It is just us in Gazelle, us and the
well-groomed Narnian and his
multiple handsome assistants
— Tanya Gold, p62
High life
Taki
New York
There is fear and loathing in this city, with
men looking over their shoulders for the
thought police and hard-eyed women
roaming the television studios with lists of
sexual predators. There is also dread over
the latest exports from the city’s youth
detention centres, thanks to Kerry Ken-
nedy, daughter of Robert Kennedy and
ex-wife of Governor Cuomo, who is now
busy bailing out criminals who cannot
afford bail through the Robert F. Kennedy
Human Rights foundation, of which she is
president.
This is one hell of a city. While the
criminals are being released, the innocent
(presumed) are losing their jobs, having
been accused of sexual harassment. The
500lb gorilla in the room, of course, is the
R-word. An accusation of racism in New
York or California is a death sentence
for one’s career — even worse than being
accused of grabbing someone’s breasts.
Shock horror.
Ron Darling was a famous major-league
baseball pitcher for the New York Mets and
is now a broadcaster. He looks western but
is of Chinese descent. He used the term ‘a
chink in the armour’ to describe a Yankee
pitcher’s wild performance. The player in
question is Japanese. Shock horror all over
again. Darling was threatened with career-
ending penalties unless he grovelled, which
he did. A commonly used metaphor almost
cost him his career. See what I mean about
fear and loathing? Imagine what would
happen to you if you inadvertently brushed
against a Chinese woman’s breasts. Twenty-
five to life most likely.
And it gets worse. Some time ago, Doug
Adler, a broadcaster for ESPN, described
Venus Williams’s forays to the net dur-
ing a tennis match as ‘putting the guerilla
effect on’. He was accused, by know-noth-
ings on Twitter, of likening her to a gorilla,
and fired. What he had actually done was
compliment Williams for suddenly going
Low life
Jeremy Clarke
East of London the Thames broadens dra-
matically to a surreal waste of mud and
sewage-coloured water lined with shipping-
container dumps. Here, a row of expen-
sive apartment blocks commands the view
as if it were the Loire valley. At 11.30 on
the morning of the Friday before last, any-
one looking idly out of a window of one of
these might have raised an astonished eye-
brow. For in the water below, manoeuvring
strenuously against an ebb tide and a Pen-
tecostal wind to position her stern against
a shipping buoy, was a beautiful, red-sailed,
century-old Thames sailing barge. Crowding
her deck, moreover, and enterprisingly clad
in tweed and waxed cotton, some wearing
ties, was a curious assembly of passengers. Itto the net. Adler was out of a job and now
works on a different network after a hiatus
of almost two years.
But the best is yet to come: a veteran
TV commentator Brian Davis was recently
suspended, then dumped for good, for com-
plimenting a basketball player’s moves by
saying on the air: ‘Westbrook’s out of his
cotton-pickin’ mind.’ And there is even
more to fear if your name is Lee, as in Rob-
ert E. Lee, the greatest American that has
ever lived as far as I’m concerned. ESPN
removed an Asian-American announcer
by the name of Robert Lee, on account of
his name, because he was covering a foot-
ball game at the University of Virginia (my
alma mater), Charlottesville. This makes
Nineteen Eighty-Four and Big Brother look
like an Abbott and Costello movie. What
will they come up with next against the
hated white man?
In the meantime, rappers with strange
names that make no sense use the N-word
and women-denigrating lyrics to their
heart’s content, and no one dares say a
word. Insiders now use the name Ebony
Fair because of the magazine’s extensive use
of black models and of black entertainers.
(Meanwhile, the circulation has dramatically
dropped, and advertisers are next.)
So where will all this lead? I for one no
longer go to nightclubs because there are
no clubs left for normal people. The Boom
Boom Room is still OK, but anywhere else
is a bad joke. Freaks, drag queens, street
hustlers, parasites and pretty boys for sale
are the norm. The last time a lady went to a
nightclub was during the late 1960s.
Last Saturday night, Michael Mailer
gave a dinner for me at his place in Brook-
lyn Heights overlooking the Statue of Lib-
erty and the waters that Washington crossed
when he escaped General Howe’s encircle-
ment back in 1777. All the men were friends:
a screenwriter, an artist, a fund manager,
Michael and little ol’ me. The girls werebeautiful and young. Two of them in particu-
lar were to die for. We played a game where
everyone said who they would love to have
had dinner with, and who was the person
they most admired who they actually have
dined with. It was a lot of fun and the men
were a bit more interesting than the women.
One beauty said she’d love to have dined
with her grandmother.
Afterwards a couple of the ladies left.
We were surprised but the booze kept us
jolly and the conversation flowed. Then
the prettiest of them all, who had stayed
behind, told us why: ‘You boys are all good
friends, make jokes with each other and
enjoy each other’s company. You not once
addressed us and our needs.’ Gee whizz,
I never actually thought they had any
needs, but then I’m a selfish son-of-a-bitch.
The one who stayed behind was sitting next
to me so I addressed her: ‘The truth is that
throughout the evening all I did was think
of you, and how much I wanted to bed you.
But of course I would never dare say any-
thing of the kind. This is the truth and noth-
ing but.’ She gave me a wan smile, but the
men did not look best pleased. Truth will
get you nowhere nowadays.‘The enemy are virtue-signalling to us, sir.’