High life
Adulterers all
Taki
has lasted 54 years, which is a hell of a lot more than the 22 years of age his latest girlfriend is reputed to be.
It would be inappropriate for me to name names — after all, my friends are private people who have not challenged the press to scrutinise their lives — but rumour has it that two of my oldest friends, an Italian automobile tycoon with a limp, and a duke with tall sons and a fondness for horses, may have strayed somewhere along the way. Both their marriages, however, will endure until death, as I know my father's will. On the other hand, I can hardly think of anyone of substance who does not philander. Neil Kinnock sure doesn't, being to hen-pecked even to sin in his heart a la Jimmy Carter. The two Davids I am obliged to list as innocent until proved guilty, which in my book means they both chase girls, although I truly do not believe what I'm saying, and am only giving them the benefit of the doubt. Where the Tories are concerned, however, the matter is very cut and dried. The only one who doesn't chase and philander is the Prime Minister, and for obvious reasons.
Which brings me to the last thing that will ever be written by me about the JFK clone who lied almost as much as the Kennedys, but unlike them, got caught. I say it will be the last thing because far too much has already been written about Gary Hartpenny, or whatever his real name is. The facts are very simple: his muse was Warren Beatty, a man whose only redeem- ing feature as far as I'm concerned is that he has no pretence to celibacy. Beatty is a shallow man with no ideas but with clever script-writers. He reminds me of the Ken- nedys, all style and no substance whatso- ever. It was Beatty and his crowd of leftist admirers of such tin-pot torturers as Castro and Ortega who inspired Hart to run for the Presidency. Their celluloid world of make-believe suited Hart, a man with no original ideas or personal style. They quickly turned him into a JFK clone. The accent, the mannerisms, even the personal quirks of the JFK became those of Hart. The result was that it fooled a lot of people for a long time.
As the joke goes, Hart must now regret not having Teddy Kennedy drive Miss Rice home that fateful evening, but he doesn't regret much else. When one lives in the make-believe world of Hollywood and Beatty, it is hard to come to terms with reality. Had the press actually investigated Hart's rhetoric, they would have realised what a phoney he was. William F. Buckley Jr did, and as he pointed out, found it full of lies and hypocrisy. Hart said that Reagan cuts energy for the poor and breakfast programmes for children. He said that Reagan held feasts while the elderly trembled in the basements of their homes. He said that Jim Bakker, the evangelist who got caught with his pants down, was a typical example of the Reagan years of immorality. Two weeks later, his `immorality' was exposed.
Some of us have known all about him for some time. His Washington girlfriend is the ex-wife of a senator, and he has an English paramour too. It was his business, until he began giving us lectures in moral- ity. Ironically, the man who now leads the polls, the egregious Jesse Jackson, makes Martin Luther King seem strait-laced by comparison, but that's another story.
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