2017: A lousy year so far...
the issue enough that the hapless Theresa is upping the ante for Britain to become independent again. Not so yippee! The Donald isn’t making my life any easier either. Not on account of his tweets — the jihadis do it non-stop, so why shouldn’t he? The reason I’m starting to doubt his sanity is that he’s climbed in bed with the Saudis, which is like investing all one’s moolah with Madoff on December 9, 2008. No one benefits from a deal with the Saudis. My experience with the Saudis is that they never pay their debts, cheat on contracts and agreements, and tell lies that make Baron Munchausen sound like Enoch Powell.
The mini-Napoleon had a fool like Thomas L. Friedman of the New York Times in for a chat, fed him some lamb, and Friedman began gushing like a Texas oil well. What they didn’t talk about were those thousands of Yemeni children with swollen bellies who are being starved to death by the Saudi blockade, and the fact that the heroic Saudi pilots, led by American navigators and forward air controllers, have managed to bomb hospitals and schools, and even marriages and funerals.
When the mini-Napoleon arrested Al-Waleed bin Talal, a man reputed to have 20 or so billion smackers, he asked him where the loot came from. The same place the $500 million that you overpaid the Russian oligarch for his boat last summer came from, should have been the answer. Mind you, between you, me and the camels, all the greedy ones from the West, people who used to hang out in Tripoli trying to do business with Gaddafi, are now hanging out in Riyadh.
The Saudi Caesar was assured by the Donald that if the Saudis played nice with the Israelis, the latter would do to the mullahs in Iran what they more often than not do to the Palestinians every week or so. The Israelis, however, have been accused of many things, many of them true. But stupidity is not one of them. And Iran is no push-over. Israel’s nukes will never be used except in dire circumstances when the nation is about to go under.
But enough of camels; let’s have some real news for a change. Last week Jay-Z, a billionaire rapper, music entrepreneur and ex-crack cocaine dealer, admitted cheating on his wife Beyoncé, a singer. (So that would explain why, three years ago, her sister kicked him in the shins, rather hard. Michael Mailer and I had been in the elevator where it happened a few moments before history was made.)
How did I get this world exclusive? Easy. The editorin-chief of the NYT, Dean Baquet, got an exclusive interview with Jay-Z, published it, and I bought the paper and read it. That’s how great scoops are achieved. The top banana of the Times waits patiently to interview one of our greatest men ever, and then the poor little Greek boy reads it while riding on the subway.
So, 2017 is drawing to a close and I am very busy organising my “goodbye to New York” Christmas party. One of last year’s guests, Harvey Weinstein, will not be attending, and in a way I feel cowardly for not inviting him. But then we have about 40 young women coming and if he were to show up we’d end up being 40 men and no women, so there you have it. By arrangement with the
Spectator