Steve Schwarzman Basks in the Limelight

Steve Schwarzman is a busy man these days, what with running

his company around the world (Blackstone just bought

a back-office company in India), preparing his company for an IPO this month,

fighting Congress on the taxation of private equity, and even attempting to

bail

out a Bear Stearns hedge fund. But he still manages to find time in his

schedule for being feted by the rich and famous, for instance at a New York

Public Library event

last night in his honor. Such events seem to be quite

common for Schwarzman these days:

Mr. Schwarzman and his wife, Christine Hearst Schwarzman, have become regulars

at events like these, and increasingly of late, honored guests. He was given

the Leadership Award at his alma mater, Yale University, on Thursday night.

Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse awarded

him with a Distinguished Service Award in April of last year.

Of course, there was also Schwarzman’s notorious $3 million birthday party

in February, where he stage-managed all the accolades: "When Blackstone

colleagues prepared a video tribute, he sought to squelch any roasting, asking

his peers not to poke fun at him," reported

Henny Sender and Monica Langley in a Schwarzman profile last week.

Today, the WSJ’s DealJournal is reporting on some of the oily obsequiousness

directed towards Schwarzman from Maria Bartiromo at the NYPL

event:

Bartiromo said she was introducing Schwarzman “not as a journalist”

but as a friend. She called Schwarzman “truly a wealth creator”;

a “winner”; someone who “loves the camera, likes the attention,

and it loves him.”

“Steve,” Bartiromo said, “you’re a pioneer. There’s

no other way to look at it. It’s all good.”

Ugh. I just hope that Bartiromo is never forced to report on her "friend"

Schwarzman.

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