High life
East side story
Taki
arl Bernstein is the pockmarked half of the duo that helped bring down Presi- dent Richard Nixon, and an American hack superstar as a result. He is an ugly man, with an arrogant look and a swagger- ing style, traits which are de rigueur for a celebrity in the Big Bagel. When Wood- ward and Bernstein were writing on Water- gate I was ready to bet my last devalued drachma that they were making most of it up, and I still am. Woodward has since been revealed to be a fiction writer, but Bernstein has avoided being caught be- cause he has done and written nothing since his last great novel, The Final Days (co-novelist, Woodward).
But all this is about to change. Starting this week Bernstein is being profiled ad nauseam in the glossies of this great country — alas, including Fame — because he has finally finished a book about his parents. It has been 11 years in the making, which makes my prison book seem an instant one (only five). What is so interest- ing about Bernstein's parents? As far as I can tell absolutely nothing, but for the fact that they were members of the Communist Party and knew the executed traitors, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. 'My first memory of the White House', writes Carl, `is from a picket line', while thousands of Commie sympathisers appealed for clemency for the traitors.
Well, my first memory of the White House was also just about that time, except that I was on another sidewalk picketing to make sure those vile Rosenbergs would fry. (I had gone down with some Greek youths who had suffered under Stalin's minions.) To have remained a Communist after Stalin's genocide of the Thirties seems to me inhuman. To have joined in 1942, as the Bernsteins did, and to have continued to proselytise after what the Soviets were doing to post-war Eastern Europe, is to believe in cacocracy.
Needless to say, the sins of the father `The way they follow one another, they're almost ovine.' and mother should not be held against the son. And they are not. What I hold against him is that although he's made millions, lives the high life and has been seen to escort such nubile young virgins as Joan Collins, Bianca Jagger and Liz Taylor, little Carl seems not to have learnt the first lesson of Marxist philosophy, which is not to exploit your fellow man. Or woman, for that matter. Let me explain.
Bernstein lives very near my friend Tom Wolfe on 62nd Street, in a house that the Americans with great economy of express- ion refer to as a brownstone. The house belongs to a woman by the name of Guida Carvalhosa, a Portuguese lady who makes ends meet by renting out parts of it. Bernstein rents a flat, although rent may be the wrong word. I say this because apparently he has not paid for his flat since last November, and is now being sued by the owner, who wants him out. It is not the first time this has happened. Two years ago he got some bad publicity for refusing to pay, and only last summer he again tried for a free ride complaining that ... there were too many flies in the house.
His latest excuse is to complain about Carvalhosa's boarders. When I inquired who the boarder was I found out it was Larry Collins, author of Is Paris Burning and other best-sellers. Collins is a gentle- man, but I guess Bernstein is not familiar with the species. There is a court hearing on 28 February, and then either it will be time to pay or he will be joining the homeless. But for one who pretends to speak for the downtrodden, I say shame on you, Carl. He must have learned such tricks while working for the Washington Post. Next week, for a change, I shall write about a true American hero, Barnaby Conrad.
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