Sign of the times
Taki
New York
This is so luminously beautiful, so hauntingly glamorous, that nail technicians, personal tattooists, wardrobe consultants and personal publicists the world over are waiting for it with their tongues hanging out. I am talking, of course, about the new history of the House of Hilton, from Conrad to Paris, with a few porno videos discussed in detail in-between. I am not surprised. Western societies have allowed themselves to be shaped by the lowest standards of decency and by the nastiest people. In art we have exhibitions featuring defecation, bestiality and selfmutilation, among other horrors. In poetry we are lucky to be blessed with impenetrable prose. In literature, Lady Luck has abandoned us. We now have the life of Paris Hilton and her ma, Kathy. Like a good American mother, Kathy went on record saying she is proud of everything her daughter has done — ‘even the video’. After all, what’s a mother for? Mind you, when she said it, she did look as if she had just eaten a bad oyster, but hey, maybe she just had. These Hiltons have no shame, but I can’t vouch for their stomachs.
Paris and her lot are examples of the excesses that modern D-list celebrities will go to, proving what little dignity a lot of money and fame can buy. And why not? Paris is laughing all the way to the bank, as they say, and to hell with dignity. To be fair, Kathy Hilton warned anyone collaborating with the author of this opus that there would be a price to pay: ‘If anyone participates in the book they will be banned from the family.’ My only regret is that I was never approached. Being banned from the Family Hilton would make me feel like a Wehrmacht officer standing at the top of the Champs-Elysées before the parade began in June 1940.
Crude behaviour seems to run in the family. I knew Nicky Hilton, Paris’s great uncle, and he was a bad drunk and a brute who could not take a punch. Her father Ricky seems a good sort, but as dumb and lacking in charm as it’s possible to be and still be allowed to walk the streets without a keeper. Paris’s maternal grandmother, Big Kathy, is reported in the book as a real goer. According to the author, she once fed dog food to one of her numerous mother-inlaws, served her stepdaughter a cheeseburger with a screw in it, and drugged a rival and crushed her ankle in a car door. During Paris’s christening, her mother Kathy, known as little Kathy, told Big Kathy’s exhusband he should have a threesome with her mother and his new wife. Who was the innocent fool who called the Marquis de Sade a pervert?
Oh well, I suppose it’s my advanced age that makes me wince at times. I have not read the book, just read a few reviews of it, but I know the family, and the writer is not far off. One should never speak badly of a lady, no matter how unladylike her behaviour, but take my word for it. Paris Hilton is no carnal, dangerous temptress, smouldering in black satin and luring men to their doom. She is cheaper than a Brooklyn pier hot dog back in 1949, and as sexy as Boy George in drag. But this is America today, and Britain, for that matter, so there’s not much old bores like myself can do about it except not buy the book and suck on a raw lemon instead.
But it’s not only Paris and her brood. Take the Cuomo clan, for example. Mario Cuomo was governor of New York State for 12 years and supported the draft dodger’s presidential run in 1992. His son Andrew was later appointed head of the ministry of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Andrew Cuomo married Kerry Kennedy, one of Bobby Kennedy’s daughters, and from day one it was obvious he was positioning himself for the inevitable run for governor and eventually the top job. But there were hitches. Rumours mostly, about the close cooperation of rich developers with HUD, and the job Andrew Cuomo took immediately following the Clinton presidency with Andrew Farkas, a financier and developer. Oh yes, and another thing. His wife Kerry was caught out having an affair with a moronic playboy polo player, and the dirty linen was washed on the front pages of the New York Post, which broke the story.
Next week Andrew Cuomo is poised to become New York’s attorney-general. The AG decides what deals are straight and, if not, who goes to the pokey. Cuomo’s two greatest contributors to the tune of more than half a million dollars are — yes, you guessed it — two developers, the aforementioned Andrew Farkas, and one Aby Rosen, a German-born vulgarian who makes Bill Clinton look like the Duke of Wellington. Aby Rosen has been in the news lately because he wants to build a super skyscraper above a listed landmark building on upper Madison Avenue, a residential section of the Big Bagel. A few brave souls are resisting. As an Upper East Side resident I have written a letter suggesting we tear down a few churches in order to accommodate Herr Rosen. New Yorkers are notoriously ill-mannered because no one has bothered even to acknowledge my epistle.
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