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 ...
I was not on the winning side of the debate, despite giving it the old college try. Thank God for my South African friend Simon Reader, who coached me just before I went on. Mind you, my side felt a bit like Maxime Weygand, the French general who was happily smoking his exotic cheroot pipe back in Hanoi when he got the call to take over the French army in June of 1940. Trouble was, the Germans had already taken Holland and ...
Antonio Cromartie is one of the numerous professional and amateur athletes in America who now refuse to stand during the playing of the national anthem. Cromartie plays for the Indianapolis Colts and makes over 10 million greenbacks per annum. He refuses to stand as a protest of white America’s oppression of black America. (The refusal to stand was started by another black football player who makes even more money and who was ...
This is a good time to be in Manhattan. The weather’s perfect, the park and foliage are still green, and daylight saving time keeps the days long. New York used to be able to build these beautiful cities-within-a-city, like Rockefeller Center, but that’s all in the past. The developers got to the politicians and now have free reign. The city had an opportunity after 9/11 to make a 21st-century Rockefeller Center downtown, ...
A bunch of charlatans and clowns met in Athens, Greece, at the end of September and, to use an old Greek expression, managed to make a hole in the water. In other words, they accomplished nada, but they stuffed themselves with feta and tasty Greek food, stayed at the best hotels, accepted honorariums, pumped up their egos and self-esteem, enjoyed the Attic sun, and then went back to their ugly wives and lives in and around ...
Back in the Big Bagel once again, preparing for the greatest debate ever, one that will decide the fate of the Western world once and for all. In the meantime the mother of my children is doing all the heavy lifting back in Gstaad, moving to my last address ever, that of my new farm. One of those American feminists remonstrated with me not long ago for making some chauvinist remark—on purpose, I might add—just to get her ...
Although my birthday was in August, I chose the rather autumnal melancholy moment of September to celebrate it—mourn it, rather. There are no ifs or buts about it, turning 80 is like that final beautiful gleam of light just before you lose consciousness during a boxing bout. The beauty of adolescence is that one doesn’t know why one’s angry or unhappy. The tragedy of old age is that one does know. I was a lucky young ...
Sicily – Under the watchful eye of Mount Etna the storied past of the island lies parched and yellowish, but as one gets nearer to the fiery growling giant the air turns cool, the sun glistening against black volcanic rock. Sicily is of two minds. Orange groves and beaches galore, then dank forests and possible lava flows. Sicily’s history resembles the landscape: Peaceful and religious, violent and vengeful. I first sailed ...
I’m jittery and fragile but free of plaster and in the dojo, slowly turning lean and muscular. Never listen to your doctor, is my message. Instead of two months in a cast I spent only five weeks, and I’ve just finished a brutal three-day course of karate with both the leg and elbow still intact. Yippee! The message was loud and clear. If you’re drinking vodka at 4:30 a.m., don’t lean backward while sitting on a ledge. ...
