High life
Forget the analysts
Taki
than intellectual exercise. Both ladies are estranged from their husbands, something I find very sad where Cosi is concerned.
When Cosi married her first husband, Cosmo Fry, now married to Amanda Aspinall, she joked that she did it because their Christian names matched. Her moth- er suffered from nervous depression and tragically took her own life a few years ago. I don't know why, but I get nervous when I think of Cosima and Diana. I guess it has to do with Susie Orbach and her desire to demolish that most cherished British fea- ture, the stiff upper lip. Having just returned from a place like the Bagel, where people prefer to utter crudities, as if self- restraint were a mark of hypocrisy rather than good manners, I'm not so sure we need less of a stiff lip. Everything La Susie says I am against. She uses phrases such as `emotional literacy', which in reality mean that a person should be allowed a wide range of behaviour in response to anything they don't like. This is the kind of stuff American shyster lawyers rely on to get criminals off. A ghetto upbringing, a bro- ken home, an abusive parent and, presto, the criminal is 'emoting his feelings' as he maims, robs or even kills his victim.
Needless to say, no one emotes his feel- ings better than the Draft Dodger. When he wants people to think he's sad, he quiv- ers his jaw and dabs his eyes. When he wants them to think he's proud, he squares his jaw and gives them a thumbs-up attaboy look. When he wants to show that he feels their pain, he actually can make his eyes water. When he needs to look pensive he furrows his brow and puts on his reading glasses. As the editor of the American Spec- tator wrote, the only giveaway when Hillary lies is that her eyes pop out. Not our boy Bill. Nothing twitches when he tells a whopper. In fact, that's when he looks at his most presidential. When he's lying. My favourite Clinton joke is when, during a strategy meeting with his aides, someone asked, 'What about Rwanda?' our War Hero answered, 'The lying bitch, I never laid a hand on her.'
Following Diana's infamous interview, The Spectator asked whether we want our children to grow up endlessly emoting. Of course not, is the answer. My question is whether people like Diana, or Cosima if she is seeing Orbach, with both volatile personalities and fragile psyches, should be exposing them to someone who was drawn to the worse element the United States has come up with in 200 years, the anti-Viet- nam War protest movement. There was nothing altruistic or noble about those war protesters. It was all for self aggrandise- ment and self-importance. I have never met Ms Orbach and perhaps I'm being too tough on her, but when I hear of Sixties' political activists I reach for my poisoned pen. Cosi, tell your new friend to stop lis- tening to people who have political agen- das in mind. Analysis never solved anything except the shrink's bank overdraft.
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