High life
Mind your manners
Taki
some of you may have heard, the Big Bagel is going through a period of grace. Civility is in, crass expletives, bluster and intimidation are out, out, out. Mayor Giuliani — no friend of 'High life' — is taking most of the credit, a credit which I reluctantly agree he deserves. Even better, crime is down, the Bagel being the benefi- ciary of a clear national downward trend.
It wasn't so long ago that the old joke `Pardon me, sir, can you tell me the way to Times Square, or shall I just go and f— myself?' was the city's ethic. People were mugged in broad daylight, municipal poli- cies were decided by the ability of one eth- nic group to outshout the other, accusations of racism against officials earned the accuser a place at the decision- making table, and rabble-rousers staged riots at the drop of a yarmulke.
No longer. Rudi has done a good job by refusing to be intimidated by the bull- horns. The last two Bagel mayors were dis- asters. Ed Koch was a primadonna, more concerned with headlines and appearing on television than running a city smouldering with race problems. David Dinkins, the first black mayor, and a very civil man in private, was even worse. He did little but play tennis, and was responsible for one of the worst riots in Bagel history when he sat back and watched while blacks and Ortho- dox Jews went at each other in Crown Heights.
Rudi wants all Noo Yawkers to be civil to each other, because, as everyone knows, when manners disappear society disinte- grates. This is easier said than done. First of all, there are no more ladies and gentle- men in America, only men and women. The 'aristocracy of everyone', however, simply doesn't work. Quality of life cannot be codified and legislated, as the mayor seems to believe. It certainly cannot be enforced. People learn to act in a civilised manner by aping their superiors.
Needless to say, superiors nowadays are a no-no. There is superior money, c'est tout. Mind you, the city was created to make money. When Rudi cited Plato's concept of reaching for the ideal, the greedy ones reached for higher end-of-year bonuses, and to hell with that dumb-dead Greek.
Be that as it may, New York remains a mosaic ready to explode. What is amazing is how long the truce has held. Like every major city in America, New York needs a mayor who can speak to ethnics and whites alike. Ever since the grotesque Sixties, white blue-collars have been treated with contempt by liberal politicians. Giuliani has been fair to both black and white although he got only 4 per cent of the black vote the first time around. The same applies for the Latinos. (Incidentally, I have apologised to my Puerto Rican friends about last year's column, meant as a joke, and all of them have accepted it with good grace.) The greatest danger to the quality of the city's life is not the drugs, nor the rapes, which, alas, are very much on the rise. It is the race-hustling hoodlums with bull-horns who incite race hatred and intimidate City Hall. As long as Giuliani keeps them in check and backs his police force, everything will remain hunky-dory, even if the words please and thank-you are still as alien to the new, improved Bagelites as the truth is to the Draft Dodger.
And speaking of hatred, I wish to express my pride in being a friend and colleague of Paul Johnson. His column in last week's Spectator was a tour de force. Leave it to Paul to go after the purveyors of hatred and malice, those evil men (and some women) who have wrecked innocent lives and continue to do so while gloating about it.
Johnson is a very brave man. He is taking on vicious people far richer than himself who resort to lies and character assassina- tion. My father-in-law, Prince Schoenburg, a quiet, dignified and extremely decent man, told me only last week how shocked he was reading the Guardian. 'It was once a good paper,' he said, 'now it's malicious trash. How could this happen in England?'
How, indeed. What I would like to see is the Home Secretary or the Prime Minister himself order some security surveillance while Paul is writing his black book on the scum. If he manages to expose the cancer that has plagued Britain these past 15 years — and I'm certain he will — he deserves our gratitude for life. What I would like to do is give a ball celebrating the publication of the book, but I will wait for the sage's approval first. In the meantime, let all fair- minded people pray for Paul Johnson.
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