Sporting chance
Taki
By the time you read this I will have a pretty good idea whether my 70-andover judo world title will belong to some Mongolian monster or be retained by yours truly. Unpredictability is to sport what lying is to Clinton and Blair — a compelling stimulus — but my chances in Brussels are beginning to resemble those of the Belgian army facing the invading Germans back in 1940. Having trained hard all spring in the Bagel, it all went down the drain in two weeks living the high life in London and Devon. As good an excuse as any, and fun to boot. Speaking of Blair and Clinton, I am reliably informed that Arpad Busson’s ‘Diary’ in the 14 June Speccie is up for a Pulitzer Prize. And it makes me very proud. Only a Pug’s Club member would have the insight to find greatness in those two bull artists, hence a prize is well deserved. Ditto for the hedgies being a force for good in the world. That they are — for luxury goods, that is. Working for others is what hedge funders do, and God forbid that anyone would accuse them of greed. Mind you, there are those who suffer from Spenglerian pessimism and believe hedgies are pretty grabby and have driven the economy south with their greed, but now that Arkie has set us straight everything is hunky-dory.
Pug’s Club, incidentally, has just voted in our 12th member, George Livanos, the Erwin Rommel of Greek shipowners, as he’s known among us cognoscenti. Which means the club is now one fourth Greek, and as Heinrich von Fürstenberg has just been elected a member of the world’s BestDressed List, Pug’s can claim that a quarter of its members are among the earth’s best-dressed people. (Eat your heart out, White’s.) But back to sport. As I said, unpredictability is what makes sport great, and the way things are now, anyone can cause an upset at any given day. It is tough enough to pick a winner, not withstanding the Russian Mafia which is trying to have tennis players tank matches. This applies only in the early matches. Champions do not throw matches, but tennis is such a game of inches, who can accurately accuse someone of tanking? Henri Cochet once told me that his success lay in the fact he rarely missed an easy ball. But easy shots are, for lack of a better word, easily missed, and that goes for champions, too. I remember one great player many years ago who was up against the ropes at 30–all when his opponent missed a set-up forehand volley, his best shot. He would not have missed it one hundred times out of a hundred, but that time he did. Go figure.
Wimbledon is wide open this year, and I think Nadal has as good a chance as Federer if his knees hold out. But no one knows for sure, and that includes those I just mentioned. I wouldn’t mind seeing two Serbs winning, Djokovic and Ivanovic, but then I’m prejudiced on account of the Greek Orthodox religion of the former, and physical beauty of the latter. In judo, needless to say, there is no suspicion of tanking because judokas compete for glory and little else. In Miami last year I won against a man fighting with a Zimmer frame. (He has since died of natural causes. Just kidding.) I am told that Vladimir Putin has poured money into judo, so there will be plenty of old Soviet champions trying to take away my gold medal, which I have had framed and put in a rather prominent place on Bushido.
Which I’ve just left in the south of France on its way to Hellas. While on Bushido I was reading up on de Gaulle. I was not a Gaullist while he was president because of what I thought was his betrayal of the French army in Algeria. But I was wrong. De Gaulle knew very well that holding Algeria was impossible. He also mistrusted capitalism — up to a point. He knew that left totally to their own devices, capitalists would turn much too greedy for the public’s good. When he retired in 1969, he could have collected his pension as a general as well as that of an expresident of ten years. He chose, instead, a colonel’s pension, and de Gaulle was not a man of means. He died the following year in relative poverty. Compare that with the 100 million greenbacks Bill Clinton has amassed by hanging out with low-lifes like Jeffrey Epstein (about to do a Taki for at least 18 months) or the millions Tony Blair is accruing from American banks for having played along. The money-obsessed career politicians of today alone make de Gaulle a great man.
Le Grand Charles was not an Israel fan. He had warned that Israel would greedily gobble up Palestinian lands with settlements which would make it hard to get back when and if the Palestinians were ever allowed to have a country of their own. A couple of weeks ago a little Palestinian girl in Gaza died from the hole in her heart, a hole that could easily have been operated on had she been allowed to leave besieged Gaza. But it was not to be. While America came to a standstill mourning the death of an overweight 58-year-old newscaster, I thought her life was worth one hundred Tim Russerts. Russert had his day in the sun and was pretty much a sneaky hack at that. The little girl was never given the chance. I wonder from whom the Israelis learnt all about collective punishment?
Previous page
