November 11, 2017

Source: Bigstock

A dinner by Michael Mailer in honor of Arki Busson in Michael’s brilliant Brooklyn flat on the banks of the East River, overlooking the Statue of Liberty a quarter mile away. His father Norman had some very brainy people living it up on these premises, and Michael has continued the custom of feeding pretty women, bitchy columnists, talented cinematographers, and brainy tycoons like Arki, among the few tycoons I know who combines looks, a talent for seducing beautiful women, and the ability to make lotsa moola for his clients.

Needless to say, everyone got very drunk. Three beautiful ladies and five horny men, including the actor Griffin Dunne, who is not only talented but also born a gentleman. (His documentary on his aunt, Joan Didion, is extraordinary.) The subject at dinner was, needless to say, sexual harassment, and every one at the table had the opportunity to have their say. Although many of those present are in the movie business, everyone was adamant that Hollywood is the pits. And always has been. My theory was the same, but—as those accused are mostly Jewish—it went a bit deeper: When they were at school, the perpetrators were mostly indifferent to glory. That is, while the rest of us tried to be Saturday’s heroes, breaking our bones and cracking our noodles on the sporting field, Jewish boys were hitting the books. Hence they did not get to kiss the campus queen after Saturday’s heroics. Once they got into the movies, however, they tried to make up for lost time and get the rewards we received when in school. A sudden entitlement ensued, and you’ve read the rest. It went over like the proverbial lead balloon.

“Britain is not a ‘hollowed-out country,’ nor is it ill at ease or deeply provincial. And America is not a nation run by Nazis, religious fanatics, and Ku Klux Klanners.”

One subject that the media has ignored is the organized ring for young boy actors that is believed to exist in La-La Land. It is un-PC to mention, hence the silence. Another silence was that of former New York Times Washington bureau chief Michael Oreskes, who was reported to the then female executive editor of the paper, Ms. Abramson, who failed to do much about it. He’s had to say bye-bye from his national radio job. Sexual harassment is a wicked mixture of sex and power, and harassers possess what shrinks call hostile masculinity. As often is the case, the shrinks are wrong. Sexual harassers are ugly men who never got the girl and were not born gentlemen. Jimmy Stewart, John Wayne, Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, William Holden were not exactly born with a silver spoon, but they were gents to their toes. Harvey and Dustin and Brett are not. It’s as simple as that. But there’s a witch hunt going on, and it will continue until the ultra-feminists leading it overstep the line; then we’ll go back to the good old days when a man was innocent until proved guilty.

Otherwise, Uncle Sam and Blighty both seem to be in the trigger sights of the Times, NBC, The Atlantic, CBS, ABC, and The Washington Post. Liberal mediadom is still stunned and outraged at last year’s presidential results and is out to annul anything that stems from that result. Britain and Brexit are seen as just as outrageous. So a sort of dreamland has been invented by fake-news perpetrators, a vast defiant territory that in reality is the bicoastal states of New York and California, places perfectly governed by Democrats where no one goes hungry and everyone is happy and where it never rains and even the cockroaches vote left. Talk about La-La Land—both New York and California are teeming with drugs, murders, sexual deviancy, child porn, you name it, the anti-Trump camp owns it.

Mind you, the Donald is very hard to defend at times, but the anti-Donald camp is impossible to excuse. It believes in democracy as much as Robert Mugabe does, and its smug bicoastal liberals are furious that those they see as deplorables had their way via the ballot box. This is where merry old England comes in. If British attributes are lightly born knowledge, social ease, self-deprecation, and understated emotion, American attributes are energy, a never-say-die belief in equality, and lots of self-confidence. The smug hypocrites who rule the media in America see Brexiteers as Trumpists. Brexit means Britons chose not to be ruled by unelected bureaucrats in Brussels. Trumpism means a repudiation of the Bush and neocon doctrine of democratic crusades around the world, with their ensuing colossal disasters. Hence papers like The New York Times let loose paid agents provocateurs like Cohen and Erlanger to spread the word that Britain is in a terrible mess and only a recall of Brexit can save her. Good salaries and great expense accounts are known to make hacks like the above toe the line. Reportage and editorials are one and the same where the fake Times is concerned. The readiness of the Times to lie and peddle untruths gives me great pleasure at times, pun intended, especially when the hacks use the same exact words to blame the right.

Britain is not a “hollowed-out country,” the way it’s described by Erlanger, the lying fool, nor is it ill at ease or deeply provincial. And America is not a nation run by Nazis, religious fanatics, and Ku Klux Klanners. If anything, Trump and Brexit have exposed to the world how the big lie works, until it’s uncovered—that of the media in America and the left in Britain.


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