Last night, a stylish crowd of about a hundred Democrats gathered at the enviable East Village Manhattan loft of photographer-filmmaker Gregory Colbert for a fundraiser for Barack Obama. The event, which featured a distinguished lineup of speakers culled from the arts, raised $45,150 for the Democratic presidential candidate. Guests talked politics, sipped Prosecco, and admired the lush, dreamlike environs as gorgeous moving images from Colbert’s films were projected onto an exposed-brick wall in his soaring studio space. After an introduction by Scottish actor Alan Cumming, Alec Baldwin, E.L. Doctorow, Calvin Trillin, Nora Ephron, Australian novelist Peter Carey, and Jonathan Lethem took turns at the podium to entertain the audience (which included lawyers, artists, writers, and the rapper Q-Tip) and comment, with different degrees of directness, on the situation America finds itself in today.