I write this on my last day in the Bagel, and it sure is a scorcher. Heat and humidity so high the professional beggars on Fifth Avenue have moved closer to the lakes in Central Park. Heat usually calms the passions, but nowadays groupthink pundits are so busy disguising fake news as journalism, ...
The feeling of summertime abandonment is here—the Hamptons are overflowing with mouth-frothing groupies looking for celebrities, and the Long Island Expressway is replete with hissy fits by enraged drivers stuck in traffic for hours on end. One reason I gave up a beautiful estate in Southampton, ...
NEW YORK, N.Y.—This week fifty years ago saw the assassination of Robert Kennedy, a man I met a couple of times in the presence of Aristotle Onassis, whom some Brit clown writer once dubbed Bobby’s murderer. (Bad books need to sell, and what better hook than a conspiracy theory implicating a ...
I recently had a spirited discussion with the British historian James Holland, brother of Tom Holland, also a distinguished man of letters, about FDR, his oil embargo of Japan, and the root causes of WWII. We were in Normandy, inspecting the battle scenes of D-day, with James giving us the kind of ...
Back in New York and digesting the five glorious days I spent in Normandy. What was the fighting all about, you may ask: Was it about equality, cultural diversity, man’s dignity? All liberal catchphrases these days. Liberty and freedom are also big words now, but all I see are massive central ...
PEGASUS BRIDGE, NORMANDY—We’re taking morning coffee at the Gondree Café (skirting “THE” bridge), still owned by Arlette Gondree, whose family owned it on D-day. She was a girl at the time, and she now stands old but erect and schoolteacher-like, looking us over as we have breakfast and ...
OMAHA BEACH, NORMANDY—I am standing in a German cement bunker, having walked through a large gaping hole caused by an incoming shell that must have instantly killed the handful of defenders. The bunker is on the beach, about fifty yards from the sea at high tide, and an afternoon mist is rolling ...
Bonjour, mes amis! Fifty years ago this month I was living in Paris and life was, shall we say, grand. Back then there was nothing like Paris in the spring and early summer, with formal balls galore, polo in the Bois de Boulogne, and late-night parties in Left Bank clubs such as Jimmy’s. At 30 ...
Talk about high life, this is not. I smelled a rat long ago. Then the scent got weaker and weaker. But now it’s back, stronger than ever. It has, of course, to do with the Saudis, the Qataris, and the son-in-law who has also risen, Jared Kushner. About a year ago, the Saudis issued an ultimatum ...
NEW YORK—“What Do We Do With These Men?” thunders a New York Times front-page headline, followed by a mouth-frothing, overwrought hissy fit worthy of an Oscar in the overacting department. These “men” are the usual suspects: media people and Hollywood types who have been accused by the ...
