Taki's Top Drawer

Statue of Prinz Eugen, Palais Hofburg, Vienna

Prussian Prose

At the end of World War II, the victorious Allies were convinced that Prussian militarism had played an important part in Hitler’s war in Europe. Herbert Marcuse, an overrated theorist of the Frankfurt School working for Uncle Sam, submitted a secret report that put all the blame for Nazism on capitalism. Marcuse was a phony who later became a hero to the anti-Vietnam war protesters but got it right on Prussia and Hitler. As I am in the midst of nonstop reading about the Congress of Vienna and the Napoleonic Wars, I sidestepped a bit and read how it was Austria-Hungary, not Prussia, that for centuries was the most aggressive and domineering power in the German-speaking world. I’ve been married to an Austrian for ages, as is my daughter—the Führer of Takimag—married to an ...

Slave to Reality

“Blue-eyed white devils” are not very popular nowadays. At least not with a recent migrant thrown off an airline flight for calling his fellow travelers thus. The man was drunk, or he might have been a New York Times reader. Or watched network news, especially NBC, because he really had it in for white people. I was not surprised when I read the item, especially the phrase “blue-eyed white devils.” It reminded me of an ...

A Sorry State

A well-dressed gentleman in New York today looks like a shadowy figure in a sepia-colored old photograph. I’ve been here for two weeks and have yet to see anyone wearing a suit and tie, except when I passed a window and saw a reflection of yours truly. Between Patagonia fleece vests donned by Wall Street hustlers and the schlubby hoodies of Silicon Valley wannabes, the city is slob heaven, its innocence, spontaneity, and ...

Targeting Trump

Back in the good old days when the Brits ruled the roost in the American colonies, the sneaky Brits used a system of their own to lord it over those who looked like them, spoke like them, and worshipped the same God as them, but called themselves American rather than British. It was very simple, really. The bad old Brits recalled an old British law passed by those whose knowledge of democracy was equal to mine of homosexuality, ...

Jared Kushner

The Cruelest Comment

He has the appearance of a startled vulture, a sort of prefab mannerism, but he’s all greed and preening self-importance. Selfishness is his holy grail, and he’s a lying, self-serving opportunist who knows whose ring to kiss at all times. This malodorous cesspit used his son-in-law position to get $2 billion off the Saudis and save his bankrupt business. He is Jared Kushner, the man who last week made a remark so jarring in ...

Poking the Russian Bear

I’ve never had much use for diplomats, nor did my father, who called them gigolos and freeloaders living high on the hog off taxpayers like him. “Except for George Kennan,” I used to tell him, and Dad would reluctantly agree. For any of you young whippersnappers unfamiliar with George Kennan, he was the author of America’s Cold War policy of “containment,” in which the U.S. would try to constrain the expansion of ...

Lord Byron by Richard Westall

A Love Letter to Love Letters

Of all the lovely things and habits that Big Tech has deprived humans of by turning us into electronic robots, the one I miss the most is the love letter. Those sleepy types who go by the name of millennials have declared letter writing over, with the great majority of them ages 18 to 35 proudly admitting in a recent poll that they have never written an epistle, let alone a love letter. So, what else is new? All one needs to ...

The Hollywood Hoax

I recently watched a Swedish movie, 1939, as good a film as I’ve seen in years, with a beautiful young blonde as the heroine, and with none of those boring Bergman silences that trademarked his movies. Alas, nowadays the moronic youth that watches movies prefers the visible to exceed reality, ergo endless science fiction and horror fantasies. It all has to do with the moneymen. As a Hollywood-based friend once described a ...

The Dictatorship of the Minority

“She” strangles a cat, then dissects it and shreds what is left. “She” then hits a man with a bottle, strangles him, and finally drowns him. “She” calls herself Scarlet Blake, and the British papers and media feel obliged to refer to this muscular and terrifying individual as a woman. But this monster of a human is as male as there is, and only the female writer J.K. Rowling has the guts to point this out. J.K. has ...

Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra, From Here to Eternity

Me and Mr. Jones

The late ’60s and early ’70s were great years for yours truly. Sporting successes in tennis and karate, a great president in the White House, and some good reporting from Hue for National Review’s William Buckley had given me a career boost. That’s when Bill, a very good friend, decided Paris would be a safer place for an eager young Taki to make his name. There was another reason Bill picked the City of Light as my ...

Donald Tusk

Taki’s State of the Union

Things ain’t looking that good. Nothing seems to be working in the so-called free world: rubbish in the streets, vandalism and violent crime, illegal immigration at record levels, no-go areas in towns and cities; is this why we pay taxes and call ourselves free? Mass shootings have become a way of life in America, illegal underage migrants are turning New York and Chicago into war zones, and Joe Biden is given a pass by an ...

John O'Hara

Men of Letters

I’m back scribbling about writing again because penmanship is like cocaine—once you start it’s difficult to stop. Disaffection is my customary response to contemporary writers and literature—long-winded me-me-me balderdash—and I won’t go near hysterical American female screeches who pass for writing from know-nothings at The New York Times. So, everyone I mention in this column is, alas, dead, but their writing ...

W. Somerset Maugham

Trio of Titans

If it weren’t for Papa Hemingway’s machismo, or Scott Fitzgerald’s lovely prose, Somerset Maugham would have been my favorite writer. And one of the things I most regret is having refused an invitation for lunch at La Mauresque, the great man’s Cap Ferrat Riviera villa, a few years before his death. The invitation had come through an old “queen” by the name of Eric Nielsen, who had been making passes at the poor ...

Slaves to History

I read somewhere that Saint Kitts and Nevis, thriving democracies somewhere south of Miami Beach, are demanding reparations from the Brits because the bad old English owned slaves back at the time when owning black people was rather chic. What surprised me is that I haven’t seen any claims from descendants of slaves against African owners—who thrived in the vile economy that slavery produced—nor against any Arab states ...


Columnists

Sign Up to Receive Our Latest Updates!