High life
Jackie's junk
Taki
t is none of my business, but I think there's something terribly wrong with the Sotheby's hysteria-sale of Jackie KO's pos- sessions, going on as I write. The newspa- pers are full of stories about long and fidgety lines forming on York Avenue for the public viewing of the trinkets, with Kennedy groupies oohing and aahing at everything, although as yet no one has jumped off the nearby bridge into the East River as a mark of respect. What escapes me is her children's logic behind the sale. How can a son or daughter, not in desper- ate need to feed a hungry child, sell the desk where their father signed the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty? Or a hide-covered rock- ing horse that used to be in Caroline's White House nursery? Better yet, the Pres- ident's rocking chair?
There are more than 4,000 items to be auctioned off, in my book most of it junk, but it's precisely the junk of those you love that you tend to want to keep. There is a $90 548-page catalogue to be bought in order to qualify to be among those ran- domly picked by a computer to receive tickets, and about 75,000 mugs have already been bought. A modern day Dio- genes would be looking for an unfoolish person nowadays in the Bagel. What is beyond me is the sale of certain items by the children (in return for a tax break, apparent- ly — $100 million left to them just wasn't enough) and the hysteria of the groupies.
A couple of weeks ago an American reader of The Speccie wrote in from Illinois chastising Paul Johnson and the poor little Greek boy for adding adjectives such as `crooked, mendacious, insular, ignorant, cowardly, uncoordinated, deeply frivolous, stained, discredited, worthless' and so on next to the Draft Dodger's name (Letters, 13 April). The letter was well-written and quite polite. It asked for the Sainted One to have a word with Saint Paul and the Greek sinner.
Well, as luck would have it, two Saturday nights ago, at a private dinner at Le Cirque (following the Greek Orthodox midnight Easter service) given by Alexander Papa- markou, the only Greek banker I know who is not in the extortion business, in fact he's into enriching people, placed me next to the Draft Dodger's closest friend — no, it was not Barbra Streisand — George Stephanopoulos. As it happens more often than not in such cases, we got along swim- mingly. Better yet, George's father, who is a priest in the Cathedral of the Holy Trini- ty on East 74th Street, turns out to have assisted at my son's baptism back in 1982. He, Prince and Princess Pavlos and other assorted grandees made up the table.
George Stephanopoulos is the War Hero's closest adviser and has his office next to Clinton's. My little boy aside, we had something else in common: we were both wrestlers at school — the classical Greco-Roman style, not the crap one sees on television. We talked wrestling and then I made a deal with him. I'm attracted to someone called Dee Dee Myers, who used to be a White House spokesman but now has her own television show. I asked my NBF to put in a good word in return for me laying off Baron Munchausen. 'I'll put in a very good word,' said George, 'as long as you keep it up. People like you get us votes.'
Oh, dear. Worse, people in the know now tell me that this someone called Dee Dee Myers is not as sexy as I thought when I first saw her on the idiot box. Perhaps the rose-coloured glasses I was wearing at the time — her show is late at night — had something to do with it. Oh, well, as they say, nobody's perfect.
As your 'High life' correspondent wasn't one month ago. Some of you may remem- ber that I wrote (High life, 23 March) about how some 30 of us, including the actor Bruce Willis, crashed the Gstaad Lieberman flat at 6 a.m. to view the Tyson- Bruno fight. I should have made it clear that this was pre-arranged, and that the Liebermans were gracious hosts through- out.
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