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, you’d think this was election week in November. Here’s one jerk in The New York Times: “In a narrow vote the Supreme ...

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, L.I., was the inability to get there within, say, a lady’s yes and an eventual refusal due to fatigue and the boredom of sitting ...

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 totally innocent man?) At a Susan Stein party I once witnessed Bobby asking Onassis for funds—the 1968 election was coming up—and ...

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 briefings reserved for the top brass, and then some. Billeted at the Ch"teau de Pully, where the German High Command lived the high ...

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 governments with arbitrary powers à la Brussels and Washington, D.C. Normandy promised us a lot but, as far as I’m concerned, ...

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 try to imagine the brave Brits who took and held the bridge so long ago. Our führer/teacher James Holland called it the greatest ...

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 in from the north. The scene is eerie, chilling, and 74 years later my heart goes out to the defenders. There are ghosts all around ...

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 years of age one felt omnipotent, especially when wearing boots and riding breeches and galloping down the polo field cheered on by ...

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 to Qatar, threatening a blockade by Saudi-allied countries in the Gulf. All sorts of accusations were made and 24 hours were given to ...

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 weaker sex of sexual harassment. Oh, boy! Is this place going nuts or what? Spring is here, the girls are in their summer ...

Benito lives! The Blackshirts are here. Fascism is on the march—at least according to Madeleine Albright, secretary of state under Bill Clinton and—in my book, having allowed Albanian gangsters to win power in Kosovo—the worst American foreign minister ever. She attacks Hungary and Poland, the left’s newest whipping boys, for preferring their own kind to African migrants, but she’s not alone. The usual suspects are ...

NEW YORK—Remember when the Internet, Twitter, Facebook, and other such useless gimmicks were supposed to usher in an era of transparency and knowledgeable bliss? These gizmos make George Orwell’s 1984 redundant, no longer science fiction but more Knights of the Round Table. Big Brother is more powerful and all-knowing than ever before, and we have that Errol Flynn look-alike Mark Zuckerberg to thank. There is no such thing ...

April, according to the poet, is the cruelest month, and it got crueler 106 years ago when the Titanic hit the iceberg—and Hollywood the jackpot, after the sinking. Being a shipowner’s son—tankers and dry cargoes, not passenger ships—I sympathized with the owners, White Star Line, pushing the envelope to set a record, but still. Going full out in a minefield of icebergs known to lurk nine-tenths beneath the water’s ...

As anyone who has ever tripped the light fantastic with a witch knows, Circe was not only a witch, she could also at times be a bitch, and a sorceress. She was, after all, the daughter of the Sun and a goddess in her own right. If she were around today she would most probably be the first American female president, her specialty being turning men into pigs. When poor old battered Odysseus landed on Circe’s island, having lost ...

NEW YORK—If Albanian television had shown the program CBS showed last week—with a woman who has sex on camera for a living describing how she had unprotected BingBing with The Donald—I think even Albanians would feel so diminished they’d move to Kosovo. But this is America, and it’s a woman’s, woman’s, woman’s world! Or perhaps a frontal lobe is missing. The reverential coverage afforded to a porn actress by ...

At dinner the other night a friend wondered what came first, social climbing or name-dropping? It’s obviously a very silly question, and we all had a laugh over it: “As Achilles told me in his tent the other evening, Helen always fancied him and Menelaus didn’t like it a bit.” Or, “I’m rather tired of listening to Claudius complaining that Agrippina doesn’t hold a candle to Messalina in the sack.” We played that ...