"Diddy" doesn't dazzle at White Party
Sean "Diddy" Combs may be losing his touch when it comes to throwing bashes. Remember the good ol' days when he could fill Cipriani's 55 Wall Street with peeps like Muhammad Ali? Mariah Carey in a wedding dress? Bruce Willis, Naomi Campbell and Jay Z? Those were the days.
But Diddy's down to C-list celebs if his Labor Day barbecue was any indication. The big gets? Mariah was there, sans the dress and on the down low. After that, things get pretty scary: Star Jones and husband Al Reynolds. Oh yeah, and Tommy Lee, the overly tattooed, untalented sometime-companion of Pamela Anderson.
In fact, the listing of celebrities who had their pictures taken by WireImage is so threadbare that it includes lower-tier publicist Jonathan Cheban. Not exactly Muhammad Ali. Poor Mariah must have wondered what happened. Of course, she is been busy making her new album.
Designer Donna Karan was there, but she lives next door. I will never forget one of the original Combs Fourth of July bashes years ago when Karan and I got a personal tour of the Combs house by our host. Karan commented that Combs should get some art on his walls.
At this year's party, I'm told, Combs stayed on his terrace all day and watched the proceedings from a distance. Maybe this was to keep away from Kim Porter, the mother of three of his children who is currently involved in a major palimony-custody-child support situation. Yes, she was there, sources tell me, as were Russell Simmons and Andre Harrell, former Diddy employers.
One report says that Katie Lee Joel, Billy Joel's young wife, was turned away because she wore cream instead of white. Nice. What is unclear is whether or not any Warner Music types were on the scene. They paid Combs millions a couple of years ago to have his Bad Boy Entertainment in their company. So far, the partnership has yielded little in the way of hits but much in the way of red ink.
Combs is more interested in his perfume and clothing lines, which are yielding more profits but for other people. In the meantime, there's some question about what has happened to Diddy's non-profit charitable foundation, Daddy's House, which used to organize summer camps for poor kids. According to the most recent federal tax filing, Combs only put $188,000 into Daddy's House in 2005. How times have changed. In 2004, he parked over $600,000 in the charity, and in 2003 it was over $2 million. Talk about signs of the times. Diddy's largest donation was a big one, too. In 2003, he gave the New York City schools $1 million.
Alas, in 2005 Daddy's House Social programs showed a loss of $38,000. The non-profit had $26,000 in legal fees, and paid executive director Lisa Williamson, aka Sister Souljah, a salary of $75,000. That relationship, however, appears to be finito. On Sister Souljah's bio on her Web site, she says she "was" the executive director from 1995 to 2007. That party is over. (Fox 411)
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