“Sorry, I’m in makeup; if it’s something important, call my agent, Israel Goldfarb.”

This is how I’ve been fending off the myriad calls from eager females trying to reach me now that I’m about to become a major movie star.

Michael Mailer, son of Norman and a very close buddy, is producing a movie directed by James Toback and starring Alec Baldwin. It’s about a movie producer trying to finance a film during the Cannes Film Festival. That’s what Cannes is all about: Greedy Hollywood types deal, dicker, and haggle over future films and imaginary profits with the French Riviera’s azure waters as background. So this is a movie within a movie, and yours truly plays an Onassis-like figure languishing on his yacht trying to fend off Hollywood sharks looking for a mark.

According to the script which I have yet to see, Alec (us Hollywood types only use first names) comes onboard Bushido, sees my young blonde girlfriend du jour, makes a pass at her, and we end up fighting. The only provision the director has made is that the fight should be for real. No faking and no taking dives, except that we both should end up in the sea fully dressed. This is the good news. The bad is that Alec Baldwin is not only a tough guy, he’s also no friend, having told Mailer that I’ve trashed him in print and he’s looking forward to getting revenge. Oh, dear!

For someone who has detested Hollywood’s philistinism for decades—when was the last time a priest was not portrayed as a child molester, a cop as corrupt, and a soldier as a psychopathic murderer?—I’m looking forward to my 15 seconds of fame. I shall look at the Cannes film people from my boat and keep an Onassis-like distance from them, unless they’re very young and pretty and female. (Neither Baldwin nor I are gay, so we will not fight, make up, and get married, even if that disappoints Obama and Biden.)

I have hated Hollywood for most of my adult life due to the way it depicts Americans: All Southerners are Ku Klux Klan, all farmers dumb and backward, all drug dealers misunderstood, and all criminals victims of an unfair system. Yet in my private life I’ve only had good experiences with movie stars—except for the ghastly Peter Lawford, next to whom I lived at the Sherry Netherland almost fifty years ago. He was a very bad drunk and a terrible drug addict whose idea of paternal concern was to give one of his sons—according to the son’s biography—five grams of coke which father and son consumed together on Christmas Eve. I finally ended up punching Lawford after he insulted my then-young wife, and that was the end of a beautiful friendship.

After that it was all hunky-dory. I went out with the sexiest woman of her time, Linda Christian, and with a very young Joan Collins, and the beautiful Janet Leigh. But my real friendships were with men such as Louis Jourdan, the handsomest actor of his time in films such as Gigi, Letter From an Unknown Woman, and The Swan. Louis and his wife gave a wonderful party for me on my way back from Vietnam, introducing me to all the stars and then some, and we used to spend our summers together at the Hotel du Cap in Antibes. Louis is now in his nineties and looks as good as one can at his age. He has impeccable manners and is well-read and as charming a man as one can hope to meet.

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Probably the least pretentious person I know is Harvey Keitel, he of Taxi Driver pimp fame. The time we were introduced I asked him what a nice Jewish boy from Brooklyn like him was doing in the Marine Corps. He laughed and said to no one in particular, “Who is this guy, I like him.” I rarely see him but when we run into each other we have lotsa laughs togther.

Just as charming is Frank Langella, a sophisticated man and wonderful actor. His book Dropped Names is beautifully written. But my closest actor buddy is Sir Roger Moore, a man I’ve known for forty years and with whom I’ve spent a lot of time due to our William Buckley and Gstaad connections. As his son Jeffrey once said to me, “Roger is not a great actor, he’s a great movie star.” He’s also as gentle and witty as they come, and we meet a couple of times a year and get rather pissed together. Roger devotes his time now to UNICEF and spends his own money while traveling the world helping poor children.

And as luck would have it, the first James Bond, Sir Sean Connery himself, moved near me in Gstaad a few years ago. During a dinner party he revealed that he’s been reading me for thirty or so years in the Spectator. Sean and I have shared many dirty jokes and many good bottles of wine. His wife is even more of a fan because she shares my prejudices. So I’m friends with the two best James Bonds, the great Louis Jourdan, and now at 75 I am about to join the Hollywood pantheon by throwing Alec Baldwin off my boat like Achilles slaying Hector. Look for the movie starring Taki and tell your children and your children’s children about it. Hooray for Hollywood. 

Will Smith and Stockard Channing in Six Degrees of Separation

In John Guare’s play Six Degrees of Separation, a young black con man traduces his way into a white, rich, liberal family’s midst by posing as Sidney Poitier’s son, who had just happened to lose his wallet. The guilt-ridden rich folk put him up—with predictable results. The family is almost torn apart as the con man brings in a gay lover and steals them blind. The Broadway show was a success, as was the movie, which featured Donald Sutherland and Stockard Channing as the rich liberal couple and Will Smith as the con man.

Just about that time, twenty years or so ago, I was writing for a New York city weekly, as well as for London’s Spectator and Sunday Times, the latter requiring close to 2,000 words per week, an unheard-of load for someone who was also pursuing a busy social life in the Big Bagel. Four thousand words per week made Taki a very dull boy late at night. So I advertised for a researcher—the first and last time I ever did this.

No sooner had the ad appeared in The New York Observer, the liberal Bagel weekly in which I contributed a regular column, than a terribly polite voice over the telephone volunteered his services. I invited him to my house for lunch the next day. As it happened, my father-in-law, Prince Schoenburg, was also coming. The prince was a white, guilt-ridden liberal straight out of central casting. This was because his family had once upon a time ruled over the land of Bohemia, now known as the Czech Republic. To my surprise, the researcher turned out to be a young black male of an incredibly gay mien. He had half an ear missing, an injury I recognized from my martial-arts background to have been inflicted by violent means.

Oh, I almost forgot—the Guare play and movie were based on a true story, with names having been changed by the playwright to protect the well-meaning fools that had fallen for the con man. Except for that of Sidney Poitier, whose name the trickster had exploited in real life. Once the lunch began I noticed that my prospective researcher drank wine even faster than yours truly, becoming thoroughly sloshed in no time. He also regaled my kind father-in-law with tales about tea plantations in Brazil that his family owned, although he couldn’t place them on the map, nor did he seem to be aware that Brazil exports coffee. The prince listened patiently and politely while the man blabbed on until finally he passed out on the sofa next to the dining room.

By this time the penny had dropped, and after letting him sleep it off, I then ordered him out of the house telling him I knew who he was and that I was no West Side rich liberal fool. He tried to ring me afterwards, but after I threatened him with both violence and the police, he begged off for good. I later read that the poor guy had died of AIDS. His real name escapes me.

But then the movie came out and I wrote about my experience with the con man in The New York Observer. The female editor at the time was a ghastly left-winger who had already made my life miserable at Esquire magazine, where I used to be a regular columnist. She didn’t like the story, especially as I emphasized the black con man as opposed to the white liberal prince. She told me to tone it down, and I refused on the basis that every word I had written was based on fact. The story ran but not many of the paper’s readers were impressed by it. As far as they’re concerned, black is good and white is bad and facts can go to hell.

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Which brings me to the latest perturbation, the first-degree separation of National Review from the great John Derbyshire. All John did was to poke some fun and advise young white persons to smile and keep walking when encountering a large group of black people looking for trouble. As he wrote himself, the fact that he’s undergoing chemotherapy had nothing to do with it. Nor was it a suicide note.

He did not mention that after so many years of special remedial treatment under law, many blacks remain outside the bounds of middle-class society. He never referred to the fact that so many even educated blacks seem increasingly remote, hostile, and at times paranoid. And not once did he ask how blacks could be included in American society if they insist on separating themselves from it. As John Vinson wrote in Chronicles:

When the left labels our honest comments and questions as hate, we might reply that truth-telling is hate to those who hate truth. When they denounce our free speech by calling it hate speech, we might reply that free speech is hate speech to those who hate freedom.

Hear, hear! The trouble is that it was NR, not some lefty rag, that got rid of a wonderful and courageous man. NR’s loss is our gain, and that makes me very, very happy.

Dorothy Parker

My friend Mark Brennan and I were talking about class warfare. “It’s cyclical,” Mark said as he executed a perfect uchi mata during judo practice.

“Perhaps over here,” I answered, “but in Europe it’s a way of life.”

“Just look at the 1890s, followed by the crash of 1907, then the Roaring Twenties before the Great Depression, and then the 80s and 90s followed by the crash of 2008,” Mark insisted. “It’s cyclical.”

By then I was too out of breath to counter him, literally as well as metaphorically. The only way to put the pain of extreme effort out of mind is to discuss politics while trying to throw one’s opponent. Our discussion during an extremely tiring session was about class warfare, or what Obama and the Democrats and their ass-wipers such as The New York Times and Washington Post insist are tax breaks only for billionaires who vote Republican.

Mark is an American, and so am I. But I’ve lived in Europe most of my life. What Obama and his media catamites have to say about the rich or well-born I’ve been hearing all my life in the Old Continent, and then some. Even my old man blamed it on the class system, one that had performed swimmingly since Roman times until well past World War I. There was an upstairs and a downstairs; you’ve seen Downton Abbey and know the rest. People knew their places and stuck to them. Pliny the Younger had two houses, one more showy than the other, where elegant food was matched by deep thought, clever chat, and stunning scenery. It was a Platonic ideal of dining, an event where all the elements were in perfect harmony, although I’m not sure the servants agreed.

Listening to some European protesters nowadays, one would think that nothing has changed since Pliny’s time. A leftist Oxford professor told me it was the blithe impenitence of the upper class that drives him up the wall. He said they display a demented disregard for common decency’s humblest demands. When I suggested he get real, he called me a fascist, then asked me to buy him a drink.

As Dorothy Parker once said about horticulture, “You can lead a whore to culture, but you can’t make her think.” The European welfare state has led our prosperous society to an advanced state of moral decay, with a trashy, vulgar culture of neither spiritual nor aesthetic value. Repulsive behavior has become the norm, crime rates have gone through the roof, and the less fortunate are appeased by the idea that they are only unsuccessful because they aren’t propped up by an army of publicly funded bureaucrats. Our British cousins and their world-renowned bad manners are leaders in this field.

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The decline of the upstairs-downstairs system had something to do with the general cultural decline. It began with a healthy challenge to deference from below and became a crisis of nerves from above. The people who belonged to the Establishment, the old authority figures—and by that I don’t mean only lords of the manor and millionaires, but also teachers, religious leaders, and politicians—no longer believe in the ethos that made them what they were. They no longer feel able to uphold traditional values. Parents, bombarded by generations of lifestyle gurus on bringing up their children, simply lost the plot. Respect for one’s elders is now an alien concept.

I put 90 percent of the blame on intellectuals and educators who have consistently derided all standards of decency over the last forty years. They lost faith in the moral and cultural traditions which they inherited—reimagining them as smokescreens for oppression and hypocrisy—in order to be trendy. The result has been a barbarous nihilism which currently reigns supreme in so many British inner cities, and to my everlasting horror, at universities themselves.

Manners were the first casualty. Four-letter expletives are part of the culture of triumphant ignorance—the belief that behaving like a slob indicates virility. Alas, the rich, the middle classes, and the working poor all use them. They all copy Hollywood, where untalented mental cavemen rule the roost. Between Hollywood, rock stars, and our beloved sports idols, the F-word has become proof of some sort of authenticity.

Yet I remember when hardworking people were appalled if someone said “Jesus Christ,” especially in front of women and children. Most people I grew up with never swore, and I don’t think my mother would have recognized a swear word if she heard it. She was kinder to people who worked for a living than, say, a countess or a princess of the blood, and in a way I’m glad she’s no longer around to see our current mess. I only hope Americans don’t turn into Europeans. Let them hate the rich and privileged in cycles, unlike us Europeans who hate everyone and everything at all times.

Indian Wells, California

Here we go again, sports fans! During a recent tennis match between two professionals in Indian Wells, California, a racial comment uttered by one of the players has the usual suspects up in arms. The newspaper that only prints what fits PC, the dreadful Big Bagel Times, was among the first to complain.

Michael Llodra of France is usually a mild-tempered fellow, but in his winning match against Ernests Gulbis of Latvia, he seemed to be out of sorts. His problem was a Korean woman by the name of Alex Lee Barlow. The Korean-American was accompanied by her husband and brother, all of whom stood out by cheering loudly for the Latvian. Indian Wells is known for having stands very close to the courts—not necessarily a good thing for emotionally sensitive tennis fans. Tennis players are known for constantly using four-letter words.

When I was on the tennis circuit forty or so years ago, the worst offender was Bob Hewitt, a foul-mouthed Australian who won the Wimbledon doubles and mixed many a time. There were no fines back then, and players were supposed to act like gentlemen. Referees turned a deaf ear in Bob’s case because he suffered from a type of Tourette’s, although back then it was called bad manners. Players no longer act like gents, especially women such as the ghastly Serena Williams, who intimidates everything in her path and often often seems to go unpunished because she’s black.

Llodra’s grievous offense was to mouth the words “putain chinoise,” which translate as “Chinese whore,” after some excessive cheering against him by the Barlow group. He did not yell the words out, he muttered them at best, and he did, after all, express his feelings in French.

I’m against vulgarity in all its forms, but there are mitigating circumstances in this case. Koreans are monolingual at best, and the chances of a Korean-American speaking French are slim. Ilie Nastase, the great Romanian player of the 1970s, always swore his head off at umpires and linesmen—but he did it in Romanian. They knew that he was using foul language, but there was nothing they could do about it. Who speaks Romanian except for Romanians?

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I’ve heard people cheering hard for my opponent, and in the heat of the match one tends to take it personally. Llodra looked directly at the woman and called her a “putain chinoise,” and the PC brigade went into overdrive. If he had called her a “conasse”—which is French for a female part that a bikini hides—no one would have made a fuss. But because he used the universally offensive word ‘Chinese,’ all hell broke loose. Rappers call white folk far worse names, yet no one utters a word of protest. But call a gook—sorry, I was in the Nam long ago—call an Oriental some word relating to their ethnic makeup, and the Thought Nazis go berserk.

Barlow claimed that she thought about what happened after the match and decided to complain. A little bird tells me she had dollar signs on her mind. Llodra was fined $2,500 dollars for the insult and Barlow was promised an apology. But the Frenchman has refused to give one, which I think is correct. Either a fine and no apology, or an apology and no fine. And he taught Barlow a couple of French words, so she should thank him.

We all know that the French are an arrogant and unpleasant race, but the Koreans are not much better. Look at their culture. Llodra was certainly wrong to peg the woman as a Chinese hooker, but I can’t tell them apart either, except when they’re behind the counter in the 24-hour markets.

The thought police enforce hate-crime laws, campus speech codes are wielded like nightsticks, and the Times is thundering against a Frenchman who called some Korean a Chinese hooker. As Pat Buchanan wrote, “The new mortal sins are…racism, sexism, homophobia and nativism.” I wonder what would have happened if he had simply called her a hooker.

When the bloated and declawed Las Vegas casino-money recipient Newt Gingrich had some fun recently over Mitt Romney’s ability to speak a few words of French, Europeans took notice of this farce. The French are an angry nation: envious, supercilious, and eager to show superiority over those who invented Coca-Cola and the Big Mac. They are also forgetful, especially their amnesia regarding Uncle Sam’s military forays to save la France profonde, as Charles de Gaulle called the land of cheese and perennial German domination.

Jealousy is often provoked by losing something you once had to someone else. In Europe’s case, that “something” is power. Instead of learning to emulate the strategies and systems that have made the US a superpower, many of the European elite, as well as the proverbial man in the street—especially l’homme de la rue—decry Europe’s McDonaldification and endlessly whine about American philistinism. This malicious envy of Uncle Sam is nothing new. It’s been around for at least fifty years. But after George W. and Obama, it seems to be getting worse. Bush was a philistine and his Iraq folly was shared by Tony Blair, a far bigger philistine and phony.

In a recent column, London mayor Boris Johnson wrote that Britain will never get off the pot until the Brits learn to admire success. He noted that unemployment is falling in the US, where wealth creators such as Mark Zuckerberg are generally applauded rather than denounced. However disgusting and intellectually dishonest (my words, not Boris’s) Zuckerberg may be, his success is undeniable, as was his maniacal determination as an undergraduate to become rich. Boris claims this would never happen at Oxbridge.

I’m afraid that I agree with him. I cannot see a European Zuckerberg emerging. I envision debates in European parliaments about the scale of his prospective wealth and whether it was tolerable in a fair society. Anti-capitalist protesters would shut the city down and tents would appear on his office lawns. Such aimless rage is not conducive to wealth creation. This is one of the reasons that most Greek shipowners live outside Greece. A Greek citizen cannot do business unless he or she has a partner inside the government. I don’t think anyone in Congress has as yet approached Zuckerberg to help him push through legislation favorable to Facebook. This is the simple difference between the old and new continents.

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Bashing wealth creators isn’t new, but back home in the good old US of A, very few outside the media take it seriously. Americans know that if they scramble and make it, they will receive their fellow citizens’ admiration rather than condemnation.

Which brings me to Obama and his cohorts across the pond. Many of them now have great reservations about the first black president because he has not turned out to be as socialist as they are. The fact that Obama and his fellow free spenders have driven up the national debt to 15.5 trillion greenbacks—nearly five trillion more since he came into office—does not impress the faceless bureaucrooks of Brussels, Paris, London, and Berlin. Obama and those who voted to lift the debt limit should be stars in the eyes of the Brussels gang, but they are disliked for not having lifted it enough.

Far removed from the Brussels power gangs, young Europeans often praise Ron Paul. They agree with his calls to halt the endless wars and to legalize drugs. Europe takes Uncle Sam for granted and refuses to share in military expenditures. Europe refuses to pick up more of the military burden, becoming what some of us who pick up checks in restaurants call a free rider. This should make it easy for Obama to do what Ron Paul asks ad nauseam: Bring the boys back home and see how the rest of the freeloaders like it. Even Europe’s two most important military powers, Britain and France, no longer have the capabilities to execute an overseas military operation. Argentina could invade the Falklands tomorrow, and Britain would have to ask Uncle Sam for a carrier, as their last one was recently decommissioned. Without the US, the NATO powers in Libya would have been without logistics and intelligence, yet they took full credit.

Obama’s refusal to read the riot act to Netanyahu astounded Europe. They see him as more of the same—scared to death of the Israeli lobby and accepting Netanyahu’s insults and defiance of the UN’s anti-settlements resolution. Europeans can’t see a difference between Obama and the GOP candidates who genuflect in front of Likud. I suppose the only difference is skin color. Plus ça change!

A couple of weeks ago I wrote in this here mag about Syria. I played it safe. My point was that Assad was not as bad as what may come after him. I now know better. In the long sweep of history, those who play it safe are more often than not wrong. Here’s a tip: If you want to get it right, choose the side Uncle Sam and the Fourth Estate see as a villain, and presto, you’ve chosen the good guy.

Assad did not start this in Syria. Saudi Arabia and Israel did. There was no Arab Spring in Syria, only realpolitik. Very briefly: The camel drivers posing as Saudi royals got the heebie-jeebies after Uncle Sam invaded Iraq, enabling the Shiites to come to power after the Sunni majority had kicked them around since the 1920s. Iraq’s Shiites and neighboring Iranian Shiites were natural allies. The Saudis began paying al-Qaeda to foment revolution in Syria, the main country standing between Israel and the Shiite regional powers of Iran and Iraq. That is when I believe the camel drivers got a telephone call from Israel: Let’s keep this quiet, but between you and your money, and us with our power over the Americans, we can knock Assad over in no time.

The pathetic media, desperate for a bad guy to demonize, blind to reality but open to PR hucksters, played along. Like lemmings, journalists and newspapers have parroted the script that dictated this was a revolution by Syrian people yearning for freedom. The truth, however, is that the Syrian conflict is a Sunni move against what the Saudis and Israelis view as a Shiite move toward Middle Eastern hegemony.

What surprises and depresses me is that after a century of never getting it right—both World Wars were useless to America, as were the disasters of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan—Uncle Sam is still a naïve and helpless giant being manipulated by Saudi money and Israeli threats. So-called Syrian protesters are Sunni mercenaries and al-Qaeda professionals working for Saudi money—the same Saudi money that paid for 9/11 and killed thousands of Americans.

Attikon Cinema

I was sad to read that the Attikon Cinema on Stadiou Street in central Athens was burned down by anarchist scum pretending to protest against the EU Nazis. The Attikon was built in 1870 as part of a beautiful, ocher-colored neoclassical edifice constructed by a German architect, only to be torched 142 years later by professional troublemakers posing as freedom defenders.

It’s par for the times to burn down an old beautiful building to show the world how civilized we modern Greeks are. Hundreds have lost their businesses in one night’s looting by extremists, most of them probably well-off and posing as anarchists.

The Brussels bureaucrooks don’t fear the street scum. They have one fear only: Contagion. If Greece drops out, others will follow. The EU’s dreams of running the old continent will be kaput.

So for now, who is worse—the pusher or the addict? I’d say it’s fifty-fifty as they sustain each other, although the addict has the moral high ground. Greece is the addict. The German and French banks are the pushers, with Brussels the Godfather shipping the stuff in from Afghanistan. The Godfather is not the cuddly Brando type, but rather an autocoprophagous degenerate who managed a coup d’etat while Europe slept. The Godfather is now defending his turf with Caligulan levels of depravity.

If I had one wish, it would be to see Europe’s dregs—dwarfs such as Barroso, Draghi, Rehn, Van Rompuy, and the rest of the scum—in the dock the way the Greek colonels ended up. At least the brave Greeks who pulled the coup on April 21, 1967 had the courage to roll the tanks out and take their chances. One of them, Costa Papadopoulos, brother of the leader George Papadopoulos, is still in prison, the junta having collapsed in 1974.

I am very serious. These midgets who have done away with democracy in the name of democracy need to be tried, convicted, and jailed for life. When the Austrians voted in Jörg Haider some time back, the scum in Brussels said no way. They threatened a boycott because they didn’t like the way the Austrians had voted. When the French and the Dutch rejected the 2005 referendum, they were rejected in turn by the Brussels commissars. The Lisbon Treaty, ditto. In Hungary the people have overwhelmingly voted for the Fidesz party, but the Brussels apparatchiks lectured the Hungarian premier on his internal policies. Daniel Cohn-Bendit, a Green euro MP and probably the most disgusting man in Brussels and Berlin, told the Hungarian premier to show more respect for the EU or else. Instead of instantly kicking Cohn-Bendit in his nonexistent balls, the Magyar went home with his tail between his legs. What in the hell is going on here?

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Let’s now get to the Greeks. They are caught between the Scylla of debt and the Charybdis of default. What Brussels demands of Greece is as realistic as asking a middleweight boxer to bulk up to heavyweight while on a starvation diet. The Greeks cannot and will not ever be able to pay the debt and interest simply because even under the cruelest austerity by the year 2020 the deficit will still be more than the GDP. Most likely the economy is in freefall and will continue to fall for years to come. The Euro Scum Elite know this but have an agenda of their own—keeping their perks and positions of power in Brussels—so they are immune to Greek suffering.

The ones suffering are the innocent poor made up of those who work for a salary in the private sector, pensioners, and small businessmen and women. Worse, the Greeks do not seem to have learned anything since the crisis began. They still believe in the most thieving politicians this side of Nigeria, and the next Greek prime minister will be Antonis Samaras, a malevolent, blackmailing, opportunistic demagogue.

Not a single Greek politician has been charged with corruption, yet there are socialist ministers from the Andreas Papandreou period of twenty years ago who have been caught stealing hundreds of millions of euros in German kickbacks for arms sales. All the EU money went into paying for votes by both right and left parties—by appointing voters to civil-service jobs for life, protected by a constitutional amendment—yet the electorate is ready once again to go the polls and vote the same old crooks back in.

I left Greece back in 1994 because politicians and civil servants demanded bribes from me to conduct my business. I refused to pay fakelaki, hence I couldn’t do business in Greece. So I cut my losses, got on my boat, and hit Europe’s beaches. When dumb hacks ask why most successful Greeks are outside Greece, the answer is because staying in Greece means paying protection money just like the poor wops in the Lower East Side paid the Godfather.

Greece has secured a second bailout from the eurocrooks. If Greece defaults there will be super-inflation and the nation could become the first failed eurozone state. The Greeks will remain poor and the country’s infrastructure and human resources will be unable to turn the situation around. It simply postpones the inevitable.

After the 2004 Olympics, while the various stadiums built for the games began going to seed, I tried to buy the judo stadium to turn it into a martial-arts dojo. I am still waiting for an answer. Two friends of mine had a similar experience. They were expected not only to pay for the rotting stadiums, but also to bribe the appropriate civil servants and ministers. Greece went rotten once it did away with the monarchy, which kept the politicians honest. The politicians cooked the books and sent the bill to the people. End of story.

As I watched last week’s Western posturing after the Russo-Chinese veto of the UN Security Council’s resolution against Syria, Captain Renault of Casablanca fame kept coming to mind. Like the good captain, who was shocked to discover gambling was taking place at Rick’s Café (while pocketing his winnings), I was shocked that Uncle Sam’s Secretary of State and her British equivalent were so upset that the big bad Russkis and the tricky Fu Manchus could veto a resolution against the world’s worst man ever, Bashar al-Assad. Following the veto, ominous warnings were issued against the Syrian strongman by the fierce-looking William Hague—a Mister Clean lookalike who is reputed to have worn diapers until he was 16—and echoed by Hillary the Great, the only woman to have ever been cuckolded by Monica Lewinsky.

The reason for my shock was simple. Uncle Sam has been vetoing UN Security Council resolutions against Israel since the latter’s inception. And Israel has been bombing, strafing, and killing unarmed Palestinian protesters regularly and efficiently since then, too. So why is a Russian veto suddenly so objectionable? According to anti-Assad informants and the media which is excluded from Syria, more than 5,000 Syrian protesters have died in the last eleven months. I don’t have any figures in front of me, but I’d hate to list the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that Israel has sent to Kingdom Come these last 64 years. Why does the US refer to Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied West Bank as “terrorists,” whereas they call the Syrians who oppose Assad “freedom fighters” or “protesters”? Can someone out there explain the difference to me? Don’t bother. I know it. Anyone who is against Likud and the illegal settlements is a terrorist or a terror apologist (and if they happen to be Jewish, they are self-hating Jews).

If the good Captain Renault was around last week he would have been doubly shocked that such beacons of democracy as Saudi Arabia and Qatar are screaming for Assad’s head. The so-called Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal—I do not accept phony Saudi titles except those of Camel Driver in Chief, etc.—said, “It is not a quality of Arab leaders to kill their people.” Since when? Only eleven months ago the Saudis poured their tanks and half-tracks into Bahrain to protect another phony king, one who rules in favor of a rich Sunni minority and enjoys lording it over the impoverished Shiite majority.

The Qatari Emir, Khalifa Al Thani, demanded that Arab countries send troops to Syria to end the brutal crackdown. The Emir is a very brave man. It is said that when he was 18 years old he single-handedly skinned a baby kitten. The Qatari strongman owns Al Jazeera and uses it for protection against anyone who might get ideas similar to last year’s mass Tunisian delusion. Having the Saudis and Qataris threatening a military intervention reminds me of that famous pugilist Bill Clinton saying he wanted to punch Bill Safire after the latter had called Hillary a pathological liar.

What is the Syrian uprising all about? That’s an easy one. The Sunni Saudis are financing the Sunnis in Syria to get rid of the governing Alawite clique. The Syrian army is Alawite-led, the Alawites being a minority and an offshoot of Shia Islam. Get it? The Saudis fear Shiite Iran, which is helping Assad. The Sunni-led kleptocracies of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf are posturing and threatening war against Iran’s Shiites and Syria’s Shiite-Alawite regime. It is the game of nations, a fight between Sunnis and Shiites in reality, but I don’t expect many of the Super Bowl-winning team’s defensive linemen to understand it.

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Russia and China are made to be the bad guys for vetoing action against Assad, but does anyone really care about him in Washington? Yes and no. The neocons would like to see him go because he does not follow orders and allows Hezbollah to remain a threat against Israel’s northern frontier with Lebanon. Uncle Sam has no bases in Syria, which also makes Assad expendable. Yet throughout Syria, Assad is the only man able to bring in eventual reform and to protect Christians—who in Egypt are being slaughtered by the newly “free” and “democratic” Egyptian Muslims.

Iraq showed us how easy it is to prematurely proclaim victory. In that tragic country, elections after the American invasion only widened divisions, and a civil war is a fifty-fifty chance nine years after the invasion.

Libya is worse off now than when the monstrous Gaddafi was in power. Militias have the run of the place, the killing continues, and the only good to emerge from the West’s intervention is the fact that Gaddafi’s ghastly offspring no longer come to Gstaad, St. Moritz, St. Tropez, and St. Barts. That is all. Washington has never learned any historical lessons. We armed the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, both of which cost thousands of American lives.

The Syrian opposition is divided—by sects, by politics, by regions, and by tribes. What’s happening in Syria is not a revolution, it is a sectarian conflict. Syria’s Sunnis and Alawites hate one another more than they hate Assad. That’s why Assad has survived so long.

Russia is not the kind of country that plays nice for the hell of it. Russia sees the falls of Saddam and Gaddafi as part of a plan to draw countries into the Western orbit. Syria is the seventh-biggest Russian arms purchaser. The deepwater port of Tartus welcomes Russian warships. Putin dreams of a Russian return to the Soviets’ global standing. The Russkis have made a bet, and I think it’s a fifty-fifty one. As the great Marcel Dalio playing the croupier in Casablanca used to exclaim, “faites vos jeux”—place your bets.

It wasn’t Italy’s finest hour. Not even Gabrielle D’Annunzio—poet, patriot, propagandist, and proto-fascist—could spin this into a maritime Titanic-like drama. Once the Costa Concordia hit a rock off the Tuscan coast, the passengers and crew acted like cowards. This much we know. But knowing Italy—a country that successfully switched sides in both World Wars—the truth will never emerge. Human nature’s eternal glories and failings have always played a leading part in Italy’s long and magnificent history. Heroes turn into baddies, defeats into victories, burlesque into opera. They say Italy is more of an idea than a country. Where else would a benevolent dictator’s innocent mistress be shot and hanged upside down by men who pride themselves as protectors of the weaker sex?

When I first heard the news of the Costa Concordia’s sinking off an island I have sailed around more times than I can remember, I thought it was a joke gone wrong. Surely the reason was bella figura, the Italian male’s unique style of pride, all show and no substance. Since it is the centennial of the Titanic’s sinking, for one sick moment I imagined some show-off captain had tried an impossible maneuver to impress his friends ashore. As of this writing, it seems that is why he went 300 meters off the mainland rather than the required 1,500. Still, at least 17 people are certified dead. Even in Italy, Captain Schettino risks going down in history as a man who not only ran his boat aground—modern equipment notwithstanding—but one who was in the bar with two female companions and who jumped ship long before his passengers.

In the chaos that ensued after the ship began to sink, the legendary edict of women and children first—which is not part of maritime law, and I would know, since my father was a ship owner—fear took over with the predictable Darwinian results. The strong managed to get a place on the lifeboats; the weak did not. But 100 years ago when the Titanic sunk, 72% of the women and 50% of the children were saved, as opposed to 18% of the men. With a few exceptions, this was the way it should have been. Three Italian men from steerage were allegedly shot dead for disobeying the order to allow women first. The ratio of those who survived reflected the era’s chivalry.

Which brings me to Cosmo Duff-Gordon, a Titanic survivor, a Scottish aristocrat and landowner, and a Silver Medal Winner in the 1906 Olympics in fencing. Looking at his record, Duff-Gordon embodied the ideal of the clean-living hero, the Beau Geste of the upper classes. Yet all the qualities of leadership, heroism, pride, and noblesse oblige failed him when it really counted. He escaped on Lifeboat No. 1, the only man among women and children. It was also whispered that he and his wife bribed rowing crewmen not to pick up victims in the water in case they swamped the boat. (This was never proved.) In his defense, Lifeboat No. 1 took on only 12 people. Still, he stinks to high heaven.

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I define fear as how close you feel to what you fear. My friend Commissioner von Raab told me about an incident when he was in government and how two four-star generals who had seen action on the battlefield would chicken out time and again when in a different environment, such as in a ministerial conference. They feared upsetting higher-ups, whereas in battle one does not have the luxury of sucking up. Von Raab was being kind. Fear is uncontrollable. I have a friend who has conquered Everest and has climbed the north side of the Eiger five times. Yet when we do karate, he flinches and covers up the moment I fake an attack.

Close to twenty million people cruise yearly on boats such as the Costa Concordia, and I’ll bet my last devalued euro that every last one, except those suffering from dementia, picture themselves in a Titanic-like situation and ask themselves what they would REALLY do in case the boat was going down and there were not enough lifeboats for everyone. Here’s what I said in the Proustian questionnaire Vanity Fair magazine conducts in each issue:

Question: How would you like to die?

Answer: Giving up the last seat in the last lifeboat of a sinking liner to a young beautiful girl and returning to the first-class lounge for a final drink.

I know, I know, it sounds terrific and romantic and macho and noble, but I am 75 and when I answered the question I was sitting comfortably in my desk and very secure in my house on dry land. It’s easy to rage against cowardice, even in a time when chivalry no longer exists.

Jill Abramson

When I was last in the Big Bagel (as I call Noo Yawk), a policeman who’d been awarded countless commendations for bravery over 22 years of front-line service was allegedly murdered in cold blood by a black drug dealer. Officer Peter Figoski was 47 and had raised his four daughters on his own. His last act of duty was to respond to a robbery in Brooklyn, where the fleeing black thug reputedly shot him in the face.

The accused, Lamont Pride, was only free at the time of the shooting because he had been let loose for illegally possessing a knife by a black female judge. The ex-con was also wanted in North Carolina for allegedly shooting someone in the foot over the summer.

The day after Figoski’s murder, while people remained in shock at the cold-blooded way the black thug shot an officer who had not drawn his gun, The New York Times ran an editorial praising the state of Pennsylvania for taking another black police killer off the death list. Mumia Abu-Jamal—or some ridiculous name like that—had even more cold-bloodedly killed a police officer lying injured on the ground. The timing was such that the Philadelphia policeman’s widow (since 1981) remarked upon it. It must have amused Jill Abramson, the new Times editor, for a slain cop’s widow to call her unfeeling. Abramson and her type do not much care what working stiffs think of them. To the contrary, they relish the fact that cops, firemen, blue-collar workers, and their ilk do not read or believe the Times.

I do not know Jill Abramson, but rarely have I seen a homelier woman. In a New Yorker hagiography, she was described as coming from a household that ordered and read two copies of the Times—a bit of a waste I would think, but who am I to judge what middle-class Jewish rug salesmen do with their money? All I know is that on her way to the Times building five or so years ago, Abramson was hit by a truck whose front was totally defaced, while she suffered a few broken bones. Now she cheers for a cop killer escaping the lethal injection while ignoring the fact that a black judge let a black thug wanted in another state walk the streets and kill.

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The Times is a very nasty piece of work. It aims its hatred at normal white Christian Americans while filling its pages with same-sex marriage announcements, profiles of rap “artists,” and front-page coverage of Catholic priests’ sex abuses.

The Times only prints news that fits its policies. Their latest false outrage is the discovery on Facebook of hostile comments by NYPD officers about the West Indian American Day Parade. Cops used words such as “savages” and “animals” to describe the random shootings of parade watchers, words that had the Times furious with indignation. What words should the fuzz have used? A 56-year-old mother watching the parade is shot dead and the Times is indignant because some cop wrote that the shooter was an animal?

Obviously the Times’ agenda is to undermine the police by depicting them as racist and then collect a couple of prizes for exposing police corruption. Not a single word concerning color was used by the cops—some of whom happened to be black—yet the newspaper played it up in its front page for a couple of days, triggering the usual reaction from opportunistic local politicians calling the incident “disgusting” and “racist.” (The pols avoided mentioning the shootings.)

Blacks are 23 percent of New York City’s population, yet in the first half of 2009 they committed 80 percent of all shootings. Whites, who are 35 percent of the population, committed 1.8 percent of the shootings. So the Times recently ran an extremely long story over two pages about a young black who whined about how the police tend to profile him when he walks around his neighborhood at night. That the cops failed to profile all white people for the tiny minority of whites who commit shootings is deemed an outrage and proof of police racism.

A black man was recently acquitted for carrying an illegal gun by a jury because the arresting officer was a member of the NYPD Facebook group that had called the West Indian troublemakers “animals.” When the Times was quoted in court, the jury was not told—and the Times had not mentioned—the fact that the arresting officer was black. Such are the joys of the world’s most dishonest newspaper.

I flew to Delphi to consult with the oracle, and the old girl had a lot to say about 2012. Pythia, her real name, is getting on in years—she’s around 2,500 years old. Despite her lifestyle—she smokes exotic cheroots, gets high, and then is able to see the future—she still makes sense. Pythia originally earned fame by predicting that Achilles, a supposed immortal, would not make it back from the shores of Troy. When I was ushered into her inner sanctum just below Delphi on the Gulf of Corinth, she was already high. I had paid a hefty sum to see her on such short notice.

My first question was about the euro. Will it survive?

Hers was a typical Delphic answer: “It’s an ill-conceived currency union and despite the latest Brussels ploy to fix their fiscal failures, I wouldn’t put too much stock into the market’s gains following its latest rescue.” The oracle’s speech patterns are modern as hell, but her answer was nevertheless very ambivalent—except when it came to Germany. “This is the 4th Reich, no ifs or buts about it.” What Bismarck and Hitler failed to do, Merkel has accomplished, at least for the moment. Yet the latest summit is not as revolutionary as first suggested. There is no real fiscal union as, say, there is among America’s states, which is what the unelected pseudo-elite technocrats in Brussels really seek.

What about the markets? I asked the high priestess.

“They will stop that clown Sarkozy running around Europe building drama and calling for meetings, then emerging from them and announcing a new agreement to have yet another meeting very soon.”

This obviously is a good thing, I said to her. So how long will this latest charade last?

“At least until the summer,” she said—typical of her, as she did not specify which summer.

After that the priestess took a break. I sat by the ruins in brilliant sunshine and contemplated what she had said to me. The markets will unquestionably have the last word, which means if the latest Band-Aid does not work, we’re in for a long period of economic downturn and perhaps a depression. Who would have guessed when globalization was the chic du jour that a chaotic country such as Greece could drag the whole Western world into a depression and make the Dow take the kind of dive no self-respecting palooka ever contemplated taking? Such are the joys of globalizing, and although we paleocons were always against it, we take no joy in the present mess. One thing is for sure. Outside of the asylums, not one of us is buying European equities. The latest rules impose fiscal discipline to stop a new crisis, but they do little to ease the current one. The imbalance between the strong north and the weak south will remain for at least my lifetime.

After yet another joint, Pythia summoned me back up for more.

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What’s the scoop on Egypt?

“There might be civil war, there might be a military takeover, and there might be a theocracy after all,” she said.

Not good enough, said I. I need a definite answer. I’ve paid through the nose, your highness.

She gave me the kind of look I wouldn’t give to a slob like John Podhoretz or a twisted midget like Bill Kristol. “Don’t be cheeky, young man—Egypt is more complicated than those idiots who cheered the Arab Spring ever imagined. Democracy and theocracy do not together go, and half of Egypt wants the latter while the other half wants the former. Egypt will remain in chaos for a while, then some army general will step in and there will be more riots, then another Spring, then more Islamist groups. I can only give you answers. I cannot fix Egypt; it’s not my job.”

I apologized for mentioning money. What about Yemen, Bahrain, and other Gulf States swimming in money and quashing democracy?

“What about them? They will remain as they are, ruled by a small band of brigands friendly to the West and will continue trampling on the rights of anyone who stands in their way. Iran is too weak to help fellow Shiites in the Gulf, what with Israel and Uncle Sam about to bomb it to smithereens in order to make Likudists sleep better at night.”

The Congo?

“Don’t make me laugh, I’m already very stoned. In all of Africa the official winner of an election is not recognized by the loser because most if not all the time the election has been fraudulent. There are always two self-declared presidents who jostle for attention and then mayhem ensues. Next question.”

This is the $64,000 one, high priestess—what will happen in Russia?

She furrowed her brow and took a deep drag. “With every passing day fewer Russians believe the elections were fair. Putin is hemorrhaging support, but now is my time to ask you a question: When was the last time there was a fair election in Russia? Putin will survive the pressure. He still has a majority and he will be the next president. Where is my $64,000?”

Poorer but wiser I left, as she seemed to have fallen asleep. I never got a chance to ask her about the American elections, but it’s just as well. I wouldn’t wish to embarrass a 2,500-year-old lady by bringing up Newt Gingrich’s remarks about how the Palestinians are a made-up people. Groveling to AIPAC is fine for Republican candidates, but ass-licking is simply not done—or at least not mentioned in front of a high priestess, and I mean high.

Cima da Conegliano

A reader has registered surprise that I am not an atheist. I am surprised that he’s surprised.

Theism, with its vision of an orderly universe and a moral creature created in God’s image, makes sense to scientists far more than the crap peddled by self-promoters such as Dawkins and the recently departed Hitchens.

I realize it’s not considered polite to speak ill of the dead, but Christopher Hitchens did it most of the time, especially in Mother Teresa’s case. He abused priests during debates knowing full well that a man of God will not hit back. He pretended to be a brave iconoclast but was careful never to offend the very rich and powerful—except those out of office, as in the case of Henry Kissinger or the saintly Paul Johnson. In fact he kissed the rich and powerful’s asses, switched sides so he could kiss them better, and took on God thinking he was as easy as the pope to slander and libel. It’s pipsqueaks such as Christopher Hitchens who thought they saw an easy target and attacked. I hope he has learned his lesson, which might make his stay in that subterranean sauna shorter than what he deserves.

Evolutionary theory does not exclude theism. In fact, it supports it. God created us through a process of guided evolution. I like to think God acts like some of the toughest martial artists I’ve fought against. Outside the arena they are as meek and humble as, say, our Lord Jesus—just don’t cross the line too much. God does not have to prove his might. It’s there for all to see and feel.

Most of the great scientists have been very religious. The closer scientists come to splitting the atom, the more they realize God’s existence. Although atheists use the oldest trick in the book in demanding proof of God’s existence, I demand they prove that the Almighty does not exist. It is up to them to prove it, and the reason they make so much needless noise is because they cannot.

Would there be a need for civility, brotherhood, and charity without the spiritual exercises that religions offer us? Yes, some will say, Socrates preached this long before your Christian God, and they would be correct—except that Socrates believed in Zeus and the other gods up on Mount Olympus.

I equate religious zealots with ignorance and superstition, yet the century that just passed—the one that reveled in the idea of God being dead—was the worst as far as death and destruction are concerned. However simplistic and corny it is, the spiritual revival now taking place proves that God and good exist in man’s soul. However the atheists try to paint theism as a travesty, they cannot make it stick because God will not allow man’s spirit to accept it.

“Rational” does not mean “scientific.” Rational means seeing the truth, however nuanced our Lord presents it. The soul is a concept all religions share. As John Locke—a humanist philosopher who believed in tolerance above all—once said about atheists, “The taking away of God, even in thought, dissolves all.”

I am a better person because I am a true believer in God. I believe in him because he makes me feel so good when I do something good. No punk like Dawkins can ever make me feel like less of a believer with his second-rate pseudoscientific self-promotions.

As a child I was told in no uncertain terms about God’s existence and how I’d be punished if I was bad. Yet seven decades later I look back and realize that despite the fact I never believed those old wives’ tales, I now believe in a supreme being more than ever.

A recent libel case won by Lady Moore, wife of Sir Roger Moore of James Bond fame, called for my testimony in London, and for once I was happy to oblige. Roger Moore is a friend of very long standing, as is his son Geoffrey, who lives fifty yards away from me in Gstaad. British hacks are notorious for never allowing facts to get in the way of a good story, but in this case the Daily Mail paid dearly for involving the wrong Kiki.

Let’s go back 54 years, when a very young (20) Taki arrived on the French Riviera and was extremely lucky to hook up with the prettiest Swedish girl by far in what Somerset Maugham called that “sunny place for shady people.” Her name was Kiki, she was 16 or 17, and she moved in with me in a tiny room without bath in the Hotel du Cap, made famous by the great F. Scott Fitzgerald as the “Hotel des Etrangers” in Tender is the Night.

After two or three weeks of unbridled passion, all hell broke loose. I opened up Kiki’s bag looking for cigarettes and found a wad of francs worthy of a drug dealer and then some. Under vigorous interrogation, Kiki admitted that it was a gift from an older man, a disgusting individual of unknown origins. Our love affair ended on a sour note, although Kiki went on to marry one of the richest Americans and then take him to the cleaners. I wrote about our ill-fated romance a couple of years ago in the London Spectator. As luck would have it, a gossip columnist read it, put two and two together, and got five. He figured my Kiki was Roger Moore’s Kiki and ran the item, greatly embarrassing the Moores, certain that the two Kikis were one and the same. (I hadn’t revealed Kiki’s surname in the original article.)

When I testified that I met Lady Moore 40 years after my Riviera idyll with Kiki the Swede, it was only a matter of how much Roger and his Kiki would accept for being libeled. (I hope it was in six figures.)

In the meantime, the Hotel du Cap got a lot of good publicity, which is the bad news.

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I spent my youth at the Hotel du Cap, having first gone there in 1952 with my parents when it was still owned by the family that had put up with Scott and Zelda’s shenanigans during the Roaring Twenties. For the next 30 years I spent every summer at the hotel and its famed Eden Roc clubhouse. They were probably my happiest years ever, as the hotel was THE place to be back before the nouveau riche scum from the Middle East and the old Soviet Union polluted the place beyond repair or redemption. Visit it and weep. I was there exactly 17 months ago for Naomi Campbell’s fortieth birthday party, thrown by her Russian boyfriend to the tune of a couple million euros. Among 400 guests there were five gentlemen: Leopold Bismarck, Tim Hoare, Nick Scott, Heinrich Fürstenberg, and yours truly. And three ladies: Countess Bismarck, Princess Fürstenberg, and Princess Hanover. (My wife refused to go although my boat was anchored below the hotel.)

Never have I seen so many gangsters and hookers, which is the type the hotel caters to nowadays. The Sella family sold the hotel about 30 years ago to a German group which decided to improve the bottom line. The result was predictable. Nice people cannot afford the hotel’s over-the-top prices. Even if they could, who wants to lie next to disgustingly behaved Russians in the first place? Although the hotel has not changed physically—its neoclassical façade is still surrounded by pined woodland and tennis courts that lead down to the sea—the people have changed, and that’s what makes all the difference. There are no more Dukes of Windsors, Gianni Agnellis, Noel Cowards, Rita Hayworths, Jack Warners, Aly Khans, King Farouks, Joe Kennedys, Gary Coopers, King Alberts of Belgium, Marlene Dietrichs, or Scott Fitzgeralds any more. Not even a Taki.

On a typical day back in the fabulous fifties, I’d wake up around nine, breakfast in the grand terrace facing the sea, then go to the tennis courts for a long hit and good sweat to get rid of the alcohol from the night before. Then it was down to the cabanas, screened by shrubbery from the gaze of upstanding folk who might not approve of monkey business before or immediately after a liquid lunch on the clubhouse terrace. After a long swim in the afternoon and more tennis, there were pre-dinner drinks at the hotel terrace. Then it was time to once again go hunting for women, a popular sport among Riviera regulars. It may sound like an empty life, but it sure was fun. Thanks for nothing, Kiki.

The London Spectator is the oldest weekly magazine of the English-speaking world, a jewel of a magazine as distinguished and respected as it is elegantly written. It was first published in 1828, just as modern Greece became a nation, and in a recent speech the sainted editor remarked that the Speccie was as old as its longest-running columnist, which is yours truly.

Graham Greene, no slouch where writing is concerned, called the Spectator “by far the most elegantly written weekly in the English-speaking world” and went as far as to invite one of the most notorious drunks of London’s bohemia, our “Low Life” columnist Jeffrey Bernard, to stay with him in Antibes. Both Greene and Bernard are now gone, but the Speccie has recently reached an all-time high in circulation—over 85,000 copies—a fact which seemed to grate with our literary editor, Mark Amory: “I remember when our circulation was 12,000 and EVERYBODY used to read it.”

I joined the magazine as a columnist back in 1976, when it sold around 8,000 copies per week but it seemed that everyone you knew read it. Everyone, that is, at Oxford and Cambridge, in Westminster, in Kensington and Belgravia, as well as in London’s St. James’s clubland. Now at 85,000 copies, owned by the Daily Telegraph group, and a big moneymaker, the Speccie’s sometimes reactionary ethos is not as profound as it once was—who can forget its early support of the postage stamp and its prophetic thoughts on the motor carriage?

Back in 1976, the Speccie’s headquarters were a Georgian house on a leafy Bloomsbury street next to the house of Charles Dickens. We have since moved to yet another grand house in a quiet street fifty yards from Parliament. There is a large garden in the back where our annual summer party takes place on the first Thursday of July. These parties are notorious for the scrum they produce, an overflow of every writer, hack, politician, and London characters imaginable. All prime ministers, at least since I’ve been there, attend regularly, although royals are never invited. Except for lunch. The Spectator’s lunches used to be notorious for the mix they produced. They are held in the elegant dining room and such diverse characters as Spiro Agnew, Prince Charles, Dame Edna Everage, Alger Hiss, Albert Speer, Dame Maggie Smith (whom I sat next to a couple of years ago and her first words to me were, “What in heavens is that pink thing you’re eating?”) join in the frivolity. Drink flows uninterruptedly, and when the legendary editor Clay Felker came over for lunch—he was looking for writers as he had just taken over Esquire—he asked me how was it possible for anyone to produce the magazine after all the drinking. (After lunch we took him across the street where the Speccie pub did a roaring business.) But despite all the drinking, the magazine has been produced for more than 9,000 consecutive issues and running.

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The Spectator’s detractors—there are very few—complain that it’s elitist and edited only by old Etonians. Our answer is that there’s nothing wrong with elitism and as far as old Etonian editors are concerned, I’ve served under seven, and only five of them had gone to Eton. The present editor, Fraser Nelson, is a very good-looking young man who was the first to ring me when he was appointed. “I’m sorry to tell you that I haven’t received a single call asking me to fire you” was his opening. (Most past editors had received such requests, especially from the Israeli Embassy.)

Great names of literature and journalism have always graced the Speccie’s masthead. John Betjeman, poet laureate, wrote on architectural topics; theater producer Kenneth Tynan was the drama critic; playwright John Osborne was a diarist; novelists Nancy Mitford, Evelyn Waugh, and Graham Greene were contributors; Auberon Waugh was a long-time columnist, to name just a few past greats. Paul Johnson, the greatest living historian, now writes regularly on religion, gardens, fashion, and, of course, history. Former editor Boris Johnson is now the Mayor of London and tipped to be the next prime minister “if he can keep his pants on,” as a recent Speccie article warned. A recent arrival—it was ten years ago, which is recent by Speccie standards—is Jeremy Clarke, who writes the low life to my high life. Under Fraser Nelson’s expert guidance, Jeremy has reached superstardom with his brilliant writing. The last low life, Jeff Bernard, had a play written about him and was portrayed by Peter O’Toole onstage. The play was a runaway success under the euphemism the magazine used when Jeff was too drunk to file copy: Jeffrey Bernard is Unwell. (Bernard died the same day as Princess Diana and was thus deprived of the spectacular obituaries he had announced in his deathbed.)

The Spectator’s genius is a simple one. Its writers continue to believe they are communicating with a smallish and highly educated and sophisticated audience. They write as if they were addressing their aunt Agatha, their eccentric and terrifying relation who got a 1st at Oxford age 16 and who now lives in a crumbling stately home owned by her half-witted brother. Long may the Speccie reign.

Kathleen and Eldridge Cleaver

Hearing about the black American fugitive who was caught recently after 40 years on the lam brought back lots of memories. No, I’m not black and I’ve never been a fugitive from justice, but the memories are quite pleasant because I met all those Black Liberation Army conmen in Algeria just about the time George Wright flew in from Boston to join them.

It was pre-PC but worse. I remember one night at the Sherry Netherland in New York in the company of an exquisite beauty, a lady who had the lead part in that haunting film Summer of ’42, which had just been released. I was back from Vietnam and after lots of drinks I thought my chances were pretty good, especially as she asked if I would walk her across Central Park. Back then the park was a more dangerous place than Da Nang. Alas, the Nam came up while walking and I mentioned enlisted men’s fragging of officers. “It’s one hundred percent black GIs who do it,” I said. If I had called her mother a hooker she would not have gotten as angry. After calling me a racist mother———g pig, she rushed off into the night and I never saw her again.

Jennifer’s reaction might seem over-the-top now—especially as she hardly knew where Vietnam was—but it was predictable. Black gangsterism was beautiful back then, and to hell with firebombing buildings, murdering judges and policemen, and robbing banks in the name of revolution. Some revolution. When Angela Davis was finally apprehended, Newsweek gushed about her looks as if she were Helen of Troy rather than a rather rough-looking gap-toothed woman with an extreme hairstyle.

White liberal guilt remained out of control until Tom Wolfe’s famous piece that exposed the hypocrisy of Park Avenue types such as Leonard Bernstein and his infamous penthouse party for the Black Panthers. Once Eldridge Cleaver and his merry men escaped the prison that was America for the freedom of Algeria, Bill Buckley thought it a good idea I go to that hellhole and interview them for National Review. I waited for a visa for a long time and eventually got there from neighboring Libya.

Algiers was grim, with veiled women, no booze, and security police everywhere. The French who had made it a cosmopolitan and pleasant capital had long left, with only a few old shopkeepers still trying to eke out a living. I hung out for a week without being able to make contact until I met a black South African revolutionary named Futhi Muchatini. Once I heard his nickname (“Futhi give me fifty,” given to him by Arnaud de Borchgrave) I knew I would soon be making contact.

Algerian strongman General Boumediene had permitted all sorts of revolutionaries to establish offices in Algiers, but he kept a tight leash on them. When Futhi took me to the Black Liberation Army headquarters I remember thinking that it beat Alcatraz, but not by much. The dumpy little house on the edge of town doubled as living quarters and offices. The only decorations were revolutionary slogans hastily scribbled on the walls. I quickly began spreading the wealth, and both Cleaver and his “field marshal,” Donald Cox, became talkative. “Oh man, what wouldn’t I give for a hamburger” was the field marshal’s opening line. It was the usual diet of anti-American slogans, nothing I hadn’t heard from American liberals back home: Amerika was a prison, the pigs were fascist thugs, the whole system was rigged against the blacks, and so on.

But Cleaver eschewed all that and only asked for news. To my amazement, they had not read a newspaper in months, did not speak French or Arabic, and hence were completely cut off from the rest of the world. I seriously contemplated telling him that a black-v.-white civil war had broken out but then thought better of it. I already was feeling sorry for the guy, especially when he showed me pictures of his beautiful wife Kathleen Cleaver. (I also thought of asking him for her number, but a self-preservation instinct prevailed.)

I got a cover story from it, the black revolutionaries got bored and asked permission to return to America and face the music, and George Wright went on to Paris and Portugal for 40 years of freedom until the long arm of the law got him. I hope he rots in prison because he murdered a WWII Bronze Star winner in cold blood and then wrapped himself up in the flag of revolution along with other criminals such as Cox and Cleaver. The latter served his time and later sold trousers with a large black sheath hanging from the front. The scheme did not work, since African-Americans have no need of such tricks. His beautiful wife left him and Jennifer O’Neill had a nervous breakdown, but not over me.