NEW YORK—Back in the good old days the Carlyle hotel on Manhattan’s Upper East Side was THE hotel for Yankee swells, rich politicians such as JFK, and, of course, upper-class Eurotrash. Both my children were born at a ...

Here we go again. Is the Constitution merely a guideline to be consulted by those it purports to regulate, or is it really the supreme law of the land? If it is just a guideline, then it is meaningless, as it only will be ...

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 ...

For those of us who were ecstatic the night Donald Trump was elected president, who watch election night videos over and over again, it used to be easy to defend him against the charge that he is just a BS-ing con man who ...

We can thank Providence that the earthquake was not 150 miles closer to Tokyo, else Japan’s dead might number in the millions. Prime Minister Naoto Kan calls it the worst crisis since World War II. Yet, horrendous as ...

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 ...

War is fought on two fronts: the battlefield and the mind. Whereas superior strategy and firepower wins it on the battlefield, the war for the mind is won by successfully tarring and feathering your opponent with guilt. ...

GSTAAD—Joan Didion, who died December last, took herself extremely seriously. American writers tend to do that, especially those whose books are unreadable, the kind that win prizes and get reviewed by the Bagel Times. ...

What does one do, go to or refuse a party after a tragic event such as the recent Paris outrage? My son happens to live next to the Place de la République, where the massacre of innocents by those nice Islamists showing ...

Two rather splendid dinners given in the Bagel by George Livanos and Mick Flick, where the subject of the faux Leonardo that sold for 400 million greenbacks—plus a $50 million fee for Christie’s—was a subject ...

Last Saturday, my 80-year-old dad and his lady friend came to my house in Wellesley for lunch. I roasted haunch of venison shot with bow and arrow and served it with butternut-squash lasagna made with winter vegetables from ...

America’s famous First Amendment may be under threat de facto, but it does at least exist de jure, and one of its major modern protectorates is the media. Britain has no such safeguard, however, and its legal requirement ...

If you drive a car, I’ll tax the street, If you try to sit, I’ll tax your seat. If you get too cold, I’ll tax the heat, If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet. —The Beatles in “The ...

This is a sequel-in-spirit to last week’s piece about rightist “fog.” In a recent column I mentioned a Ron Unz contradiction regarding the Holocaust. In his “landmark” 17,600-word Holocaust denial essay, Unz ...

It is a trope of many intellectuals that to stack shelves in a supermarket, or to work at a supermarket checkout, is the worst fate that can befall a human being. Such a job is regarded as the very epitome of ...

“Hangover cure”—like military intelligence—is an oxymoron. If hangovers could be cured, they wouldn’t exist. Maybe one day it will happen, and some penicillin of the brain will sweep away these days of paroxysm. ...

In declaring secession illegal, and the U.S. a consolidated state, Abraham Lincoln enacted the first income tax, the first draft, supported internal improvements and nationalizing banks. Such centralizing, socialistic and ...

I have to admit I’ve never listened to NPR, but I assume those letters stand for Not (very good at) Public Relations? It’s been a rough year. First came the firing of a black man, Juan Williams, by extremely ...

Sci-fi writer Philip K. Dick had an interesting theory about the Roman Empire—that it never actually ended. According to him, Rome’s Imperium merely shifted shape repeatedly down the centuries, its geopolitical center ...

I love tobacco. I have been a pipe and cigar smoker since my 16th birthday. (My father had offered to buy me both if I abstained from cigarettes until that date). On that memorable occasion, he took me down to Santa ...

Controversy recently erupted when Rick Sanchez, whom CNN subsequently sacked, noted that Jews have a disproportionately large influence on the media. Attempts at disproving his assertion have been fitful and unconvincing. ...

Edmund Wilson was America’s premier man of letters during the middle of the 20th century. The Wound and the Bow, To the Finland Station, and Memoirs of Hecate County are still in print, as are his journals about the ...

Dear Gato, Forgive my disappearing act. The Dalai Lama flew into town nine days ago. Unofficially. Unexpectedly, at any rate. And in so doing he created such a hot ticket, only Oscar Night and the Vanity Fair after-party ...

NEW YORK—It’s party time in the Bagel, at least private party time, yours truly being an extra man nowadays as my wife and I have been separated by pandemic restrictions for six months. Alexandra is in London, ...