High life
Big Bagel blues
Taki
The end of the year was perfect, with a great party thrown in honour of Nabila Khashoggi by her father the day after her wedding to Danny Daggenhurst. Adnan Khashoggi was a nice man when he was among the world's richest and though now Perhaps a bit less rich he's as generous and Pleasant as ever. The music was Glenn Miller's, the food exotic and the service just about perfect. Not for the first time, I was the last to leave.
Mind you, it was probably one of the most exhausting weeks of my life. Christo- pher Gilmour's wedding took its toll, what With starting serious drinking at midday with the ushers' lunch and going strong throughout the reception at Sion House and at the V & A, where Andrew Neil gave US more champagne and even the ghastly Salman Rushdie seemed to be satisfied. The black-tie party began immediately after, and then it was light and 300 of us
were still in Covent Garden jumping up and down like a bunch of Zulus.
The Big Bagel beckoned next, but some- how I'm sick and tired of the smug and self-congratulatory behaviour of the typical Big Bagelite. New Yorkers think that act- ing grand, with pretension and snotty supe- riority, means being classy. In fact the 'in' crowd act like rock stars, which makes them very difficult to rub shoulders with. My Christmas party is fine, because it's mostly family and close European friends. My New Year's Eve blast is now bloody awful. Word has got around that when drunk I turn into a soft touch, and just about every deadbeat in town crashes my party. Two years ago I knew 5 per cent of the people; last year, with a tight door poli- cy, it rose to 10 per cent. This year will be better because I'm giving it in Chuck Pfeif- fer's new bar and grill, but not much. I guess nice people stay home on New Year's Eve, or perhaps I'm just getting old.
In fact, it's neither. It's the city itself that no longer works. It has become the great social experiment based on those lousy pro- gressive ideas of people who live far from the scene of danger. The trouble is the experiment has failed miserably, but the dishonest Big Bagel Times and other deadly sinners in the media won't admit it.
Responsibility is a suspect and politically incorrect word in American cities, almost as bad as the worst four-letter word in the American lexicon — work. The Times is as responsible for this attitude as anyone. The paper has consistently taken the side of the criminal against the police, and even an old friend of mine, Lewis Lapham, has ques- tioned the manhood of cops from the safe- ty of his editorial office at Hayper's magazine. (Needless to add, Lapham's chil- dren all go to exclusive private schools, and his Park Avenue flat — where young John Taki spends most of his time playing with Lapham junior — has 24-hour minder ser- vice.) Now, with the draft-dodger becoming co- President with the awful Hillary on 20 Jan- uary, things are bound to get worse. In the guise of compassion for the poor, the decent, working and tax-paying people have been subordinated to the poverty pimps. Anything and anyone politically left of centre finds a home in New York as eas- ily as Jeff Bernard fits into the Coach and Horses. Excuses are made for criminals from street hustlers all the way up to the mayor and on up to His Honour the Dago. Never in the history of the world have so many up high been held hostage by so many down below. The city is no longer fit to live in, unless of course, one belongs to the criminal class. Personally, I still prefer it to Pentonville, but I hear my old school has done away with slopping out, so I'm starting to have my doubts. One thing is for sure. The moment my house is built in New England I'm moving out, and to hell with child molesters. At least they don't shoot first and molest later.
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