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Sunday 6 July 2008

Diary

Daphne Guinness on awards shows and the US elections 

I am in the grip of US election mania. I have had a bet on with my bookie for two years (I’m not joking!) that Barack Obama will win. It is looking less and less like a long shot. Even if the rival faction does its best to defame and destabilise him. I really like what I read and what I hear about him. From people in their sixties, registering to vote for the first time, to the young, the nation is galvanised.

Why do I distrust Hillary Clinton? I am told that I should like her as she is a ‘woman’. Is it her toughness, her fakeness that I loathe? You could say that Barack’s young aide Samantha Power may have been unwise, but she was right when she called Hillary a ‘monster’. She’s a bit like Rasputin — almost impossible to finish off.

I have been wrong though; I thought France made a good choice last year with Sarko, and now I’m beginning to wonder. The cult of personality and Napoleonic hubris, combined with a lack of understanding of the distance required from a head of state, is probably the origin of the mess. Our Queen might really be the best head of state in the world! A real example of how the role should be performed.

I’ve become addicted to blogs. Bloggers may not be part of the mainstream news media but the blogosphere certainly is one of the best ways to tap into the zeitgeist of current thinking and it is helping drive discourse in the city and country. I even have my own at Starworks.com, which is great fun to do. I check many sites now every day.

Last week I saw my friend, the photographer David LaChapelle, who is more than anything an artist. His idea was to do a portrait of me underwater, so I spent four hours in a tank in full evening dress. I lost all sense of time and space. The only instructions I could vaguely understand were muffled by the water. Gazing out of the tank, it was impossible to make anything out in the blur, just the flash of the bulbs going off. I was so happy and relaxed compared to other times I have had being photographed — even by David. At one point somebody thought I had drowned.

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