A fifth columnist is a supporter or secret sympathizer of an enemy nation, and the phrase was coined by Spanish nationalist general Emilio Mola Vidal. Before World War II broke out in 1939, Europe was awash with charges of “the fifth column at work” being bandied about by both appeasers as well as those who wanted to stand up to Hitler. One thing was for sure: Jewish groups were adamant that appeasing Germany was the work ...
NEW YORK—An old-fashioned party is a gathering of friends invited by the host or hostess, who foots the bill. Old-fashioned parties are very rare in New York nowadays; actually, they are nonexistent, having been replaced by the charity shindig, where the guests pay, the host or hostess profits, the gossip columns get to write about it, and the charity sometimes even gets to see some of the moola the climbers paid to get ...
NEW YORK— I now know it by heart. Brooklyn Heights, that is. It takes 35 minutes by cab from where I live on the Upper East Side, and approximately $30. I even walked to the Heights once: one hour down the FDR, turn left onto the Brooklyn Bridge, dodge the aggressive bikers and avoid the vendors. It’s a twenty-minute crossing give or take ten minutes, depending on the crowds. After getting off and turning right, one’s ...
NEW YORK—In the dark she still looks good. The mystery and magnetism linger until dawn, and then you slowly see the lines and the harshness. Like a lady of the night who has smoked 10,000 cigarettes, the coming of the light is the enemy. New York ain’t what she used to be, that’s for sure. She’s a tired old place, with the upper-class vertical living gone to seed, and the honky-tonk fun side of the city gentrified and ...
There is fear and loathing in this city, with men looking over their shoulders for the thought police, and hard-eyed women roaming the television studios with lists of sexual predators. There is also dread over the latest exports from the city’s youth detention centers, thanks to Kerry Kennedy, daughter of Robert Kennedy and ex-wife of Governor Cuomo, known to hit the bottle and the pills occasionally, and now busy bailing ...
Is Mohammad bin Salman a murderer? Is it fair to say he is a hairy coward who has starved millions of children in Yemen? Did his crawling parasites dismember Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last week? Is this man a perverted sadist? If so, this is the real scandal. I doubt much will come of this murder most foul. Jared Kushner, The Donald’s son-in-law, could well see to it. Kushner probably smelled money to be made from the ...
The bells are ringing, the bells are ringing, ding-dong, ding-dong. The cows are down from up high, where they’ve been grazing since spring. From my window I look at them and they stare back. I love hearing cowbells, day and night, and their sounds accompany me while I hit the makiwara. I like it best when they cozy up and examine me from up close, with absolutely no reaction. No emotion, no curiosity, serene-like. The one ...
To London for much too brief a visit for a wedding, lunch with commodore Tim Hoare, and a look-see for a house. Yes, I am returning to live in London, but under one condition: It’s called Corbyn, and if he comes in, I won’t. It’s rather cowardly, I know, but I did live in London during the closed shops of the early ’70s, and did experience the joys of the three-day week, the uncollected rubbish and hospitals without ...
The grandest view of Gstaad and the surrounding Saanen valley bar none—and that includes the vista from my high-up-on-the-hill farm—belongs to an imposing house that was originally a sanatorium but is now a home for the blind. It’s ironic to be located where only eagles dare, yet unable to view the sights, but such are the jokes fate plays on mankind. I had just finished a very hard training and was looking up the ...
Perception and reality, truth and falsehood, black and white; nowadays the salivating chattering classes don’t know their ass from a hole in the ground, as they used to say in Brooklyn before the yuppies moved in. Take, for example, the latest kerfuffle about the moon landing 49 years ago. I remember it well because it was summer, I had just acquired my first sailing boat—thanks to good old Dad, naturally—and the ...
A letter from a reader in South Africa mentions that the writer’s father insisted a white dinner jacket was permissible only in Palm Beach, Biarritz, or the Riviera. I agree and stand corrected, having worn one at the Duke of Beaufort’s bash last July, but a heat wave is my excuse. England was a frying pan, I planned to drink it up, and a new Anderson & Sheppard dinner jacket was hanging Circe-like in my closet. The writer ...
Some of you oldies will never believe this, but London is no longer the place of The Blue Lamp and other black-and-white golden oldies that were made in the Shepperton and Elstree studios by the great Rank and Korda organizations. During the postwar years, with rationing on and the empire still unraveling, England made some of the best movies ever. They were intelligently scripted, underplayed, and beautifully acted by ...
Some jerk know-nothing writes in an unreadable American newspaper that Greece is back—Athens, actually. He would; he’s an American who probably thinks that the lack of starving Greek beggars in the streets à la Calcutta back in the 1920s means we’re back. Have another hamburger, asshole, and stick to Trump-bashing. I knew Athens before it went down, and we’re not back, just us rich who are back for the summer. Take ...
The New York Times has announced a forum to discuss democracy in the cradle of democracy, Athens, sometime in September of this year. It is as if the late John Gotti held a forum to discuss crime in Chicago, God rest his soul. Gotti committed crimes in order to live like a Sulzberger. Sulzberger commits crimes daily by slanting news and waging unremitting war on whites, Christians, and those of us who are attracted to the ...
Here’s a question for you: Could the “monster” of the #MeToo movement get a fair trial anywhere in these United States? Is there a potential jury member who has not made up their mind that Harvey Weinstein raped, mistreated, and oppressed women? Since last October, to be exact, every news organization in America has been busy piling it on, reporting each and every accusation no matter how wild—or untruthful, for that ...
GSTAAD—The pastoral heaven of this place can get very dull during the summer months. Green hillsides, neat farmsteads, pleasing breezes, and meadows bright with wildflowers amid great white-capped mountain peaks are no substitute for pretty women or intellectual company. This is the bad news. The good is that the nouveaux riches and terribly vulgar do not appear during the summer, they’re too busy sweating it out in the ...
