High life
So vain
Taki
New York When Al Capone was advised by his henchmen that the Feds were closing in, and that he should flee to Canada, he screamed: 'Canada, I don't even know what street that's on'. Well, I think I know where the place is only because of Margaret Trudeau, although I'm not so sure that Capone was wrong in choosing to go to the slammer rather than end his days north of the border.
Although I got an 'A' level in history while at Eton, I failed geography, and so had never heard of Canada until all those modern-day Spartans, the American draftevaders, went there, covering themselves with glory in the process. After the Vietnam war ended, and after the Plains peanut granted a general amnesty, Canada disappeared from the headlines until Margaret Trudeau decided about three years ago to sniff cocaine with the Rolling Stones, and write about how really boring her husband was, (as if everyone didn't know).
Now Canada is once again being talked about: a book of memoirs has been published by another Canadian, not as sexy as Trudeau's wife, but nevertheless as relentless a publicity seeker as she ever hoped to be. I am referring, of course, to the man who demands an end to hypocrisy in high places, the millionaire economist and bon vivant jet-setter, John Kenneth Galbraith. Not since Margaret Trudeau's true confessions about herself and Teddy Kennedy, or Bianca Jagger's opportunistic little outing to Nicaragua (dressed in a St Laurent nurse's uniform), have I come across such naked self-aggrandisement as that of the Ontario-born farmer turned economic guru whom the editor of The American Spectator, Emmett Tyrrell, describes as 'having an ability to instantly abblish truth in the service of the most highly ideologised absurdity'.
I first met Galbraith in Gstaad (where else do good socialists go?) in the company of William Buckley. Galbraith, like all second-rate people, does not look one in the eye, nor does he ever allow anyone else to voice an opinion. Although being six foot eight might have something to do with his furtive looks, his total disregard of others (the press always describe it as an Olympian manner) has nothing to do with the fact that he is a rather ugly and unpleasant man. Galbraith simply loves to hear only the sound of his voice and that's all. In Gstaad, where people like Buckley are as scarce as honest elections in Democratic Socialist Republics, Galbraith has a wonderful time listening to his own voice.1 have seen him during many an evening holding an audi ence spell-bound, and the fact that most of them don't speak English doesn't seem to bother the economist who has been proved wrong more times than Dai Llewellyn has sold his life story. It's the ego trip that counts with the man who advised John Kennedy to get rid of Diem at all costs.
There are plenty of sardonic bon mots in Galbraith's memoirs, such as: 'Under capitalism man exploits man, and under communism it is just the reverse'. And when it comes to treading on toes, Galbraith knows how to tread. He writes that Jackie K.O. always had a sharper view than her husband of the people around the presidency, which must equal if not surpass in opportunism the remark by Andrew Young, who called that hirsute freak Khomeini a saint. The Kennedys will not use Galbraith any longer because by the time Teddy gets in the Canadian will be too old, but Jackie does give good parties, and she does take his rantings seriously, like all good radical chic.
In one particularly egregious ego trip, Galbraith castigates himself for preventing the vice-presidential nomination of Boston mayor Kevin White at the 1972 Democratic Convention, thus 'paving the way for Thomas Eagleton and, ultimately, Nixon's re-election'. The fact that McGovern could have run with George Washington and lost seems to have escaped the Ontario boy. One should remember that he once told President Kennedy that he would be enchanted by a level of vanity for which not even his services in the Senate would fully have prepared him.
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