If the government of a country was being threatened by a larger neighboring nation with invasion, and held a referendum whether to fight or give in, and its people voted to fight, but then the government not only gave in but stripped its army of weapons and welcomed the invaders, the government would be called collaborators and eventually put on the dock for high treason. This is exactly what the Syriza gang has just done to ...
Wow, what a week. London may be bad for one’s health, but it sure makes it fun on the way to where we’re all going. I’m determined not to mention Greece—too much has been written about my poor country, most of it quite nice—so I will stick to London in general and The Spectator in particular. It began with a nostalgic party for about 28 of us chez George and Lita Livanos, childhood friends, in their treasure-filled ...
Back in the good old days of 2,500 years ago, the Greeks blamed the gods for their self-induced disasters. In modern times the Brits were to blame and then the Americans. Now it's the Germans. Modern Greeks are not renowned for introspection. Others are always responsible. We brag about inventing democracy"however selective"and also about inventing tragedy, as in Aeschlyus and Euripides, but don"t dwell at all on ...
Tempus sure fugit, and how. Twenty years ago today, Thursday, July 2, 1995, monarchs from around the world descended on London for the wedding of Greek Crown Prince Pavlos to Marie-Chantal, daughter of the duty-free magnate Bob Miller. I remember it well, especially the hangover. Never have I seen so many royals under one roof. The Greeks had treated King Constantine, father of the groom, very badly, managing to convince the ...
For those who like to see their name in print, the Hiltons and Kardashians of this world, make sure that when the man in the white suit visits you, you"re the only one he's dropping in on. In fact, even if the white-suited gent visits you within a day or two of having called upon someone more famous, your goose is cooked. Newspapers, television, radio, and the horrid Internet have become so celebrity-minded, the demise of ...
Last Wednesday, June 24, Pugs held a luncheon in honor of our first member to depart for the Elysian Fields, or that large CinemaScope screen up above, Sir Christopher Lee, age 93. Pugs club is now back to 19 members, the ceiling being 21. Our president for life, Nick Scott—I actually was the first chief but was overthrown in a bloodless as well as voteless coup by Nick—gave a wonderful address while breaking yet another ...
When I founded The American Conservative magazine 13 years ago–the purpose being to shine a light on neocon shenanigans that led to the greatest American foreign-policy disaster ever—Pat Buchanan and I held a press conference in the Washington, D.C., press club to herald the event. There were reporters galore, and by their looks I knew it wasn’t going to be a friendly session. Buchanan went first and held his own. Then ...
Back in the good old days, when Ike and Mamie lived in the White House"and the neocons were an ugly bunch of short bald people meeting in New York dumps discussing the greatness of Leon Trotsky"summertime spelled freedom and fun, at least for this poor little Greek boy. Ironically, summers lasted longer back then. From the beginning of June, when the boarding-school jail term ended, until September, when the inmates had ...
There’s nothing to add about the clowns in Brussels and Athens but a Yogi Berra pearl, “It ain’t over till it’s over.” The Greek drama will go on and on until the brinkmanship is exhausted. My guess is the EU will blink, and I write this early, a day before the “final” decision is taken in Brussels on Friday, June 5. Although Greek accounting arabesques have been known to shame the Bolshoi—Goldman Sachs taught ...
The last week in Gotham was exceptional fun. A Broadway play—compliments of the producer, my NBF Harvey Weinstein—Finding Neverland, had me clapping with one hand due to the operation and standing with the packed theatre for the ovation. Shows how much the critics know, who panned it. The audience loved it, as did I. It’s an uplifting, wonderful play about J.M. Barrie and the children. Then there was the blind black guy ...
It was, using Edward De Vere's words, much ado about nothing. The media didn"t think so, called it "Deflategate," and one of America's great sporting heroes, Tom Brady, was pilloried as if he had inflated the beautiful model Gisele Bundchen, his wife, against her wishes. If any of you Takimag readers missed it while on holiday in Albania, Brady and the New England Patriots supposedly deflated the footballs used in ...
An operation on my hand after a karate injury has me reading more than usual, and even attempting Don DeLillo’s Underworld, but I soon give it up. Truman Capote famously said that On The Road was typing, not writing, but old Jack Kerouac was Jane Austen compared to some of the novelists of today. Making it sound easy is the hardest thing in writing, and I grant you that today’s modernists sure make it look easier than easy. ...
It’s as good as it gets; a light rain is falling on a soft May evening and I’m walking north on a silent Park Avenue hoping to get into trouble. 14,000 yellow taxis have turned Manhattan into a Bengal hellhole, blasting their horns non-stop, picking up or disgorging passengers in the middle of traffic clogged streets, speeding and failing to yield to pedestrians, as the Big Bagel law requires. But on the Upper East Side, on ...
OK. Magnanimity in victory is a sine qua non among civilized men and women, so let me not be the first to rub it in. Last week I wrote that I feared the worst and felt sorry for Britain. I was convinced throughout the campaign that a certain testicular fortitude was missing on the part of the voters, and that David Cameron would be vacating 10 Downing Street. But not for the first time I was proved wrong. The only testicular ...
If any of you see Graydon Carter, the editor of Vanity Fair, walking around with a begging bowl in his hand, it’s because he took me to dinner recently and I sort of went a bit nuts with the wine and the VF chief ended up with the bill. We went to a new Bagel restaurant, Chevalier, a futuristic marvel with great food and wine and even grander prices. New York is no longer elegant, and there are no longer society types dressed ...
Talk about how the mighty have fallen. Time magazine was for the better part of the 20th century the model for American newsweeklies. Its style of epigrammatic terseness and punchy prose became known as “Timespeak,” its compact format an invention of its founder, Henry Luce. Luce was the son of a missionary and was born in China. He was devout, brainy, single - minded and convinced America was a miracle conceived by the ...
