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. ...

I have some questions for you, dear readers: Is it simply me, or is there no newspaper or network in America that tells it like it is anymore? Take, for example, the Anthony Weiner case. He is the pervert who keeps sending pictures of his penis to women over the internet, more often than not while in the company of his 4-year-old son. If a man like that were married to Donald Trump’s closest assistant, The Donald would have ...

Just about this time of year, 42 years ago, Dunhill’s of London, the famed tobacconist, had a bold idea. The president of Dunhill’s, Richard Dunhill, flew 32 backgammon players to New York and had them board the QE2 for the return trip to Southampton. The backgammon players were a varied group. Like with cricket of old, there were gentlemen and there were players. For players, read: hustlers and small-time con men. Among ...

The Brits are big on weddings, and Pippa is getting hitched sometime this autumn, or maybe later on, when the English weather is at its best. If any Takimag readers are not familiar with Pippa, she's the sister of the commoner who is married to Prince William"€”son of Prince Charles"€”who will one day be King of England. That fact alone makes the upcoming wedding ceremony a tabloid dream, and no one does it better than Brit ...

Okay, sports fans, the Games are over, Uncle Sam and Britain hit pay dirt, and the prettiest girl of the Olympics was Morgan Lake, a black Brit high jumper who wins the gold medal for looks and proper demeanor. Here’s a tip for ambitious mothers: Take a lesson from Morgan Lake—the name is perfect, no agent could have made it up—and instead of sending your daughters to Hollywood, where they’re more likely to end up as ...

In the summer of 1992 BC (before Clinton) I was cruising in Greece with William F. Buckley and his wife, Pat, on board the boat I had just inherited from my father. It was a motor yacht and Bill, a sailing enthusiast, was restless. A discussion the night before had become heated after a friend of mine had brought up the subject of neocons using Bill's fame and gravitas to undermine true conservatism. Out of respect for Buckley ...

An item in an American newspaper had me thinking of my father all last week. Old dad died 27 years ago, which means I have outlived him in age, the only thing I have ever outdone him in. His achievements were too many to list here, and everything I have I owe to him. Compared with his accomplishments, mine have added up to the under performance of the century, not that he ever made it obvious. To the contrary, all he did was ...

GSTAAD—“He’d fly through the air with the greatest of ease, that daring young man on the flying trapeze.” As everyone knows, life’s unfair, but this is ridiculous. An American daredevil falls out of an airplane at 25,000 feet without a parachute and manages to land on a postage-stamp-size net without a scratch. The poor little Greek boy falls off a balcony ten to fifteen feet high, lands on gravel, and breaks many ...

What is it with these baldies? I turned on the television last week and watched as the identical twin of E.T. asked a guest on Newsnight whether there should be a second referendum. To call that a loaded question would be a redundancy of expression, as the female guest had harangued us with incessant negatives about Brexit and the shock horror of not getting her own way. The bald presenter and E.T. twin is obviously in the ...