Taki's Top Drawer

A Visit to Walhalla

REGENSBURG—The mighty Danube begins in the park of the Furstenberg Palace and flows eastward for a distance of 2,000 miles across ten countries on to the Black Sea. Last weekend, Prince and Princess Heinrich von Furstenberg, the titular heads of the family who live in that palace, gave us a little tour of Walhalla, the German Hall of Fame situated further down the river from their park, in Regensburg, the perfectly ...

Where Have All the Dragons Gone?

“Goblins and devils have long vanished from the Alps, and so many years have passed without any well-authenticated account of a discovery of a dragon that dragons too may be considered to have migrated.” So the Alpine Club was informed in May 1877 by Mr Henry Gotch, the secre-tary, and the news set off great celebrations among sporty but superstitious Englishmen. The golden age of mountaineering, as it was then ...

Here’s to Charlie

I just read about Charlie Reese’s retirement. His dignity and grace in his ultimate column is untypical of his profession today. Only two months ago the nation took time out to mourn the death of a courtier to the powerful, and what a time out it was. Three days of crocodile tears by smiling wallet lifters and bald-faced phonies whose absence on earth would not have been keenly felt even by their immediate ...

Did Somebody Say Elitism?

When Pat Buchanan and I founded The American Conservative back in 2002,  we held a press conference in Washington’s National Press Club. One of the first questions posed was how come Pat, famous for his espousal of family values, could ally himself with “a famous philanderer” like myself. Pat handled it well. One needs a sense of humor at such times, and, thank God, both Pat and I possess it. Basically it had to ...

Remembering the Great Fitzgerald

Having sat on a boat for the last five weeks, I’ve had plenty of time to reflect, and reflect I did. Getting old tends to make one look back, nostaligize for that green light of the dock, and, of course,  the great F.Scott Fitzgerald himself. Yes, he was the master of evoking the grand old days, when Gatsby boys wore white ducks and ran around in open cars, their gals flighty, their hair not yet up, all giggly in ...

Olympic Glory

Just after the Berlin wall came down, I flew to Berlin with my German-Austrian wife and traveled around the city and its eastern parts. On visiting the Olympic stadium I told the taxi driver that my uncle, a hurdler, was the first athlete the Führer’s gaze fell upon as the parade of the 1936 games began, because we Greeks always go in first, having started the games back in 776 B.C., and because my uncle was the flag ...

All in the Family

Around 15 years or so ago, I was fast asleep late in the morning when I got an ear-splitting telephone call from Greece. It was Vicki Woods, a Telegraph writer, and she sounded anxious. If memory serves, and it does because she wrote a subsequent piece about it which made it in “The Week,” the conversation went as follows: “Oh hello, my name’s Vicky Woods, we’ve met a couple of times….ah at the ...

Belgium’s “Useable Past”

    “Belgium agrees to Holocaust restitution,” cries a New York Times headline on March 12. This is good news ... except that I was unaware that Belgium had been on the Nazi side 68 years ago. The piece goes on to clarify that campaigners welcomed the decision to compensate those whose propery and gold in Belgium had been looted by Nazi occupiers. But why should occupied Belgium be made to pay? ...

Soldiers, Rodents, and Spoiled Saudis

Admiral Fallon resigns as any honest man, and an admirable soldier, because he realizes that the Cheney-neocon network is still at work. We are at best hoping for a holding action in Afghanistan, and the same in Iraq, yet the madmen of the administration believe they can still pull a rabbit out of their hat before next November. Back in New York, a blackmailing bully who has studied Hollywood movies on how to act tough, drags ...

Israel Needs to Make the First Move

“And so the blood-drenched cycle begins again, each side convinced that it has no option but to make the other suffer.” This from a London Daily Telegraph >editorial. What my favorite London paper did not write about the latest outrage in Israel is that there is an option, and it is in Israel’s corner. The Jerusalem religious college that was attacked last week is the ideological heart of Israel’s ...

The Steamroller Gets Busted

“The Steamroller,” as he liked to call himself, sure rolled over the poor prostitute—petite and only 105 pounds—in Washington D.C. I do not suffer from Schadenfreude, but in Spitzer’s case, I will make an exception. The guy’s the phoniest of all the phonies ever to hold public office. He went after innocent people, ruined names and reputations for no reason except to serve his own, and would ...

WFB—A Leader Who Lost His Way

Gstaad is a very chic place and, alas, getting chicer by the minute as the nouveaux riche Russians and oily kleptocratic Arabs are closing in. Thinking about the way our alpine village used to be, I’m reminded of the time I spent here with Bill Buckley and what he represented when he came on the American political scene—a fresh voice full of promise, and an educated and cultured one at that. I’ve written a memoir of ...

William F. Buckley Jr. as I Knew Him

When I wrote Pat Buckley’s obituary last spring, I had a pretty good idea that Bill would follow her sooner rather than later. I happened to be with him the day she died, along with his brother James and sister Priscilla, and I was taken aback by Bill’s unembarrassed weeping. At her memorial service at the Met, he was more in control, but one could tell that he no longer wished to live. I often went up to Stamford ...

The Old Gray Lady and the Tramp

That phony story about John McCain and Vicky Iseman, which the New York Times ballyhooed as an “exclusive,” is so typical of the Old Bag. But Bill Keller’s (the executive editor of the Times) response, that he stands by the story and the rest of the bull, brought back memories. During the ’80s in London, one of the town’s most…er…shall we say receptive-to-male-charms young woman was one Emma Gilbey, a ...

East of the Sun, West of the Moon

Here is good news. For any of you out there nostalgic for the lovable extra terrestrial, NASA is beaming out songs into deep space trying to lure anything that might be out there to our shores. The bad news is that scientists warn that transmitting songs could put the earth at risk of an alien attack--If some terrestrial hears the lyrics of a rapper, or listens to the boring tunes of the Beatles, our goose is cooked. Here's a ...

Takimag Does Not Recognize “Kosovo”

I knew that this administration makes the gang that couldn’t shoot straight look like criminal geniuses, but I never realized just how dumb the Bush-Cheney gang truly is. When I saw Bush announce that Uncle Sam has recognized Kosovo, it reminded me of those moronic Englishmen who had seen the murderous Stalin in action against his own people who had returned home and told the world they had “been over into the future ...


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