High life
Blazing inferno
Taki
Take for example the theatre district, once known for its charming restaurants, and still among the best policed areas of the city. (We can't have the fat cats who can still afford a Broadway show having their chauffeurs mugged while they wait, can we now?) As I write this there is open warfare taking place between drug dealers, Guardian Angels (self-styled keepers of the peace), commercial transvestites, crack addicts and, of course, the police.
Further uptown, in the Bronx, two black lawyers and a black Elmer Gantry type have managed to place themselves above the law because of the colour of their skin and the state of Governor Cuomo's back- bone. The three hustlers defied the courts by 'advising' a witness to refuse to testify, and, after she was held in contempt, taking her to a church, surrounding the place of worship with militant Black Muslims and daring the governor and police to storm it.
The two mouseketeers, Cuomo and Koch, did nothing of the sort. Cuomo's only reaction was to deny he was a Hitler clone, which the three radicals had charged. Koch appeared on television but only talked about a cancerous mole that has recently appeared on his bald head. And this in a town that last year sentenced a 15-year-old British-born youth to 30 years in the jug for the accidental death of a black in a racial incident.
This prompted yours truly to send a white feather to the governor, which in turn must have prompted him to show his bravery, because soon after he vetoed the capital punishment bill the state legislature had just passed with a large majority. The fact that innocent bystanders are routinely shot down in drug-related street warfare doesn't seem to bother Governor Mario Mozzarella. Nor that drug king-pins reg- ularly put out contracts on police officers. What is imperative is to hold his liberal credentials unsullied. After all, there are future elections to be fought.
Closer to where I live, on the upper East side, the talk is of Arianna Stassino- poulos's biography of Picasso. It is a lively opus, full of gossip and outrageous allega- tions, such as Picasso having had affairs with men when young (gee, I never real- ised Pablo went to Eton), but its real strength lies in having taught the crowd at Mortimer's that Picasso was a painter and not the father of a jewellery designer.
Needless to say, the Greek pudding has received the kind of publicity she was seeking in the first place. John Richardson, a Conde Nasty scribe, has declared her allegations to be on a par with those that claim Sy Newhouse owes money to the government. Others have hidden their Picassos saying they don't look good in the hot weather. The worst reaction came from Arianna's agent, a man who makes Swifty Lazar seem a giant by comparison. He put out the false rumour that the French museums are selling their Picassos short. No one has yet informed Mort Janklow, the pudding's agent provocateur, that Picasso is a dead Spaniard and not a stock.
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