We are not amused
Tald
rro Oxford for a debate on whether England is America's poodle or not, or something like that. Of course she is, and Charlie Glass and I are proposing the motion against Lord Parkinson, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Nicholas Soames. I will tell you all about it next week, after it takes place, and if the aeroplane I'm about to fly over in does fly. In the meantime, Andrew Roberts, known among the cognoscenti as the thinking man's phallic symbol, has landed me in the soup. The historian hunk had this to say in What Might Have Been, a counterfactual history which he edited and is great fun:
An arrangement was negotiated with the Austro-Hungarians by which the ex-Tsar and his family crossed the border by train and proceeded to the Swiss border, whence they settled in Gstaad. Over the next five decades the lives and loves of the Tsarevich and his four grand-duchess sisters were to fill the pages of the world's society columns, but the Romanov-Theodoracopulos family — as they were eventually to become — were never again to intrude on to the front pages, to their own considerable relief.
what-might-have-been history. He in turn showed the above passage to a Greek woman who suffers from an inferiority complex, especially where social matters are concerned. During a lunch, she turned on me, accusing me of being a terrific snob and acting in a superior manner against the lower classes. For once I was speechless. The accusation was so outrageous I was left Billy Budd speechless.
My friend then came to my rescue, reminding the woman that court etiquette demanded a certain je ne sais quoi towards non-blue bloods. The penny finally dropped, and now I know what poor royals have to go through in life. My only worry is that my friend Nicola Romanov will read it and denounce the book. Or demand half my fortune. Be that as it may, I hope no one in The Spectator office begins to bow; it would greatly embarrass me. Just as I hope Princess Michael of Kent does not start calling me cousin. Incidentally, she made the front page of the New York Post for having told a bunch of black people at the next table at Da Silvan° to go back to the colonies. I was there the night before, alas, hut somehow the story stinks to high heaven. I simply don't think it happened. I'm no friend of Princess Pushy, but in this case she's the victim of some publicity hounds. Take it from a fellow royal. The lady never said it. But what a way to make the front pages. Thank you, Sir Rupert Murdoch.
And speaking of bullshit, Susan Sontag, an American woman who hates America more than Osama does, had this to say about the prisoner-abuse affair in the Noo Yawl( Times, to boot. She compared it to the Rwanda massacres and the Holocaust. Really? Does Sontag truly believe that Abu Ghraib equals Auschwitz and the million Rwandan dead? Has she ever met an American soldier, ever seen a battle from afar except those staged by Hollywood? I don't think so. (I believe she crossed Central Park once at dusk.) But that's what happens when wars are planned back at the neocon think-tank by people who have also risked their lives in Central Park at dusk but have never seen action up close. It gives the opportunity for America-haters to stick the knife in and to hell with the truth. That it is a mess in Potamia is obvious, a war of mass deception even more so, thanks to Ahtnad Chalabi, a neocon without the neo. Chalabi took the stooges at the Pentagon for all they were worth and then some. Instead of doing time in a Jordanian jail, Ahmad baby ran for president and got rich beyond his wildest dreams thanks to the morons in DC. I hope he has cried Wolfowitz for the last time.
Finally, here come the brides, so gay with pride. Same-sex marriage and all that. Good old Massachusetts, always in the forefront. If it were up to me, and if I did that sort of thing, I would ask the justice of the peace to say, 'I pronounce you
pitcher and catcher for life,' rather than spouse and spouse as they tend to do in John Kerry's state. I am not for or against same-sex marriage, but I find it extremely funny. The French, in their infinite wisdarn where sexual matters are concerned, grant marriage rights to people of the same sex where moolah and property are concerned, without having to go through ceremonies which offend more traditional folk. But Americans like to push the envelope, and after the war down south is mercifully over, the same-sex marriage battles will begin in earnest. Fasten your chastity belts.
Previous page
