All the Charm of Hyenas

Driving through what my sister-in-law calls la France morte—the France that is dead—my wife and I were struck by the peculiar gloom of so many of the small country towns that would once have provided services for the farmers of the surrounding agricultural areas. Now the towns’ principal economic activity seems to be the collection of pensions and the provision of the very few services that those who drew such pensions required or could afford. The death of the towns was brought about by the replacement of small farms by agribusiness, which I suppose must be more efficient in one sense ...

Poor Tourists

Interviewed recently about COVID-19, a subject on which I am now, like only 1,500,000,000 others in the world, an expert, I was asked as a last question whether I thought that any ...

In a Fashion

Is changing one’s mind a sign of strength or of weakness? It depends on the circumstances. There are people who are at the mercy of the last person who spoke or who can be ...

Evening Above the Hell-Bar

There are few sounds more frightening than that of the English young enjoying themselves. The English, it was once said, take their pleasures sadly; but now they take them loudly, ...

Snake Charm

A woman in Indiana was recently found asphyxiated to death by a snake—a reticulated python—still wrapped round her neck. This was a death so horrible that you avert your mind ...

Deposition by Daniele da Volterra

Il Braghettone in UNESCO

UNESCO headquarters in Paris are offended by the nudes, and so they have been forced to cover up with a thong. Either the prick has become a disturbance or an iconoclastic Taliban ...

Hugh Grant

Hugh’s Views

An Irish friend who pays much closer attention to the media than do I often passes on to me items that he thinks might interest me. He is of my view that things of no importance ...

Epstein’s Web

Discussing the case of Jeffrey Epstein recently, my interlocutor asked me whether the indulgence in orgy by the rich and powerful was more frequent nowadays than ever before. I ...

Route 27

The Shinnecock Erection

The Indians are getting uppity, at least in Southampton. After a couple centuries of relative peace, the Shinnecock tribe has erected a six-story electronic billboard on ...

Meghan Markle

Meghan Markle: CIA Asset?

Meghan Markle is doing such a good job at destroying the monarchy, she could be a foreign agent. The idea seems far-fetched, that the CIA would train a B-list Hollywood actress ...

Work’s for Jerks

I’ve never done an honest day’s work in my long and useless life, so it is acutely annoying when people brag about the horrible jobs they had when they were young. If I ...

Oleg Cassini

Wicked Widow

How much money is enough? Would $30 million suffice for an old woman with no children? I ponder these questions as I try to understand why Marianne Nestor Cassini has spent ...

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West, 2016

Carpet Bomb

Pat Buckley would be spinning in her grave if she knew what has happened to the Met Gala she used to cohost with Blaine Trump. The benefit for the museum’s Costume Institute ...

Michael Cohen

Rat Tales

Nobody likes a rat. No one outside of his immediate family will be sad to see Michael Cohen go to prison on Monday, May 6, for three years. I thought Donald Trump’s personal ...


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