskier, and the only possible way forward is to put the leaders of the two sides together with American help.

Yet on the Palestinian side, not even the leadership is enthusiastic. Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, has spent the past year and a half resisting the entreaties of Mr. Netanyahu to sit down together without preconditions. Mr. Abbas said repeatedly that years of such direct talks had led to no deal, only to the slow but steady loss of the West Bank to Israeli settlements.

He was hoping that the Obama administration would impose a solution, which he imagined would push Israel to yield more land and authority to him than the Netanyahu government favored.

That is why the Palestinians wanted only indirect talks brokered by the Americans. But Mr. Abbas failed to obtain what he sought, and the administration pushed him toward direct talks. He has agreed only from a position of weakness, he and others say.

“Abbas is naked before his whole community,” observed Mahdi Abdul Hadi, chairman of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs, an independent research institute in East Jerusalem. “Everyone knows that this Israeli government is not going to deliver anything.”

Most Palestinians — and many on the Israeli left — argue that there are now too many Israeli settlements in the West Bank for a viable, contiguous Palestinian state to arise there. Settlement growth has continued despite a construction moratorium announced by Mr. Netanyahu.

Moreover, support for many of the settlements remains relatively strong in Israel. In other words, if this view holds, the Israelis have closed out any serious option of a two-state solution. So the talks are useless.

The Israeli perspective focuses on Palestinian failures that have led to the current deadlock. As most Israelis see it, twice in the past decade their governments made generous offers to the Palestinian leadership that were rejected or ignored, evidence that peaceful coexistence was not the other side’s goal.

The first offer was in 2000 from then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak to Yasir Arafat at Camp David. Within two months, a Palestinian uprising broke out, leading to blood on the streets. The second was less than two years ago, when then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered even more to Mr. Abbas. Nothing came of that either.

What happened in Gaza over the past five years has also created intense Israeli disillusionment. Israel withdrew its settlers and soldiers and the result was a victory for Hamas, which rejects Israel’s existence, and thousands of rockets shot at Israeli communities from Gaza. The gap of mutual antagonism between Hamas and the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority grows monthly.

As a result, although most polls still show Israelis favoring a two-state solution, there is skepticism, even widespread cynicism, about Palestinian intentions and any prospect for a successful, peace-oriented state of Palestine.

The big issues that the sides will face in the talks are the same ones that have divided them for years — the future of Israeli settlements in areas conquered in the 1967 war, the borders between Israel and a future Palestinian state, the fate of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 creation of Israel and the status of Jerusalem.

Despite the intractable nature of those problems thus far, there are those who believe in the coming talks. Dore Gold, a former diplomat who has left public service but is closely associated with Mr. Netanyahu, said the negotiations “can be important as long as Israel’s red lines are not crossed. Creative ideas need to emerge that will address the fundamental needs of both sides.”

The lines he considers red are the need to keep Jerusalem united and under Israeli sovereignty and preserving Israeli control of the area in the West Bank along the Jordan border to prevent any flow of weapons in. Both positions have been completely rejected by Palestinians thus far.

Haim Assa, who served as a close political consultant to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s and continues to advise centrist Israeli leaders, said that even though the talks were between the Israelis and Palestinians, the power of success was with the Americans.

“The main player is the United States,” he said. “All the cards are in its hands. When the U.S. leaves Iraq it will want to put together a coalition of Israel, Jordan, Egypt and the Palestinians. These talks are central to that happening. If they push and take it seriously, they can do it.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/21/world/middleeast/21assess.html?_r=1&hp

Yes, They’re Sleazy, but Not Originals

The second season of “Jersey Shore,” which takes place in Miami, is even more popular than the first, and “Keeping Up With the Kardashians” is returning on Sunday for a fifth season, carrying in tow a spinoff about publicists, “The Spin Crowd.”

There is no need to panic.

Reality shows that exalt indolent, loud-mouthed exhibitionists may seem like almost biblical retribution for our materialistic, celebrity-obsessed age. But actually, these kinds of series are an extension of a time-honored form of entertainment, one that reaches back to the era of landed gentry, debutantes and social seasons in places like Newport, R.I., or the French Riviera.

More than a century ago, ordinary people avidly followed the follies of the idle rich in the society pages and passenger lists of liners like the Atlantic or the Mauretania. (The maiden voyage of the Titanic was a style story — until it hit the iceberg.)

There were celebrities back then too, and their claims to fame were not so much nobler than those of Kim Kardashian or even Mike, a k a the Situation, of “Jersey Shore.” Women and men made news by spending money frivolously or having grand weddings with millionaires or titled Europeans; they became infamous in lurid sex scandals and even murder cases, as when Harry K. Thaw killed the architect Stanford White in 1906 out of jealousy over White’s affair with his model-actress wife, Evelyn Nesbit.

News judgment, even then, skewed toward entertainment. The New York Herald was the first American newspaper to use the wireless telegraph in 1899 — inventor Guglielmo Marconi was invited to New York to report not the conclusion of the Dreyfus affair or the start of the second Boer war, but the results of a high-society sailing regatta, America’s Cup.

Celebrities of yore wore more clothes and had better manners, but then, as now, they went to a lot of parties and were often famous for being famous.

Television merely invades the process and broadens the social pool. “Jersey Shore” is often condemned, at least by many New Jersey residents, for hitting a new low by elevating the riffraff of tanning salons and sleazy nightclubs. But it’s important to remember that “Jersey Shore” is on MTV, a youth-oriented cable channel that has a hortative streak: series like “Teen Mom” and “If You Really Knew Me” carry a strong “don’t try this at home” message.

So, in a way, does “Jersey Shore.” The antics of Snooki, Ronnie, Vinny and the other housemates are a reality show version of a children’s poem in Gelett Burgess’s “Goops and How to Be Them,” first published in 1900:

The Goops they lick their fingers

and the Goops they lick their knives

They spill their broth on the tablecloth

Oh, they lead disgusting lives!

Bad behavior serves as a warning but succeeds as entertainment.

When they first appeared, the cast members of “Jersey Shore” were a Bart Simpson-ish tonic after the bland chic and relentless blond perfection of “The Hills.” They are loud, vulgar, salon-tanned and gym-bulked numbskulls who drink, brawl, belch and use foul language. This season the housemates have taken on a semblance of work in a Miami ice cream parlor — but it’s a silly gimmick. Their vocation is vacation.

And they have become so entrenched in the vernacular that even President ObamaJacqueline Kennedy’s pillbox hat. mentioned Snooki in a recent speech. She has smoothed down her “pouf” this season, but for a lingering moment that retro hairstyle was a cultural artifact like

Reality shows are staged, scripted and heavily edited, but for some reason there is still a frisson of authenticity behind the artifice: real people seem to have more staying power than established celebrities who are cast in reality shows.

The amateurs who turn into semi-professional actors on “The Bachelorette” keep finding an audience. Dina Lohan, the mother of Lindsay, and Denise Richards, the ex-wife of Charlie Sheen, bombed on their reality shows, mostly because they turned out to be deadly dull, unwilling or unable to tap into their inner sitcom personas, as Ozzy Osbourne did so successfully in his pioneering reality show, “The Osbournes.”

And so, however improbably, have the Kardashians. The women of the family have molded their exotic beauty and blank personalities to fit into comic soap operas, including the spinoff “Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami.”

They deliver dialogue that is so deliciously inane that no “As the World Turns” writer would dare type it. “We have, like, a great relationship,” Kim tells Jonathan Cheban, a publicist-confidant, explaining why she and the football star Reggie Bush broke up. “We just kind of realized it’s not working.”

In Sunday’s season premiere a newly single Kim won’t let people into her new house — a huge and impersonal faux-Mediterranean villa — for fear of scratches or stains. “I’ve worked so hard for this,” she tells her stepfather, Bruce Jenner.

It’s a laughable statement — she is the high priestess of red carpet parasites — except that Kim did make a go of doing almost nothing. She began as a national joke, mocked for having an odalisque figure but no visible talent, and has transformed herself into an international brand and tabloid fixture. Now she is also an executive producer of “The Spin Crowd.”

And that show, about Hollywood bottom-feeders, makes the “Jersey Shore” crowd seem reserved. Jonathan runs his company, Command PR, based on the “Swimming With Sharks” school of management — bullying a young new associate to have collagen lip injections, haranguing female assistants to look even more slutty — if that’s imaginable.

There’s nothing new about coaxing celebrities to promote products; the actress Lillian Russell endorsed Coca-Cola at the turn of the last century. But Jonathan has to persuade a Hollywood hunk to be a spokesman for a line of self-tanning lotions for men.

And the surrealism of show business is what makes this a marketable reality show.

“That sounds sort of in the makeup-world kind of deal — that’s not really me,” Mario Lopez, a host of “Extra,” tells Jonathan. “So I don’t know if it’s really true or authentic to what I am about.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/20/arts/television/20reality.html?ref=arts