http://www.takimag.com/blogs/Theodoracopulos.xml The Online Magazine for Independent Conservatives, edited by Taki Theodoracopulos en test1@me.com Copyright 2008 2008-05-15T12:00:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/in_my_life/ http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/in_my_life/#When:12:00:00Z From my kitchen window, I have watched a little boy grow up to be a man. I live in what Americans with great economy of expression refer to as a brownstone, actually a townhouse. It is on 71st street off Park Avenue. My father bought it for us 30 years or so ago, and both my children refer to it as home. Although both have left, my daughter for Los Angeles and my son for Brooklyn, their rooms still feel lived in, with shoes lying around, old books, bric-a-brac, and pictures of their parents looking less worn to say the least. … Culture 2008-05-15T12:00:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/moolah_and_its_discontents/ http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/moolah_and_its_discontents/#When:03:23:00Z A few weeks ago I attended a most wonderful party, with music, pretty girls, lotsa champagne--and even some people who did not move their lips while reading the labels of the expensive bubbly and scotch whiskey they were imbibing. Namely Tom Wolfe, Lewis Lapham, Graydon Carter, Edward Jay Epstein and other such New York swells. The occasion was Lapham’s Quarterly “About Money,” a 220-page thick edition featuring mostly dead writers such as Aristophanes, Karl Marx, Ben Franklin, Andrew Carnegie, Edith Wharton, Cicero, even Henry Ford. (“What a treat, it must be,” said Graydon Carter, one of the speakers, “to be able … 2008-05-10T03:23:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/shallow_walters/ http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/shallow_walters/#When:12:52:00Z It is indicative of the disastrous social trends that began in the 1960s, that we are now faced with the most odious kind of snobbery, that of celebrity, namely that of Barbara Walters and her memoirs. The fact that someone taught her to act--her mother or her public school teacher--constitutes child abuse to the nth degree. This Walters woman is the greatest antidote to viagra known to man. Her toe-curling schmaltzy observations about the famous people she has come into contact with are as appealing as finding one’s self in Miami Beach in the month of February. A toady to superiors … 2008-05-09T12:52:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_truth_about_the_good_war/ http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_truth_about_the_good_war/#When:12:26:00Z Good things come in pairs. In this case there are three, actually. Three books which set the record straight. Not the usual victor’s justice twaddle that we in the West have been swallowing these last 60 some odd years. All I can say is bravo to the three authors, bravo for courage, bravo for honesty, and bravo for putting emotion aside and sticking to the distaseful facts. Buy and read these three books and the next time you’re discussing history, make yourself unpopular but right.Good things come in pairs. In this case there are three, actually. Three books which set the … 2008-05-09T12:26:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/when_the_elites_had_class/ http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/when_the_elites_had_class/#When:00:10:00Z NEW YORK--So there I was, at the Waverly Inn, Graydon Carter’s little toy that is the hottest ticket in the Big Bagel since two years, when the booth next to mine filled up with young people, all of them scruffy and dressed like the homeless, their girls rather plain and some of them even ugly. Par for the course, I thought to myself, then I noticed everyone looking at them. My son and daughter, with whom I was celebrating Greek Easter with, set me straight. The boys were Leonardo di Caprio, Toby McGuire and Robert Downey Jr, the last two unknown … 2008-05-07T00:10:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/spying_on_uncle_sam/ http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/spying_on_uncle_sam/#When:20:37:01Z It is a truth universally acknowledged that the two main reasons for anti-Semitism in America are Alan Dershowitz and Abe Foxman. No sooner had an American, Ben-Ami Kadish, been charged with providing military secrets to Israel while he was serving in the United States army 23 years ago, Foxman expresses surprise that Uncle Sam would go after a spy and traitor. In other words, spying for a foreign power is now OK, and betraying one’s country to Israel is honky-dory. No wonder many Americans believe that if forced to choose, many American Jews would betray this country in favor of Israel. … 2008-04-28T20:37:01-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/good_cops/ http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/good_cops/#When:03:05:00Z The New York Times is not very pleased that the three Noo Yawk cops got off. I sympathize with the old bag. There’s nothing those pseudo-eggheads at the Times like better than seeing cops go to jail for defending us from the bad guys. The trouble is justice was served. I don’t wish to bore any of you who have read about the case. In brief, three “bad” men with long records of armed violence emerge from a strip club that sells drugs and offers ladies of the night. Two of the three men in a car get into an argument … 2008-04-27T03:05:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/good_europeans_and_bad/ http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/good_europeans_and_bad/#When:13:00:01Z NEW YORK—It obviously came from above, the order that is, because I have never seen such perfect temperatures and clearer skies than for the Pope’s visit. And this wonderful Pope, who believes in the strictest doctrine for the church, was greeted by the faithful like a rock star, cheered and applauded everywhere, with people yelling “Wilkommen” in Brooklyn accents and thousands upon thousands waving yellow and white Vatican flags. His Holiness stayed in an upper east-side house, one block away from mine, and watching tough and burly Noo Yawk cops tear up whenever he passed by was a sight to remember. … 2008-04-23T13:00:01-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/1968_in_the_city_of_lights/ http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/1968_in_the_city_of_lights/#When:06:04:00Z It was looking good, the merry month of May, forty years ago. I had been living in Paris for ten years, had just moved into a beautiful small farmhouse 10 miles west of the city, had recently become a bachelor again age 31, and had given up competitive tennis for polo and the Bagatelle polo club in the Bois de Boulogne. My horses were young and mobile, the girls were plentiful, the nightclubs as perfect as nightspots can get, and life seemed to be as good as it gets. Mind you, there were some clouds in the horizon, such as the … 2008-04-20T06:04:00-05:00 http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/jimmy_and_jerusalem/ http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/jimmy_and_jerusalem/#When:21:47:00Z “Unprecendented Israel snub for Jimmy,” screams the New York Post. Echoed by all three candidates, I might add, all three with a crippling and chronic reluctance to let Israel feel the rough edge of their tongue. It is called Realpolitik--utter a word against Likud policy and retire to your farm for the duration. This applies to all politicians in the United States--remember Charles Percy and William Scranton, two long ago politicos who dared to criticize and retired to their farms in turn. I was never a fan of Jimmy Carter while he was in office--especially after a dinner I attended … 2008-04-19T21:47:00-05:00