21 SEPTEMBER 2002, Page 62

The day after

Taki

ANew York

though understandable, it was nevertheless dispiriting to have read so much about 11 September in American newspapers. Television, too, outdid itself with nonstop coverage. Imagine if Uncle Sam had been hit with a Dresden, or a Hiroshima and Nagasaki. What then? Still, at least firemen and cops got the credit that was long overdue. Now even trendy lefties and Hollywood types recognise their sacrifice, however reluctantly. I did not contribute to the torrent of words — I said what I had to say last year — but I do have something to add about the day after 11 September.

On 12 September. some Big Bagel city council members threw open the doors of City Hall to a murdering crook, Robert Mugabe, and hailed him as a conquering hero. I kid you not. Councilman Charles Barron, a former Black Panther — for those of you with short memories or too young to remember, these were black criminals who went around shooting cops and selling drugs during the lawless Sixties — was the prime mover behind this shameless exercise of black solidarity. In fairness, many of the council's 51 members stayed away, but not a single one uttered a word of criticism or expressed moral outrage.

Par for the course. Barron now plans to lead a delegation to Zimbabwe, all expenses paid by Mugabe, on a fact-finding freebie. Like those taken by British so-called intellectuals to the Soviet Union before the war. 'I have seen the former white-owned farms and they will work in future .. . 'type of thing. Barron might even end up owning one, and why not? The price is right. Oh yes, I almost forgot. Barron has called for the replacing of City Hall portraits of white historical figures with black icons. (What about Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and Malcolm X?) He has called Thomas Jefferson a 'pedophile' — that's a new one on me — and has gone on record saying that 'sometimes I want to go up to a white person and slap him, for my mental health'.

Mind you, I'm not surprised, The lack of reaction by whites is what bothers me. Where was Bush, or Bloomberg, or Pataki on this one? Mugabe is terminating whites in Zimbabwe in pre-war Hitlerian mode, and not a peep out of American and British whites. On the contrary. The Zimbabwean ambassador in Washington, Simbi Mubako (rhymes with tobacco), has been presented with Adrian Wilkinson's 3,000acre farm for services rendered, and has bragged about it. But that's peanuts compared to enforced starvation, Even Hitler did not use selective starvation, although dear old Uncle Joe did. As does Mugabe (rhymes with shabby).

Which brings me to yet another nice guy, Harvard professor Noel Ignatiev. He is the academic who wants to 'abolish the white race', because he thinks they are loyal to their race and advance their interests at the expense of black people. Ignatiev is a very smart feller (known among his students as a fart smeller) and his admiration for the black race is due to the advanced state of civilisation of African nations. As everyone knows, individual rights, presumption of innocence, trial by jury and democracy are all African inventions. For my part, I'll stick with William F. Buckley, who famously wrote that 'I would sooner live in a society governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by 2,000 faculty members at Harvard University'.

Needless to say, it's not the blacks who hate whites the most; it's white academics and intellectuals who are doing it for them. Since the ghastly Sixties, college and university professors have been doing their best to make blacks hate whites, They are the ones who have made accusations against whites which feed black anger and resentment. And the whites, instead of responding in kind, play dead. One US Marine division could topple Mugabe in a jiffy, yet we are much more likely to hit a prostrate Saddam instead. But why US Marines? Blair should send in a British regiment to safeguard the whites, but he's as likely to do that as I am to give one to Monica Lewinsky.

And speaking of that slob, Bob Greene, a 55-year-old writer for the Chicago Tribune, has just been fired over a tryst with a teenage girl that took place ten years ago. Greene is a nice guy who was made fun of by his colleagues for describing a Norman Rockwell kind of America. (He was at Esquire with me during the late Seventies.) The trouble with this case is that the girl was not a minor, and it was perfectly legal. Definitely ungentlemanly — she was legal but too young — but no more than what Clinton did with Lewinsk,,. So the poor one loses his job, while the bullshitter got to keep his, Greene was a crypto-conservative. Clinton was a crypto-crook. There are two laws in America. One for conservatives, the other for liberals. Just like in Zimbabwe, one for whites, the other for blacks. We whites should hang our heads in shame.