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Looking
north along the Hudson River Promenade.
Photo: JH.
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Tuesday. The weatherman (in the Times) said it would be hot and sunny
and then in the afternoon there would be warm breezes that
would bring in the clouds and the thunderstorms. We got everything
but the thunderstorms.
Diplomatic Impunity; Love and War on the Same Page. I went to
lunch at Michael’s with an old friend from California who now lives
in London. She predicted that Blair would not remain in power much
longer. Her prediction has about as much validity as anyone else’s
and is therefore meaningless, although good for conversation.
Two tables over was Richard Holbrooke, the former Assistant Secretary
of State of European and Canadian Affairs under Clinton. As well
as former US Ambassador to the UN. A few tables beyond, against
the wall, lunching with Alice Mayhew, the great Simon & Schuster
editor whose authors have included Jimmy Carter, Walter
Isaacson, John Dean, Stephen Ambrose, Doris Kearns Goodwin, was … a
familiar face … a youngish looking man, sort of professorial,
damned familiar, but who? Thatchy salt and pepper hair … a
magazine editor? No … who … An author? Well, he was
with Alice Mayhew. Looked like that guy I’d seen in the papers
who was our man in Iraq up until the end of June – Paul
Bremer.
After their lunch was finished, the two got up and walked by our
table on their way to the door where the guy was met by three officious
looking guys with wires to their ears and bulges in their jackets
and/or pants packing arms. Secret Service. It was Paul Bremer.
Someone at the table next to me asked Ms. Mayhew “what he
was like,” this sort of tweedy looking Mr. Bremer. “Very
smart,” was the reply I heard, eavesdropping.
At another table: Nan Talese with columnist Richard
Cohen. And
at another Randy Paar with Court TV’s Henry
Schlieff. And
another: Brooke Hayward and Peter Duchin with Alex
Hitz.
I was telling my lunch guest about being up till all hours the
night before reading W.G. Sebald’s On the Natural
History of Destruction about the Allied bombing of Germany.
You can click here to read an account from this history but do
so only if you have a strong stomach. The author makes the point
that the destruction of German cities was beyond measure in terms
of human and animal suffering and death, as well as the devastation
of the architectural landscape. Yet the German people bore the
brunt of it, the brunt of the vengeance wreaked on them by the
enemies their leaders created. They bore the brunt partly by never
discussing it, never writing about it for decades after. No German
writers went near it. Those writers who did never published their
works about it until decades later. The survivors literally looked
the other way, even when cleaning up the devastation, like automatons
going through the mechanical (and eventually successful) motions
of starting all over again.
Man’s inhumanity to man. Yes, Hitler started it and plundered
to the point where he got and they got what was coming. And everyone
paid. First the Germans, and then everyone else. Everyone. And
we’re still paying.
So, that was lunch. A million laughs, did you say? Which reminds
me, yesterday someone was telling me about the fancy yard sale
the Hiltons had at their Southampton house last week under the
watchful eyes of the television cameras taping the Hiltons’ upcoming “reality” show.
How’s that for changing the channel? What is reality, did
you ask?
Billed as Kathy Hilton’s Pink
Ribbon Estate Sale, my spies told me they took in $45,000 for Memorial-Sloan
Kettering Cancer
Center. Kathy cleaned out the closets of their big house on Fordune
(on the land that used to be part of the Henry Ford II estate).
Reporters had to sign non-disclosure agreements with NBC, prohibiting
them from revealing who was there, taking any pictures, revealing
the address. Yawn ....
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Paris
Hilton wearing the tiara at her 21st birthday
party
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I wasn’t
there, so I guess I can disclose anything I want. Zzzzzz .... There was a “tiara” said to have been
worn by Paris on her 21st birthday but one of the four spikes was
missing. Twenty bucks, it went for. Too bad they didn’t sell
the dress she was wearing that same night, what there was of it.
That cudda brought some big bucks. There were handbags said to
be Hermes, etc., although no guarantees in that department. It
was a yard sale, kids. A lawn sale. A garage sale. You takes what
you get at these things, the world over. And from that NBC got
some footage of the reality of the High Life of the Hilton family
which you’ll see next November if you’re interested.
And don’t worry, someone will be interested. Or to quote
the late Andy Warhol, author of the Universal Fifteen Minutes of
Fame: “The business of art is business."
Meanwhile, while we’re on the subject, I didn’t see
anything in the papers here but it was all over the news in London:
There are now 24 million people taking Prozac over there, and because
of it, environmentalists have discovered the inevitable – it’s
got into the drinking water, specifically that water which has
going through the treatment and filtration systems. Watered-down,
of course, but nonetheless, prescription or no, you too can be
on Prozac just from drinking … the water. Fiji or Evian anybody? |
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