When I was young my recurring nightmare was that I would die and be reincarnated as a polo pony. I squeezed in lots of polo in the years I played, at least three matches per week, mostly in Paris, and I felt that polo ponies had the kind of deal the mass media is handing Trump as I write. I wasn’t mad about the people I played with, either. Back then, in the ’60s and ’70s, fat businessmen who cantered hired good ...
When I saw an e-mail waiting from Lucy, the lady who has the unenviable task of editing my copy each week, I knew something was wrong. And sure enough it was, the bad news that my first editor in my beloved Spectator had died. Forty years, gone in a jiffy. It was back in 1977, and I had gone to Turin to pick up a new car on my way to Paris. Back then one had to drive the first thousand miles slowly while breaking in the engine. ...
GSTAAD—The snows came tumbling down just as the camel drivers headed back to the Gulf. In fact, they never saw the white outdoor stuff. And a good thing it was, too. The outdoor stuff makes everything look so pretty, the glitzy types might be tempted to return. God forbid. And let them stick to the white indoor stuff. The problem with Gstaad is the local council. They remind me of the EU: They’re intransigent and ...
ATHENS—I can only sardonically ask whether it was worth it. To be executed after unspeakable torture without giving anything away—and for what? Fat, greedy, avaricious, and very rich Davos Man? Or those ignorant, self-indulgent, cowardly little twerps who demand “safe spaces” in universities? Was it worth dying for the crooks of Brussels and the Angela Merkels of this world? Poor, heroic, and stoic Kostas Perrikos, ...
There are Dames and there are dames. Dame Vivien, an old friend, became one for her philanthropy. Dame Edna, the creation of yet another friend, was damed for her middle-class morality and upper-class pretensions. And now we have Dame Anna of Vogue, honored for affecting a faux aristocratic grandeur to the peasants of the fashion world. There is only one thing to say, and that’s “Gimme a break.” Here we have the last of ...
GSTAAD—New Year’s Eve was a Rhapsody in Blue, with a clarinet glissando that promised joys to come, and the Gershwin downbeat not registering until 6 a.m. The hangover was, of course, Karamazovian, but who the hell cares? I am finally solid again, and even the flu I caught on the trip over is on its last legs, lingering and as annoying as EU regulations, but no longer to be taken seriously. I had lots of close friends for ...
Call me old-fashioned and I will thank you for the compliment. Call me a fool for rosy nostalgia and more thanks will be in order. Yes, Fred and Ginger are my favorite movie couple, and last year while recuperating from a broken leg, I watched four of their movies back-to-back shown on Turner Classic Movies. I haven’t stepped into a movie theater in years, and only watch TCM and a few sports on the idiot box. The latter has ...
Here we go again, another Christmas issue and it seems only two weeks ago that I filed for the last one. This is a very happy time of year: parties galore, lots of love for our fellow man, and happiness all around. Mind you, there is an old calypso ditty that tells one, “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty woman your wife…” Well, I’m not so sure about that; in my book, the prettier the ...
It had the same effect on them that a man sitting in a front-row seat and sucking a lemon has on the lead flutist performing a Mozart concert. “Them,” needless to say, are the “elites,” a misnomer if there ever was one for the rabble that is Hollywood types, engaged ladies who lunch, cheap celebrities, media persons, reality stars, postmodernist professors, Davos people, LGBT activists, women of color in general, and ...
NEW YORK CITY—Richard Spencer made the front page of the NY Times two days in a row last week, as well as a half-page report on the third day. For any of you who have never heard of him—and very few have—he is described by the mendacious Times as the leader of the “white nationalist movement,” a movement not too many of us who believe in the white race are aware of. Let’s start at the beginning. After I “sold” ...
Even by modern, cataclysmically hysterical standards, the postelection histrionics by the losers take the proverbial cake. Poor Graydon Carter, the Vanity Fair honcho. He wrote things about the Donald I would not dream of writing about an African-American hero like O.J. Simpson. I advise my friend Graydon to drink some retsina, that awful Greek wine that is known to calm down the volatile Greek character even when the name ...
NEW YORK—If only my friendly wordsmith Jeremy Clarke had been with me, what fun he’d have had with the ungallant thing I did last week. Jeremy’s writing thrives on such occasions, but alas, he’s in the land of cheese and impressionism. I had just finished lunch with my friend Alex Sepkus, a unique jewelry designer, and a Catholic priest whose name I will not reveal in view of what followed. After all, the Catholic ...
NEW YORK—The only thing worse than a sore loser, I suppose, is a sore winner, but thank God we don’t run into too many of those. Thirty years ago The Spectator and I lost a libel case that cost the then proprietor and yours truly a small fortune, and as it turned out, after the plaintiff had gone to that sauna-like place below, everything that I had written was the truth and nothing but. (The hubby of the woman who sued me ...
Americans have been to the polls. Everything is over but the shouting — by the loser, that is: honest Hil. I predicted that the best Trump could have hoped for was winning the popular vote but losing the Electoral College but I got it wrong: the Donald has triumphed. An underfunded campaign — he spent barely half of what she did — with a skeletal crew and without the party’s full backing won out because not all of ...
American writers are on a roll. Bob Dylan wins the Nobel in Literature (for backward children), and Paul Beatty the Man Booker Prize, the first American to do so because this was the first year Americans were eligible for the award. (Only Brits were considered until this year.) Beatty was the unanimous choice and it's easy to see why: He's a black American, the book is unreadable, and it explores the legacy of slavery and ...
Sixty years ago this week all hell broke loose: Soviet tanks rumbled into Budapest and put down a nationalist uprising in a very bloody manner. Down south, Anglo-French paratroopers jumped into the Sinai and in cahoots with the Israelis took over the Suez Canal in a last gasp of colonialism by the Europeans. And in Washington, D.C., a very peed-off President Eisenhower ordered the Anglo-French to go home or else. They went home ...
