Bill the Bribed; Claus Von Bulow in London; Anna, Tina, Shelby, Harry and I; New World Ordure
Claus Von Bulow | [Taki](#taki) | [Toby Young](#young) | [George Szamuely](#szamuely)
Wilde Kingdom
The only event to compete with the incessant millennium hoopla of the last 12 years has been the centenary of the death of Oscar Wilde. This has been celebrated by all lovers of wit and of literature, and by everyone who rightly believes in freedom from persecution. But it has almost been too much, and therefore counterproductive. The seasonal cry of "Good Will to All Men" was never meant by Oscar to be taken literally.
The Barbican Gallery mounted an excellent exhibition of artists who were contemporaries of Wilde?Gustave Moreau's evocation of Salome, portraits by Sargent, Boldini and Jacques-Emile Blanche, Helleu's Proust and Robert de Montesquiou, the effete Aubrey Beardsley and the wonderful caricaturist Max Beerbohm. There was a play purporting to disclose the secret life of Constance Wilde, but it was just a rehash of her husband's trial and exile. The publishers jumped on the bandwagon: first, 1270 pages of The Complete Letters of Oscar Wilde, followed by Bosie: A Biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, Wilde's disastrous lover (a mere 480 pages), and finally another 400 pages of Truly Wilde: The Unsettling Story of Dolly Wilde, the niece who was converted to sapphism by that great Parisian-American dyke, the late Natalie Barney.
I am as tolerant of minorities as my friend Taki. But the saddest aspect of the centenary of the greatest wit Britain ever sent to lecture Americans is that no one has quoted any good jokes. So I'll give you one. Winston Churchill, on observing a fellow member of Parliament with whose Socialist views he disagreed, opined, "There goes the man who gave sodomy a bad name."
William Blake has been commemorated by a truly wonderful exhibition at the Tate Gallery and by the publication not only of a splendid catalog, but also reasonably priced facsimile reprints of Blake's illustrated books of poems, and of his editions of Dante and Milton. My companion, who, quite rightly, thinks that I am not only old but old-fashioned, prevailed upon me to continue our visit into those rooms at the Tate where this year's short-listed candidates for the prestigious Turner Prize were on show. Wolfgang Tillmans' work was a photograph of a male anus entitled Wanna Party in My Hole? It failed to inspire me. I don't get quite as hectic about such things as Sen. Jesse Helms, but I wonder whether some museum directors may not have gone mad. The sadly just-deceased Auberon Waugh's brilliant Literary Review every year sponsors the "Bad (in the sense of gratuitous) Sex Prize." Why not give the director of the Tate a well-deserved Emetic Prize?
One purpose of all art is to shock. Great old masters like Hieronymus Bosch, Breughel and Goya did that. The recent exhibition at the Royal Academy is rightly named "Apocalypse, Beauty and Horror in Contemporary Art." The Hayward Gallery this month showed "Spectacular Bodies, the Art and Science of the Human Body from Leonardo to Now." Fascinating, but not for the fainthearted.
After all this, it was a relief to leave rainy London for two great shows in Paris. At the Louvre there is an exhibition of the influence of Classical art through history; at the Grand Palais a feast of sunshine in a show of the Mediterranean as seen by artists. Total joy, especially as that particular ocean is no longer quite as idyllic as I remember it, and as artists have depicted it.
I may as well let all my prejudices show. There have been recent revivals in London of Shakespeare's Tempest and Romeo and Juliet, and of Ibsen's A Doll's House and his great verse saga, Peer Gynt. They all have laudable intentions and prove it by having cast black actors in the lead roles. In the case of Romeo this makes splendid sense, as it explains why those racist Montagues and Capulets didn't invite one another for dinner. I also think that it is imperative that schools, and certainly the government-subsidized theaters, should encourage immigrant minorities to participate fully in a host country's culture and literature.
But I hate directors and actors, of whatever color, who will allow great poetry or prose to be spoken inaudibly. In a few weeks I shall be seeing a Hamlet in Paris. It will be a black Prince of Denmark, but since the director is Peter Brook, the greatest director of my lifetime, I am sure that I shall be able to hear every word.
One terrific show was the celebration of my late friend John Aspinall's life, which was splendidly audible as it included a tribute to John by leopard-skin-draped Zulu dancers. I am sure that the scores of great animals from threatened species that owed their lives to John?gorillas, tigers, rhinos and African elephants?would also have bellowed their paeans of praise of their benefactor. John saw himself, as did his close friend, the late Sir James Goldsmith, as a Nietzschean Superman. He was certainly one of the most colorful and courageous of performers on the stage of life. His love of great beasts and his career as a gambler made him a ferocious Darwinian. He also gave his friends one of the greatest gifts: the gift of laughter. Till Eulenspiegel was another role model.
If anyone believes there was no hanky-panky when Bill Clinton pardoned the fugitive fraudsters Marc Rich and Pincus Green on his last morning in office, then the world is flat, the moon is made of cheese, and I am Janet Reno's mother. Make no mistake about it. Marc Rich, like Clinton, is an unusually corrupt individual.
Born in Belgium, probably the most corrupt country in Europe (government officials were caught in a pedophile ring some years ago, and it was completely hushed up and swept under the carpet), he bribed his way to safety in Switzerland, and has continued to bribe all and sundry. In fact, he has even managed to bribe people who do not take bribes, and are not in need of his ill-gotten funds. These are St-Moritz socialites, German and Austrian aristocrats, Greek shipping tycoons and Swiss industrialists. Rich is a Uriah Heep extraordinaire, flattering and showering his social superiors with gifts, throwing extravagant parties with only one purpose in mind: to whitewash his reputation as a crook and fugitive from justice. Thanks to the most corrupt man ever to live in the White House, Marc Rich has succeeded in his quest for legitimacy.
Rich and Green have never paid a fine, have never spent a day in jail, and have never reimbursed U.S. taxpayers. More than 50 counts of wire fraud, racketeering, massive income tax evasion and trading oil with an enemy during a U.S. embargo all fly out the window while Rich and Green laugh their way to the bank. And here's the rub. There is no way, at least in my mind, that these two crooks will not kick back lots and lots moolah to the Clintons in the near and not-so-near future. The way I see it, the Bonnie and Clyde of American politics did not wish to remain in the debt of four-flushers like David Geffen and his Hollywood ilk; why not take the deal from Marc Rich and ride off into the sunset set for life?
Rich has given more than $200 million to charitable causes, many of them in Israel, since he went into exile. Gee whiz, that sure makes him a hell of a fellow. If I had stolen as much, I'd probably have given more. The trouble is that Rich's crimes were committed against American citizens, not Israelis. As MUGGER wrote last week, Marc and Denise Rich might be divorced, but it doesn't take Hercule Poirot to connect the dots. Theirs is a business relationship a la the Clintons, and this Greek boy knows a stacked deck when he sees one. Just imagine if Ronald Reagan had pardoned Robert Vesco, whose wife had oiled the Republican machine throughout. Would the Humbug Times have buried the story as it did with Marc the criminal? A little birdie tells me not bloody likely.
Denise Rich was caught telling a whopper when she claimed that the pardon surprised her. This is on a par with "I never had sex with that woman," yet the painted old bag is holding her head up high while the rest of us are holding our noses. See what I mean about the Clintons having lowered the bar? Once upon a time a lie meant instant social leprosy. Now it's a badge of honor. Clinton accepted illegal Riady millions and in return America's Asian policies were changed. Does anyone in their right mind doubt that Clinton accepted dirty Rich money in return for a pardon? If one is willing to sell out one's country, there should not be a problem selling out to a crook.
A criminal conspiracy took place shortly after the 1992 nomination when Riady?well known by Clinton to be a foreign national?pledged a million dollars for the Draft Dodger's campaign. Most of the money was delivered through illegal fronts. Riady's front man, John Huang, was given a sensitive post at the Commerce Department. By 1996, Huang was switched to the Democratic National Committee, to be able to milk the Asian moneybags for more funds. Despite all the criminal activity, both Clinton and Gore got away with it. Smaller fry got their hands slapped and everyone went home happy.
Now, I ask you: Does this remind you of the way Mexican governments used to do business? Or Colombian ones? In future, why shouldn't a drug trafficker use his billions for a pardon? Or, say, any American gangster? In England, under probably the first truly corrupt government of modern times, a minister, Peter Mandelson, was fired by his mentor Tony Blair when it was revealed that Mandelson had telephoned the passport department in order to help an Indian billionaire acquire British citizenship, after the Indian had pledged one million pounds for the ill-starred Dome. He was fired for lying not to the House, not to an investigative attorney, not even to the press. He lied to Tony Blair's spokesman, who in due course misled the press.
Clinton lied under oath in a court of law and got away with it. The whole Clinton eight years of government was about one thing and one thing only. Money. Once upon a time Americans could look at Europe, where political corruption is endemic, and hold their heads high. No longer. France, Italy, even Greece would not accept Marc Rich. Switzerland did because he bribed, and because Switzerland does not extradite people accused of tax evasion. Thanks to Clinton, rich criminals the world over can sleep easier. After all, Bush is only in for four years, or so the pundits tell us, and then the good times will roll once again.
The press had a field day over here following the publication of Talk's hatchet job on Shelby Bryan. The fact that the Texan businessman is Anna Wintour's paramour and Talk is edited by Tina Brown meant the story had an irresistible Battle of the Magazine Divas dimension. Having spent their youth salivating over the gypsy catfight in From Russia with Love, British hacks love nothing more than a good brawl between two women. It's the Fleet Street equivalent of mud wrestling.
However, we're unlikely to read any more about it following Shelby Bryan's hiring of British libel lawyer David Price. Two weeks ago Price dispatched a letter to The Daily Telegraph taking issue with a piece that had appeared a few days earlier, and threatening the paper with a libel suit. It was boilerplate stuff, the British equivalent of a cease-and-desist letter, but it was taken seriously enough by The Telegraph's lawyers to get them to remove the offending article from the paper's website and instruct the New York correspondent to find out just how solid the original piece in Talk was. For the time being, the Telegraph is considering its position.
Shelby isn't the first New Yorker to threaten a British publication with a libel suit for regurgitating a story that's already appeared in the States. In 1998 Harold Evans threatened to sue The Spectator after it ran an article suggesting his departure from Random House wasn't completely voluntary. The article contained very little that hadn't already appeared in the American press, but that didn't stop Evans from demanding that The Spectator print an apology, pay all his legal expenses to date and give a sum of money to his favorite charity. The reason I know all this is because the author of the offending article was me.
The libel laws in Britain are much tougher than they are in America. In both countries, a defendant in a libel case has to prove that the material in question wasn't made public with malicious intent, but in the U.S.,. the burden of proof falls on the plaintiff; in Britain it falls on the defendant. In the States, the onus is on the plaintiff to show that the defendant knowingly published false material, whereas in Britain the onus is on the defendant to show that the material was true.
Admittedly, an American bringing a libel suit against a British publication is in a slightly tricky position because the UK libel laws are contrary to the First Amendment. When Harold Evans threatened to sue The Spectator, for instance, I was able to make the argument that either he believed in the First Amendment, in which case why was he trying to take advantage of Britain's libel laws, or else he didn't, in which case how could he justify being the editorial director of the New York Daily News, an office he held at the time? Harry's position was particularly untenable because he was threatening to come after me personally unless I gave a written undertaking never to write about him or Tina Brown ever again. Even the Church of Scientology would think twice before stooping to those tactics.
In the end, we called Harry's bluff and he threw in his cards. Legally he had a strong case, because to prove an absence of malice I would have had to persuade several prominent figures in the New York publishing world to fly to the UK and testify on my behalf. They were the sources for the articles I'd regurgitated suggesting Harry had been pushed out of Random House. They might have been prepared to do this?some of them, anyway?but it wasn't a foregone conclusion. All in all, we would have had a tough battle on our hands.
The reason Harry folded was because the press attention his behavior attracted was so unfavorable. In any libel case the plaintiff is always in danger of looking vain and self-important simply by going to such monumental lengths to restore his or her good name. My job was to persuade Harry that this would surely be the case if he pressed his claim. For almost a month, my flat in the West Village became the headquarters of a publicity campaign in which I tried to portray Harry as an evil press baron bent on silencing his most vociferous critic.
The campaign wasn't wholly successful. As the former editor of the Sunday Times, not to mention the ex-president of Random House, Harry knows a thing or two about spin. In one interview after another he branded me a "journalistic stalker," attempting to cast himself as the victim and me as a kind of obsessed loner. In the end, though, he couldn't quite make this stick. The balance of the coverage was favorable to me. The David-and-Goliath angle?or, as The Evening Standard put it, "the liberal prince and the pesky gadfly"?was too good to ignore.
I don't suppose the Telegraph will risk calling Shelby Bryan's bluff. British newspapers generally don't defend libel suits unless they have a lot invested in the story in question, because the cost of doing so can run into millions of pounds. Cases of this nature are usually settled when the newspaper agrees to publish an apology and pay the plaintiff's costs. However, Bryan reputedly did make one very silly mistake. According to the New York Post's "Page Six," he may have scrawled "Conrad Black is a friend of mine" on the letter, Black being the proprietor of the Telegraph. That might just provoke the Canadian press baron into a fight.
Imagine our reaction if one of Dubya's advisers were arrested in Moscow en route to attend President Putin's inauguration. The media would be churning out lurid tales of Russian depredations with even greater frenzy than they do already. Imagine, furthermore, that the man was being held without bail, on the basis of an arrest warrant issued in Switzerland referring to crimes allegedly committed in the United States. The White House would announce the resumption of the Cold War and a tripling of the Pentagon budget. We, on the other hand, expect the Russians to keep their mouths shut and endure every indignity we heap on them.
Pavel Borodin was arrested at JFK Airport on his way to George W. Bush's inauguration. He was a guest of Vincent Zenga, a Florida telecommunications executive who had contributed hefty sums to the Republican Party. Borodin is accused of accepting bribes from two Swiss companies in return for awarding them contracts to renovate the Kremlin. One would have thought the Swiss had other things to worry about than kickbacks in Moscow. Doubtless companies in Moscow pay off whoever needs to be paid off to win contracts. In the United States this strange practice is known as campaign contributions.
The Russians recently dropped the investigation, claiming there was no evidence of corruption. So why this unusual Swiss zeal to get to the bottom of nefarious dealings?
Borodin happens to be Secretary of the Belarussian-Russian Union, the organization in charge of planning the merger of Belarus and Russia. Clinton Administration officials denounced Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko with hysteria bordering on the Milosevic level. His sin cannot be that he is no democrat. U.S. officials have nothing but nice things to say about the assorted dictators of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Their Communist pedigrees are more than outweighed by their eagerness to cooperate with NATO as well as U.S. oil giants building pipelines. "Public opinion" only matters when it comes to Belarus?a country that has resolutely refused to swallow its bitter dose of IMF medicine. No one seriously doubts that the Belarussians want nothing more than to be part of Russia. The United States declared that it would never accept such a merger. Americans know what Belarussians want better than they do themselves.
It is hard to believe the Clinton Administration did not orchestrate Borodin's arrest. As Borodin's attorney, Alexander Fishkin, put it: "The arrest warrant is issued on Jan. 10, he receives an invitation to the inauguration on Jan. 13 and a complaint is filed in New York for his arrest on Jan. 17? It could be a coincidence, yes, but it looks too strange to be a coincidence." The U.S. government does not usually move so swiftly just to keep the Swiss happy. Moreover, Bush must have been in on the scheme as well, since the trap made use of a Republican contributor.
This bipartisan U.S. contempt for international norms and constitutional procedures was also on display in the Philippines. A democratically elected leader was overthrown by a military in alliance with a street mob, to secure the interests of business elites, both local and international. Philippines President Joseph Estrada enjoyed considerable popular support. He won the 1998 election with the largest vote total in Philippine history. As an article in the International Herald Tribune put it: "Right up until the overthrow, the polls showed that the majority of Filipinos opposed Mr. Estrada's impeachment trial for corruption and abuse of power." Congress impeached Estrada and the Senate tried him. By a narrow majority, the senators voted to bar Estrada's bank records from being used at the trial. We are hardly unfamiliar with such maneuvering. During the Clinton impeachment drama the President's Democratic supporters tried all manner of things to bring the proceedings to an end.
The military overturned an election result and handed the Presidency to Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo?a bitter political rival of Estrada's. Business leaders and foreign investors are well-satisfied. Mrs. Arroyo is a leading member of the country's elite. Her father had once been President. She was a classmate of Bill Clinton's at Georgetown. "Financial markets rejoiced," according to an AFP story. "Cheers and clapping erupted after the opening bell sounded at the Philippine Stock Exchange trading floor in the Makati financial district?a bastion of the anti-Estrada movement?and buying began in earnest." The United States government, which foams at the mouth about Lukashenko, announced its delight that the crisis in Manila was settled "in accordance with democratic and constitutional procedures."
The coup took place in the waning days of the Clinton era. Yet Bush telephoned Arroyo to congratulate her. She invited him to come to Manila later this year. He said it was a "very good idea." No pressure on her evidently to hold an early election. The IMF, needless to say, also extended its congratulations to Mrs. Arroyo.
We do not as yet know who was behind the murder of Laurent Kabila. The New York Times story announcing his death opened like this: "President Laurent Kabila of Congo, who deposed one of Africa's great dictators but then brought his country into even worse disarray, was shot and killed today." Kabila never deposed anyone. He was hoisted into power by invading armies from Rwanda and Uganda, both of which were heavily supported and financed by the United States. Clinton had hailed Ugandan leader Yoweri Museveni and Rwanda's Paul Kagame as a new generation of African leaders. What he meant was that they claimed to believe the free market-free trade pap peddled by Washington and the IMF. The Clinton administration thought Kabila would join the merry band. He didn't. He wanted the Ugandans and Rwandans to leave Congo. They had no intention of doing so, preferring to plunder diamond mines and massacring the locals. With U.S. encouragement they set out to topple Kabila. Thus the "even worse disarray" referred to by the Times. It is the New World Order. Those who don't play by its rules end up in prison, overthrown or dead.