Hearing about the black American fugitive who was caught recently after 40 years on the lam brought back lots of memories. No, I’m not black and I’ve never been a fugitive from justice, but the memories are quite pleasant because I met all those Black Liberation Army conmen in Algeria just about the time George Wright flew in from Boston to join them. It was pre-PC but worse. I remember one night at the Sherry Netherland in ...
NEW YORK—Here is the $64-million question: Is there a moral case against soaking the rich? I can’t think of a better place to ponder such an issue than right here in the womb of capitalism, the Big Bagel, taking into account that within the narrow corridor that is Manhattan Island some of the greediest, as well as grubbiest, human beings live and work. The second-richest American, a Nebraskan, says that the state ...
NEW YORK—An English prof made an Earth-shattering discovery about ten years ago—there is a strong link between having money fall upon you and being happy. He didn’t win a Nobel for it, nor for his conclusion, which was that money buys autonomy and independence. The prof should have won a Nobel Prize for excessive stupidity instead, especially for his last neologism: “To turn a really unhappy person into a very happy ...
I’ve often written about Israel, and not always in a flattering light. After president Rabin was assassinated (his wife once told me that she preferred Arafat to Netanyahu any day), I lost all hope that reason, wisdom, and humanity might prevail in the Holy Land. Partly, I keep returning to a subject that does not exactly endear me among Jewish friends because Israel’s mistreatment of the Palestinians offends my sense of ...
OK. Things are heating up in the old continent after a boiling summer. October will be the cruelest month, as the poet didn’t exactly say, but it might also be crunch time. Europeans seem more sophisticated than the parochial, law-abiding, taxpaying suckers in the good old US of A, but they’re no better than the pompous, self-proclaimed elite within the Beltway. Multiculturalism (human rights for those who don’t respect ...
GSTAAD—One of the safest countries on Earth is in trouble. Good old Helvetia, a country more up and down than sideways, according to Papa, could end up on its head. Its industrial base might melt as its currency is much too strong for its own good, and deflation might set in as the Swiss National Bank is printing money to tie its fortune to the euro. Lashing the franc to the euro seems suicidal, but such are the joys of ...
Jacqueline Kennedy’s oral history is now out, as told to the Kennedy courtier cum historian Arthur Schlesinger. In a foreword her daughter Caroline, another keeper of the Camelot flame, says that her mother’s story was told during “the extreme stages of grief.” I do not doubt it, but the widow’s sadness certainly does not come through when polishing the Kennedy apple. My recollections of the time differ from those of ...
GSTAAD–This is the worst news I’ve had since the surrender at Stalingrad. The Spectator’s deputy editor has become engaged to a former advisor to my favorite minister, Iain Duncan Smith. But how can this be when the deputy editor is already engaged to me? If true, what does it make her—words fail me—a bigatrothed? All I know is that I’m flying to London so I can investigate. If worse comes to worse I am going to hit ...
AIX-EN-PROVENCE—I attended a young friend’s wedding to a celebrity DJ in a beautiful tent in an olive grove. Had a short chat with the beautiful Kate Moss and her hubby, followed by some heavy boozing under the disapproving eyes of my two children and their mother. Aix is a beautiful old town with many parts still unspoiled, but it gets crowded over the weekend. I stayed on my boat in Marseilles and really enjoyed myself ...
GSTAAD—It’s been very sunny and hot, with the bluest of blue skies above and the greenest of green mountains around me. It does not get any better than this. The farmers have cut their grass and packed it for the winter’s feed, soon the cows will be coming down from the hills, and the Swiss franc will continue going through the roof. Life is now so expensive in Switzerland, even the rich are starting to complain. Sixty ...
GSTAAD—Forget about Libya and don’t even think about Syria. The mother of all battles is about to take place right here in bucolic Gstaad, a place of terminal political incorrectness—until recently, that is. But before I begin, the Beguine is far more likely to see Saif Gaddafi than we are in this glitzy nouveau-riche Mecca. The Beguine is a religious order in the Netherlands, the nation where the International Criminal ...
Most people in America don’t realize that Greece is a very new country—its independent-nation status was made official in 1830. Greece is as old as Belgium but far more poor. Even Dubya as president did not know our name. He called us Grecians, like the hair dye, instead of Greeks. We Hellenes are among the oldest civilizations, having invented or perfected such bagatelles as philosophy, science, medicine, astronomy, ...
GSTAAD—Blah, blah, blah! I’ve heard it all before. We are all swivel-eyed fanatics, racists, and right-wing extremists. And we’re also bigots because we believe in Jesus Christ. Today is my name day, the Day of Assumption, but please don’t ask me how my parents got Taki out of it—Panagia, Panagiotaki, Taki—that is all I can tell you in my limited English. So I stepped out on my garden overlooking Gstaad’s wooded ...
On September 1, 1957, a pretty French girl by the name of Patricia and an Italo-French couple, Feruccio and Ellen, joined me in the old harbor of Cannes waiting to board the super-new luxury liner Cristoforo Colombo. Our destination was Capri, and we had decided to go on the spur of the moment. Capri’s season back then followed the summer months of the French Riviera, and as all four of us had just turned 21, we felt ...
ONBOARD S/Y BUSHIDO—According to C. M. Bowra, gold had a divine association with the Ancient Greeks and possessed more than a symbolic value. When Pindar wished to stress something’s splendor, he called it golden, whether it was a victor’s wreath of wild olive or a song’s opening. Gold stood for wealth in its most magical and least prosaic form, for the radiance it invested in the art of living and for the graces it ...
ONBOARD S/Y BUSHIDO—The smell of pine wafting from the shore and the sight of sun-bleached terracotta houses shimmering in the midday heat remind me of the simple island life during the good old days before super yachts, oligarchs, and the brain-jolting cacophony of modern music emanating from so-called clubs. I’m lying off the eastern side of the Peloponnese, far from the flesh spots of Spetses and Porto Heli, having done ...
