Jim Brown

Jim Not-So-Dandy

His death was front-page news in every newspaper in America, starting with The New York Times, and his demise also led the news on television. Long glowing tributes poured in, starting with Barack Obama confirming the man’s greatness. The commissioner of pro football, Roger Goodell, said that Jim ...

The Royal Treatment

NEW YORK—At a chic dinner party for some very beautiful young women, your correspondent shocked, shocked the attendees by quoting an even greater writer than the greatest Greek writer since Homer—Rod Liddle, a Spectator magazine columnist—with his explanation of why royalty matters: because ...

Carroll Baker, 1962.

Dinner With a Legend

NEW YORK—Tennessee Williams wrote Baby Doll, his only screenplay, with her in mind, and she was considered the sexiest blonde bombshell ever, much sexier than Jean Harlow, whom she portrayed on film. She was great in The Carpetbaggers, The Great Divide, Harlow, Giant, and countless other ’50s, ...

The Play’s the Thing

NEW YORK—The concept of creativity and invention can be a doubled-edged sword: It can be fresh, uplifting, and original, like the Off Broadway play directed by Michael Mailer I’ve just seen, or it can be a phony rip-off of a Shakespeare classic, a terrible modern take on Hamlet, blackness, and ...

Jared the Jerk

Despite the catcalls and boos from some friends and even my wife, I was tickled to death on that November night of 2016 when The Donald was proclaimed America’s 45th president. It had a lot to do with my dislike for Hillary and Bill, as well as my Republican Party sentiments, something I lived to ...

Don’t Shoot the Messenger

NEW YORK—The most likely place to be injured, even killed, in the Bagel is the sidewalk, any sidewalk, where bikes and scooters run free to mow down the old, the infirm, and those unable to perform lifesaving, matador-like avoidance moves. Yep, marauding bikers use the sidewalks of New York to ...

Land of the Free, My Arse!

NEW YORK—The fact that a sailor on leave cannot whistle at a pretty girl’s legs is scientific proof that America is beyond help and finished for good. That also goes for hard hats, who along with sailors were among the whistlers back in the good old days before woke ruined men, women, and the ...

Columbiaman

Out of Style

Just as I finished complaining last week of the inability of Americans to string together a complete sentence, I realized they make up for it by being the worst-dressed people this side of the Ukraine. J.Crew has been in the news lately because the company has yet again changed hands, with hacks ...

Freud and Frauds

NEW YORK—Is it poor little ol’ me imagining things, or are Americans becoming stupider by the minute? I’ve been traveling and running into the species, and I swear that the most intelligent thing I’ve heard recently from a New Yorker is “Like, you know, like, uh, you know, uh, like, ...

Rewriting the Book

Never paraphrasing the classics was a given until woke sensibilities became a must. It was brought to mind by the BBC’s adaptation of Great Expectations, with the convict Magwitch knocking the Empire, and Miss Havisham taking opium on the side. What they should have done is have Pip hustling coke ...