Taki

Gstaad Back in 1975 Adam Fergusson, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, published a very important book with a very apt modern title, When Money Dies. It was about the nightmare of Weimar hyperinflation, something our so-called leaders might well think about, which of course they will not. We are so dumbed-down by reality and talent shows on the idiot box, why bother to bring up unpleasant subjects? Only recently I read somewhere that the obnoxious John Prescott defended the war criminal Tony Blair and his party’s record, which in a way is not unlike arms manufacturers being praised by Greens for population control. People are simply too dumb, too cowed, or too interested in celebrity goings-on to care about what a slob like Prescott bloviates about.

Six hours into the new year and already there was trouble. My own bash to welcome 2011 with 50 of my nearest finished around 5 a.m., so I rolled down towards the Palace hotel still looking for some action. I had a very pretty German girl in tow, Fiona, a friend of my son, so I swept into the lobby in style. Then it happened. I saw the vision to end all visions and a desperate, sensuous pain — the type that can make a grown man cry out — hit me as never before. This is the curse upon those who follow the supreme Beauty — that is to say, the Beauty that belongs not to ideas and ideals but to living forms. Beauty, they say, is in the eye of the beholder, but I say that’s all crap. Real beauty is rare and extremely precious.

My son J.T. managed to seriously shorten my life by inviting close to 75 young people to my house for an end-of-the-year party, among whom I found some seriously beautiful girls who were out way past their bedtime. My routine for my children’s bashes is a simple one. I train hard either in judo or karate, work up a very good sweat, shower, shave, put on my finest Anderson & Sheppard suit, go to the drawing room where the main battle is about to take place, and start downing vodka and cranberry juice. I never touch food, as it produces a hangover the next day. After about one hour and around five drinks, I am feeling no pain but am completely lucid. Then the scrum begins.

New York This is a bad time of year for atheists. So much so that they are showing signs of desperation. In the cesspool that is Uncle Sam’s capital, an unusual Christmas message began appearing last week on the side of buses and trains: ‘No god? No problem!’ Some 270 of these ads have gone up, paid for by secular groups in cities around the country. Similar signs are being placed on buses and billboards in New York, Las Vegas, Chicago, Los Angeles and other Sodom and Gomorrahs, including London, Toronto and Montreal. I say, so what? Sometimes I think the anti-Christian forces take Christ more seriously than most nominal Christians do. Atheists are jealous of the Christmas season. While we have Jesus and the Jews have the prophets, what have they got?

This is in praise of younger men. An outrage is about to take place at Preston Crown Court, where on 7 January 2011, a beautiful 27-year-old ballet teacher, Sarah Pirie, will be sentenced for ‘abducting a 15-year-old’, who was not named (unlucky chappie) for obvious reasons. In my not so humble opinion, this is dead wrong. And if the ballet teacher is sent to prison, it will be the cruellest decision since the Athenians sent poor old Socrates down for corrupting the young. Mind you, the Brits have always been undersexed, underfinanced and, most of the time, under the table with drink, but this is ridiculous. Because is there a greater gift a 27-year-old beauty can bestow on a 15-year-old boy than sex? Not the other way round, mind you.

The irony is such that the word itself loses meaning. The ultimate Afghan conman, an oxymoron if ever there was one, is someone Hollywood couldn’t make up. A catch-him-if-you-can type of script wouldn’t make it past the first rewrite. Even ‘based on a true story’ wouldn’t help. If it weren’t for the dead and maimed for life, I’d be laughing my pants off. Just as funny was the timing, at least from my point of view. I’d gone up to Connecticut to spend the weekend with Graydon and Anna Carter, he being the supremo of Vanity Fair. Once there, I was given a Robert Harris book, Selling Hitler, about the conman who convinced everyone but David Irving that the Hitler private diaries were for real.

Tony Judt was a very clever and learned Brit who taught in the Big Bagel and who died last August of that dreaded Lou Gehrig disease. He was extremely brave until the end, writing and lecturing from his wheelchair, and so convincing was he that some nice guys managed to ban him from speaking just before the end because of his opposition to Israeli policies. (They called him an anti-Semite, although Judt was Jewish, which is par for the course.) Judt wrote an essay about ‘My endless New York’, which was a gem. At times I think only foreigners can catch the city’s pulse, New York, of course, not being America. A homogeneous quality is not what the city is made of. The finest thing about the place, we are told, is the variety of its sideshows.

This is a good time to be in the Bagel. Walking briskly under changing autumn skies amid colours that still carry their summer clothes is an inspiring experience. Heaven knows I need it. Early morning means judo training — hangover or not — and on foggy days I walk through the park as if in a trance longing to reach the dojo before I’m enveloped by the yellow mist. After training, it’s as if a heavy load had been lifted from my shoulders. Literally. The heavy-duty training I’m putting in now will pay dividends next year. That’s how it goes, judo-wise, karate-wise, tennis-wise, sport-wise. It’s like nature: one has to plant in order to reap, unlike fellow Greeks, who reaped long before thinking of planting.

It’s open season against whites over here. A couple of weeks ago, an 18-year-old freshman at Rutgers University jumped off the George Washington Bridge after his roommate, also 18, and a female student accomplice used a webcam to film him surreptitiously in a gay sexual encounter and send it to their closest thousand friends. Tyler Clementi’s body was fished out a week later, after the cheap laughs had subsided. Clementi was a top violinist and was studying music. He came from a closely knit family, which is obviously devastated. The story made the news but the perpetrators were not treated as the monsters they are because — yes, you guessed it — Clementi was white and Catholic, while his roommate, Dharun Ravi, was from the subcontinent and quite brown.

My first copy of The Great Gatsby cost me $2. It was the year 1953, the cover was dark blue with city lights in the background, and a pair of mournful green eyes looking at nothing in particular. I had just finished Tender Is the Night, so I took Gatsby home in exhilaration, not unlike going home with the girl of your dreams — well, almost. I was not to be disappointed. Although I never related to Gatsby the way I did to Dick Diver — Jay reminded me of a couple of men I had met in my 15 years of life, whereas Dick was someone tragic whom I aspired to — it was the most glamorous of novels. It was lyrical as well as brutal, and like all Scott’s novels magical, mystical and full of romance.

Some of our readers may be aware that the sainted editor’s wife is Swedish — and she has a sister — but I swear on the Koran that what follows has nothing to do with that. The sainted one wrote about Sweden in these here pages two weeks ago. About how the Swedes have bucked the recession by lowering taxes. What I will tell you is about the fun I’ve had with the hyperborean beauties of that country, starting with my first great love Kerin, wife of a great tennis player of the late Fifties. We were touring together and as he would compete all week and I’d be out of the tournament by Tuesday or Wednesday, Kerin and I would spend a lot of time together. So much so that people talked.

When Tom Wolfe harpooned Leonard Bernstein in his famous Sixties essay, he did it by quoting directly from those attending the infamous cocktail party Lenny gave for the Black Panthers. Wolfe had finagled an invite to the grand 5th Avenue Bernstein pad, and was taking notes throughout the evening. The end result was devastating. In fact, it killed radical chic once and for all. The rich and famous stopped giving dinners for cop killers and drug dealers and turned instead to philanthropy. Soon after, the great social climb began with a vengeance, John Fairchild’s nouvelle society was created and names like Steinberg, Kravis, Gutfreund, and so on became household ones by paying a hell of a lot of money for their seats at charity balls.

I missed a very good friend’s 60th birthday party in the shires, but thus avoided the disgraceful anti-Pontiff showing off by the cheap, publicity-seeking and repellent poseurs that signed up to the orchestrated campaign against the wonderful Pope Benedict. New York I missed a very good friend’s 60th birthday party in the shires, but thus avoided the disgraceful anti-Pontiff showing off by the cheap, publicity-seeking and repellent poseurs that signed up to the orchestrated campaign against the wonderful Pope Benedict. Mind you, all these grotesque losers have a point — against God, that is. If I looked like Polly Toynbee or Claire Rayner, or Stephen Fry for that matter, I, too, might be writing letters of protest to the Guardian.

Gstaad The new look requires a new, improved Taki. From now on gravitas will be my middle name. There will be no more of this jet-set stuff. Constant classical themes will mix with references to songs by Schubert, and stories inspired by Horace and Racine. Taki the social commentator is dead; long live Taki the philosopher, humanist and classical scholar. (And if you believe that, it’s time for the men in white coats.) But let me try, for this time only at least, to justify my new middle name. Eight years ago Pat Buchanan, Scott McConnell and I founded the American Conservative, a national biweekly whose purpose was to expose what nation-building does to those stupid enough to want to build. It was my idea and I put up the moolah, Pat lent his famous name, and Scott edited.