Leonardo DiCaprio

Otherwise everything is hunky-dory. I had a great Greek Easter dinner with my old friends George and Lita Livanos and then hit the downtown scene, which at present is the answer to the roaring twenties of Gatsby fame. What crap. If only there was the slightest resemblance. Sure, one notices the bored hauteur pose of tall Russian model-hookers and the insolence of dwarfish phony nouveaux riches and asks oneself whether the 1920s could have been as bad, and the answer is a resounding NO.

First of all, the WASPs who were masters of the universe back then were morally suspect only as far as polo, tennis, and golf were concerned. Tom Buchanan is a terrible shit in the Gatsby book, but at least he knows how to behave in polite company. Nowadays, the bums with the moolah do not. And they don’t play polo, nor golf, nor tennis, they just stare at a little machine all day. The over-the-top dissipation of the rich has always been glamorized, but the cheap satisfaction we feel at their fall has not. I have been lucky never to suffer from Schadenfreude, but this might soon change, especially where Gulf Arabs and post-Soviet Union types are concerned.

An American woman recently wrote a very stupid article about how she would give one thousand Fitzgeralds for one Austen. She bases her argument on the fact that Scott Fitzgerald wrote against the rich but aspired to the good life himself. My, how nasty American women can sound, especially when they’re being sanctimonious. Who the hell doesn’t want to live the good life? I live the very good life yet I hate the pigs and slobs I run into every day, especially in places such as New York, Cannes, London, and Gstaad. So what the hell am I supposed to do? Move to a Greek monastery in Agio Oros?

Our culture nowadays is dominated by the conspicuous vulgarity of new and ill-gotten wealth, while manners and morals are nonexistent. Young people act as if they’re autistic and simply cannot communicate because the machines they stare at all day and night have made interaction impossible. Our language has even changed, with people using acronyms instead of normal speech—when they use English, that is. In the Bagel, only a minority speaks English. The most blatant degeneracy is the constant use of the F-word and the way the slobs dress. Last week at a Broadway play, I was one of the very few to be wearing a suit and tie. Soon people wearing neckties will be profiled, their picture appearing in police stations. See you in Cannes.