In these willfully ignorant times, the powers that be seem, in their haste to be politically correct, to forget that America fought its bloodiest war to end human bondage. Almost three-quarters of a million men died, yet the Civil War is being refought with fact-purging propaganda that makes cartoon villains of great American soldiers, while one group of citizens is robbed of their heritage in order to please another. About ...
NEW YORK—Christmas partying, like Yule shopping displays, begins much earlier of late. After the lockdown, however, the urge to party and party hard is justified. Like others, I am trying to make up for the missing two years, but the hangover toll is prohibitive. It now takes a whole two days to feel normal again, and at this point in my life, days count as much as months used to. Last week I hit a hot new club here on the ...
The LNG king, Peter Livanos, an old good friend, has sent me a very informative write-up about China. Peter knows as much as anyone what’s cooking behind what used to be known as the Bamboo Curtain, and he’s clued me in about China when I’ve been wrong in the past. But for any of you unfamiliar with shipping terms, LNG stands for liquid natural gas, something that costs a hell of a lot to carry over water. As a result, ...
NEW YORK—An American hack who used to write okay stuff until his left-wing employer signaled to him that activism is more important than journalism recently revealed that Americans are unhappier now than they’ve ever been before. Especially in places that voted for the Donald. According to the hack, Trump got the most votes in places where people felt the unhappiest. But that makes sense, doesn’t it? Don’t people vote ...
There are famous heroes and then there are unsung ones, and I basically prefer the latter as I have known a few of them in my lifetime. The funny thing is, I grew up learning only about famous heroes, the ancient Greek type, starting with the semi-god Achilles. Homer didn’t deal with unsung ones; everyone was larger than life, and there were only winners and losers. The person I will tell you about this week would not have ...
NEW YORK—Ms. Geniece Draper is a Noo Yawker who has been in the news lately. She is 40 years old with modern Bagelite manners, and by that I mean they are not exactly those of, say, C.Z. Guest or Babe Paley, two ladies who are no longer with us but whose presence in drawing rooms we could do with rather desperately. Ms. Draper is angry as hell and has declared she will not take it anymore. She was recently charged with grand ...
Rodney Dangerfield was the American Benny Hill, lewd, funny, and not exactly politically correct where the weaker sex was concerned. In America today there is no room for Rodney’s or Benny’s shenanigans, and leering at women is now commensurate to having one’s rocket polished in broad daylight, perhaps even more so. I find it amazing to be bombarded daily by the shameless gimmickry, stupidity, and smuttiness of ...
That Kim Kardashian dame being fined by the Securities and Exchange Commission for a “pump and dump” scheme should help add victimhood to her other assets. Everyone in this country revels in being a victim, or so it seems when watching the news or reading the papers. My Spectator colleague Jeremy Clark is as ill as it is possible to be, and what we get is his brave and wonderful column every week, never complaining about ...
NEW YORK—I am seriously thinking of visiting a shrink (just kidding) as I now have definite proof that I am crazy: Instead of remaining in England and going to Badminton for the duke of Beaufort’s 70th birthday bash, and catching a glimpse of the love of my life, Iona McLaren, I find myself in a rotten place where a small headline in the New York Post announces “16 shot in one bloody night.” All I can say is the ...
Harvard man Russell Seitz has sent me an extraordinary present as an object lesson in “what a magazine should be, in case you start another one.” The paper has yellowed and is dog-eared, pages are falling out and the print is faint, but The Transatlantic Review, Vol. 1, dated January 1924, is a joy to behold. Mind you, we were already one hundred years old when Ford Madox Ford first edited TTR in Paris. And that’s what I ...
Privilege at birth displeases wannabe types, and the subject came up rather a lot last week, especially in the Land of the Depraved, where the Bagel Times regards monarchy as antidemocratic and the cause of most human ills, including the common cold, cancer, pimples, varicose veins, and even athlete’s foot. At my own alma mater, the University of Virginia, founded by the greatest of all Americans, Thomas Jefferson, some ...
None of this would have happened had I accepted my neighbor’s invite to dine with a Swiss billionaire banker, or bb. He’s an old friend, the bb, and untypically Swiss: He boozes, schnoofs, and chases women, or AFABs, as the absurd youth of today call them. Booze, alas, now goes to my head, and as the song says, it lingers like a haunting refrain for at least a couple of days. I had kickboxing early the next day so I chose ...
GSTAAD—A fin de saison feeling around here, but the restaurants are still full, the sons of the desert still moping around, building is going on nonstop, and the cows are down from the mountains making the village a friendlier and more civilized place. Something of a twilight mood has crept in, especially when I compare the cows to the people. Reclaiming vanished days is a sucker’s game, but it’s irresistible. I was up at ...
Eighty-two years ago, when Mussolini attacked Greece, the people—deeply offended—simply fought back. Their response followed Plato’s definition of a situation whereby the desire to win a fight is fueled by the desire to have one’s honor restored. Plato called it “philotimo,” the literal translation being “love of honor.” I remember the word and the war quite clearly, my mother’s four brothers and my father ...
GSTAAD—Nostalgia barged in like gangbusters. What brought it on was a brief article about the most charming and enchanting of young women, Nancy Olson. Seventy-two years ago she was in that rare gem of a movie, Sunset Boulevard, playing the rosy-cheeked screenwriter who was the love interest of William Holden, the handsome but entrapped writer by Norma Desmond, a.k.a. Gloria Swanson. Nancy’s blue eyes shimmered, and her ...
GSTAAD—As the great Yogi Berra explained, “It’s déjà vu all over again.” The great one also contributed the following wisdom: “You can observe a lot by watching.” Yogi came to mind as high inflation and a recession loom, and merry old England’s trade unions are reverting to type and are blackmailing the government. And where is Margaret Thatcher now that she’s needed? Gone with the wind, that’s where. I ...
