I remember when I was living in Flambertin des Creppieres, a small hamlet west of Paris with an admittedly extremely pretentious name, and listening to two butchers arguing about Camus. They both had obviously read him, but it was their evocation of other writers whom they compared him to which left me breathless. After they finished their wine they shook hands and went back to slicing up chickens and lambs. Just like back in old Miami, n’est pas?

Imus is an unpleasant fellow—one could never take him to a gentleman’s club, for example—but he didn’t say anything black radio jockeys don’t say every day about us whites. And it was meant, after all, to be a joke. Ethnic jokes have all but disappeared from the mass media due to censorship. The prevalence in a given society of jokes about a particular ethnic group is not a good indicator of feeling toward that group. In fact, sometimes it’s the contrary.

Fictitious enterprises are the heart and soul of low journalism, and no one is lower in my opinion than Lloyd Grove. Just that week I had launched The American Conservative magazine, so Grove needed to put a kibosh to it with an anti-Semitic slur against me. I vowed to kick him in the ass the next time I ran into him, although I had no recollection what he looked like.

The seizure of the British Royal Marines and sailors by Iran was always a no brainer. To Iran, Tony Blair is a lame duck, and the British people believe in their government as much as the Americans believed that Bill Clinton did not have sex with that woman. Few Brits accepted their Government’s story that their boats were in Iraqi waters.

In this week’s New Yorker Philip Gourevitch takes a shot at Robert Mugabe, one of the leading psychopathic monsters among the rest of the crooks and murderers who lead the Dark Continent. He writes that the South African honcho, Thabo Mbeki and his gang have dishonored themselves by failing to stand up to an oppressor (Mugabe) who is as contemptuous of his people as Ian Smith was. What utter crap. Ian Smith, a wonderful man…

Last week I spent some days in Washington, D.C. for a conference organized by Fran Griffin at the National Press Club. The subject was Sam Francis, and his terrific book, Shots Fired, about America’s culture wars. Alas, Sam Francis passed away two years ago.

Back in the old country we’ve been making jokes about the Persians since 480 B.C. But we also like them because they made heroes out of us Greeks. We only lost once to them, in Thermopylae in 480 B.C., but they were 400,000 of them and 300 of us.

Dodi was not sleeping with Diana, hence if she were pregnant at the time of her death, it would have been a far greater story than it was. It would have been the second Immaculate Conception.

The neocons have their own axe to grind — make the Middle East safe for Greater Israel — but the West does not necessarily follow an Eretz Israel agenda. Or should not, in any case. It is strange that people like Bush and Blair have not caught on all these years. The more we mix up in their business, the more the people of the Middle East will hate us. All the more so if that involvement in their lives requires the use of tanks, American-made cluster bombs and American soldiers. No sooner had we forced the Palestinians to vote then they voted in Hamas. And we stopped all humanitarian aid because they democratically elected people we didn’t approve of. Some democracy, as Winny would have said.

Dripping with malice, envy and venom, hacks are having the time of their life as Conrad Black goes to trial in Chicago, a city known for its smiling wallet-lifters and corrupt public officials. Not since Fat Bob Maxwell took a dive into the Med back in 1991 have those holier than thou members of the Fourth Estate enjoyed themselves as much. The trouble is there’s quite a difference. Maxwell stole hundreds of millions….

Barack Obama sounds very exotic but he is an unknown quantity with a 100 percent liberal voting record, whose only claim to instant fame is his skin color. What the hell is going on here? Just because a part-black man has obvious charisma and is soft-spoken and decent, is it enough to make him president? Why not pick an even nicer guy like Colin Powell?

Back in the Fifties, Gstaad was a tiny alpine village without supermarkets nor boutiques. There were a few chairlifts and sledge trains—funicular railways—which crept up its gentle slopes. All in all there were about 2,000 beds, a few inns, three or four picturesque restaurants which served good but simple food, and the Palace hotel. The town was pure heaven.

No politician except for those wishing to retire immediately will risk the wrath of the Israel lobby.

Erich Maria Remarque was a hell of a man. Good looking, a terrific womanizer and a heavy drinker, he bedded most Hollywood stars he came into contact with, and he came into contact with many of them. He was Marlene Dietrich’s favorite beau, was married to Paulette Goddard, and had affairs with Greta Garbo (yes, she made an exception in his case) Dolores del Rio, Lupe Velez and Louise Rainer, to name but a few….

It was 1890, and the opera was Lucia di Lamermoor. The Donizetti masterpiece was conducted by a Bulgarian maestro and the opera house–recently opened–was filled by Greek society in the good seats, and by poor people, who had never heard an opera in their lives, who were more or less bribed off the street by fancy types to act as a rapt audience. Everything went fine, for a while….

Nixon was demonised by the press from day one. He was ill at ease in public, and did not possess the Kennedy blarney which so endeared that flawed Irish clan to the chattering classes. He was not cool, as my son would say, but so what? After all, is style superior to substance, especially where politics are concerned? Nixon inherited Vietnam, realised the war was unwinnable, got out with honour, and gained China… Now that’s what I call a statesman.

The real reason for American rage against Iran is the knowledge that the Shiites have made complete fools of them. Shiite exiles like the conman Ahmad Chalabi not only took Yankee gold, but sold them snake oil no five-year-old would buy. They then conned Uncle Sam in removing Iran’s most ferocious opponent in the region, making the mullahs the dominant power of the area.

Andy Warhol was a unique American phenomenon. When his infamous diaries came out – the first best-seller purposely without an index, so fame groupies could not read about themselves in the bookstore and then not buy the opus – I was surprised to find myself mentioned almost as many times as some minor celebrities. Warhol knew more about what was going on in nightclubs than we knew about ourselves because he didn’t drink or take drugs. He also did not look for sex.

Prizes and awards depend on whims of insiders, nothing more, nothing less. Certain themes are sacrosanct, such as disabilities. Hence Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot and Geoffrey Rush in Shine. The Academy also has intellectual pretensions. Shakespearian and Mozartian themes have won the biggest prize, as has a Shakespearian actor like John Gielgud in the ridiculous Arthur.

When an Italian finishes making love he looks at the mirror, flexes his muscles and tells himself, Magnifico! When a Frenchman is through, he tells the lady that she may have captured his body but not his soul. When an Englishman finally manages it he asks, “Was it good for you too, George?”

Poetry is in trouble. It is garbage being written by modernists—stuff that doesn’t rhyme and makes no sense but is considered art. Let’s stick to the past. Dante, the all time numero uno, Homer, Pushkin, Keats, Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, that’s what I call poetry. Instead of attacking Iraq, Bush should have started a war against modernism. Shoot all poets who don’t write in iambic pentameter.

The United States has no right to use nuclear weapons except in response to a nuclear attack. Nuking a nation that does not possess them, and has not attacked us, is in fact a war crime—the kind of crime for which we rightly hanged the Nazis at Nuremberg. (What a pity that we couldn’t have swung the Russians, too—and perhaps the Brits and Americans who ordered bombings like Dresden).

Courchevel, the French Riviera, even St Moritz have been Dresdened by the Russians, their obnoxious spending and lack of basic manners amounting to a grotesque deformity. Here in Gstaad we live in fear of the coming oligarch invasion…. Foreigners, with lotsa moolah, flashy cars, pulled women and incapable of yodelling.

Owning a boat, especially a sailing yacht, is like having a beautiful mistress with your wife’s approval. This is the good news. The bad is that a boat is even more expensive than a high class courtesan.

The Boston Globe praises Saudi Arabia and its rulers for its diplomatic finesse in brokering a cease-fire between Hamas and Fatah. This is the way it should be. When someone finally does something good, they should be praised. Up to a point, that is. For far too long the Saudi ruling kleptocracy—because that’s all it really is—has bought safety for itself by paying off regional thugs and relying on the American safety umbrella. Personally I cannot ever forget that the first thing the Bush administration did following 9/11 was to fly Saudi ruling family relations to safety. In other words, away from Texas or other parts north in continental United States, and back to the sandy haven which is Saudi Arabia.

Oh, to be in England! The once upon a time green and pleasant land is now Europe’s burglary capital, the most violent country in the old continent, Albania included. It’s gotten so bad that the paralyzed Blair government has reverted to television slogans such as: “Don’t moan, take action: it’s your street too.” Sure, and pigs may fly. In Britain’s mean streets taking action is taking your life in your hands. One wrong look and some ethnic minority—a protected species—will knife you quicker than you can say John Bull…