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 ...

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 ...

The massacre in Gaza has shoved the Ukraine war aside, which is just as well for Zelensky, who canceled the election he was about to lose and has outlawed rival political parties for the duration. I recently watched an interview the ex-comedian gave, and I must admit he comes through as a charming, ...

The magical embroidery of memory is not involved in this one: I remember it as if it were yesterday, despite something like sixty years having gone by. I had had dinner at El Morocco, the best dinner-nightclub that has ever been, back when New York still spoke English. I had drunk Chateau Mouton ...

Okay, sport fans, according to Joe Biden the Donald is the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, so if you value your freedoms, do not vote for Trump or you’ll be seeing storm troopers marching down Fifth Avenue. Biden gets his ideas from The New York Times, the paper that prints only news that fits its ...

The word “democracy” comes from the Greek, but when the system was first used, it was a selective one, with men of means being the only ones eligible to vote. It has come a long way since, with American lefty busybodies trying to give the vote even to illegal migrants who have more or less ...

Happy 2024 to all you readers, although according to The New York Times it will be under a dictatorial regime if Trump becomes president again. So what is one to think or do? Americans have never tolerated autocratic government, despite Woodrow Wilson’s efforts to jail anyone opposed to Uncle Sam ...

Living as we are under the collective inferiority of the West, and humbled as we are when faced with the cultural achievements of tribal Africans, primitive Amazonian tribesmen, Saudi Arabian witch doctors, and savages in general, I was relieved to see that Hollywood is hard at work in maintaining ...

My, my, how the years pass by. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve written a Christmas piece for Takimag, but the years have passed in an eye blink. Recently I asked myself, why do bad things happen to good people? (Well, not very good people, but well-intentioned.) This question has occupied ...

I find it deliciously ironic and very satisfying. We suddenly have free speech at American universities, at least while Jewish billionaires are threatening to stop the moola. The presidents of top universities have cried uncle and have pledged that free speech will be for them what money was to ...