My distant ancestor Aesop (just kidding, folks) was fond of fables, so let me follow in his footsteps. This is the story of the Gadfly and the Pervert. Norman Finklestein was a Maoist revolutionary when young, which he claims bedeviled his academic career. It took him 13 years to get his doctorate from Princeton but it wasn’t his Maoism that kept him back. Anything but. Instead, it was his analysis of Zionism. After a ...

So there you have it. Conrad Black gets six and one half years in the pokey for—as far as I’m concerned—absolutely nothing, except for the fact he saved a moribund group of British newspapers, enriched his investors and stockholders, as well as himself, and refused to bow down to left-wing envious hacks who wanted him to eat humble pie once publicity-seeking prosecutors decided to emulate Rudy Giuliani and make ...

The most common rule of thumb for the ideal club is the one where all one’s friends are members. This can present a problem for those with no friends at all, only acquaintances. I know a few people like that, but what is amazing is that they do belong to clubs. One such fellow is among the greatest shits ever to wear a ...

This must feel like a leg-deadening thwack on poor old Poddy. Norman Podhoretz, first in line of warmongers—as long as none of his kith or kin have to do the fighting—must feel in a tizzy these days. A new National Intelligence on Iran concludes that the Islamic Republic’s enrichment of uranium has “long been unrelated to a nuclear weapons program.” I wonder what the Pod will do next? He wants ...

Hold the presses. Teddy Kennedy has just signed a contract with John Karp, the publisher of 12, an imprint of Hachette, for—get hold of this—8 million dollars, for the senior senator from Massachussetts’ memoirs. Just think of it. 8 million big ones for Teddy’s side of the story. And here’s my exclusive. My Kennedy spies tell me that all of the moolah, all eight million of Teddy’s royalties ...

The sports in which one tends to choke are boxing, karate, judo, tennis, golf most of all, and things like darts, pool, and other such extremely silly pursuits. I suppose there are guns who freeze at the sight of a bird or a clay pigeon, and end up having to leave the field, but I think dem guns are mostly foreigners playing country ...

The ill-conceived American Cold War policy of accepting any kind of self-expression as art to combat communist restrictions on creativity led to the introduction of the Turner Prize and provided an opportunity for the Mafia amongst others to manipulate the art-market in a money-oriented ...

Towards the end of his life Norman called himself a Left-Conservative, and went as far as to agree that losing one’s culture through immigration was not a good thing. But he remained adamant about the evils of American corporations. He blamed them for making America an uglier place to ...

If you like to read about a giant corporation screwing old ladies and retired people who have worked all their lives just to see their life savings go up in smoke, keep ...

Norman Mailer died around four thirty Saturday morning New York time. Unlike his tumultuous life, his end was very peaceful. I spoke to his oldest son Michael who called me. I met him in the early Sixties during a riotous party in his house in Brooklyn. I was in my ...

Bill Clinton was driving a white pick up and on a muddy path late at night ran over a skunk family trying to cross the road. Hillary screamed at him to stop, which he did. When she went back she found papa skunk and mama skunk very much dead, but baby skunk still alive but barely. She picked it up and got inside the car. Bill faked ...

Next time any of you feel nostalgic for the old continent, keep the following in mind. Christmas should be downgraded in favor of festivals from other religions in order to improve race relations, says an explosive British report from the ruling party’s favorite think-tank. The report goes on to explain that “expunging Christmas from the national calendar will be hard to do….” and it suggests that other ...

The neocon tactic of shouting “anti-Semitism” has become a Pavlovian reaction to anyone and everyone who is not in tune with their agenda.  Their latest victim is my friend Paul Belien, a political writer of note whose only sin is to be married to a very attractive woman who is a member of Vlaams Belang, a Flemish party which wants no part of the bureaucrooks who run Europe and believes in controlling the ...

Talk about false advertising.  60 Minutes announced this past Sunday that the segment we were about to see was a ground-breaking scoop which “could be told only now.” Then it went on to rehash a phony WMD story that some Iraqi conman had sold the Germans and on which the American government relied to convince their allies that Saddam really was about to blow up or poison the world. The code name of the conman ...

I write this close to 48 hours before the Indianapolis Colts New England Patriots game on Sunday. And I’m going out on a limb and predict a Patriot victory. Mind you, I would give a lot to be proved wrong. There is no more unpleasant bully and cheat that Bill Belichik, the New England coach. He knows as much about sportsmanship as Paris Hilton knows about decorum and good taste. He never apologized for the blatant ...

Henry Ford II, as he styled himself, was a slob without manners or charm, but I am told he was a terrific businessman. I used to date his daughters so I got to see him quite often. He once goosed my first wife and I grabbed ...