July 12th, 2023
Learning Languids

No, not languages. You’re a smart kid from Nowheresville who got into Harvard. You’re totally able to learn languages.

What you need to learn is languidity. Someone needs to demonstrate to you how to be swish, posh, and highborn, even though you went to public school in Akron. You will not get taken on at Cravath Swain if you can’t learn languid.

Languid is Algernon in Earnest; languid is George in Who’s Afraid; languid is Sir Walter Elliot in Persuasion, and Lady Utterwood in Heartbreak.

Languid in the real world is Gore Vidal, George Plimpton, and Lady Emily Lennox. All of these are your models. Or, you know.

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As pointed out by a number of defenders of legacy admissions, the overarching value in your going to Harvard among America’s aristocrats is that by watching them at close daily quarters you can learn how to throw off Akron and assume Cambridge (either England or America). You can learn to absorb upper class attributes, primary among them a steady unflappable sangfroid.

You come from the jumpy world that supplies COPS footage. You are going to need to scrub all of that and calm way the hell down.

A fellowship year in England will further refine your languidity and is highly recommended.

All of this does indeed constitute one of the few reasonable defenses of legacy admits you’ll encounter: Without a critical mass of uppers at the Ivies, America’s middles will have a harder time getting to the top.

December 6th, 2022
Not that it matters to these two: Like their god, Trump, they are beyond shame.

But how lovely the karma, dear readers!

December 4th, 2022
‘During the ensuing scuffle, [Shannon] Epstein shouted that the deputies were going to lose their jobs or end up in jail, boasting that she was related to powerful people and that her uncle is a friend of Donald Trump..’

Sing.

It.

September 9th, 2021
Digby Remembers.

Sing it.

Thanks for the memory

Of Oversight and Rush

Of telling Fluke to hush

And women who were raped

Could simply pull the lever “FLUSH”

How lovely it was

So thanks for the memory
Of donor Foster Freiss
His aspirin gibe: so nice!
And now today it’s just as gay
With bounty hunters’ price.
How lovely it is

January 21st, 2021
All the money in the world for a world-class education, and he finds his valedictory in…

… the Lion King cartoon.

November 10th, 2020
Kayleigh, Watch Your Back!

Already even Fox is cutting away from you; and now there’s a new mouth in town and she’s gunning for your job!

Mehridith Venverloh isn’t a name that easily rolls off the tongue, but UD would counsel you to learn it, because no one’s gonna cut away from what Mehridith has to say. She writes a tweet that’s hard to beat, and I’m guessing she’s already caught the attention of the boss.

So read and learn.

Enraged at Trump’s defeat, Mehridith began her series of tweets very classily – by quoting Christian intellectual and martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. “Silence in the face of evil is itself evil: God will not hold us guiltless.” Bonhoeffer was referring to Hitler, who had him killed for his anti-Nazi actions and words.

Mehridith is of course referring to America’s reincarnation of Adolf Hitler, Kamala Harris, about whom she goes on to say:

Yes! All she needs to be qualified is a black pussy! No brain needed!!

How proud Bonhoeffer would be of you, Mehridith, for refusing to be silent in the face of evil.

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And how disappointed he would be to see that you have, a few hours after your statement of conscience, blamed your tweet on your meds. Tsk.

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And wait a minute. What meds would be so dangerous in their side effects as to have prompted a woman like Mehridith Venverloh to quote Dietrich Bonhoeffer?

October 24th, 2020
The famed Marc Kasowitz, one of this blog’s All-Time Favorites…

… threatens to sue The Lincoln Project.

With Rudolph Giuliani busy “reach[ing] into his legal briefs and whip[ping] out his subpoenas,” Trumps in search of a real tough-guy attorney have returned to the source — Mr. FUCK YOU HOW DARE YOU I KNOW WHERE YOU LIVE YOU FUCKING SHITMarc Kasowitz to defend their honor. Marc’s late-night threatening demented rant to a stranger who dared to question his ways made all the papers back in 2017; since then, he has maintained his gentle humble disposition.

He brags to friends he makes anywhere from $10 million to $30 million per year. He owns an apartment in a white-glove building on Park Avenue and a mansion in Westchester County. He travels by private jet and, when in New York, is driven around in a black Cadillac SUV. He owns at least two horses, according to a lawsuit Kasowitz once filed against his daughter’s equestrian stable.

From the start, [his firm,] Kasowitz Benson had a hard-drinking culture that its leaders epitomized.

“It’s like a time warp,” said one former employee, citing the firm’s “macho, scotch-drinking, fist-fighting” ethos. Multiple former attorneys said they saw Kasowitz under the influence at the office, an accusation Kasowitz denies.

He’s currently being sued by several ex-colleagues – it looks as though he stiffed them cuz his firm is losing money.

So if, like Ivanka and Jared, you want your honor restored, it’s hard to think of a more honorable guy than our old buddy Marc. Marc follows goodness and mercy all the days of his life, and his righteous indignation on behalf of innocents trampled by the bad boys at The Lincoln Project just sounds so right.

But it might be an uphill legal battle. Recall Lara Trump’s explanation that an angry mob at a Trump rally screaming LOCK HER UP LOCK HER UP about recently imperiled Gretchen Whitmer was simply part of a “fun, light, atmosphere.” Did Jared say No it wasn’t. It was obviously a threatening thing to do, and I hereby disavow it?

Of course he didn’t, because as Lara points out it was clearly all in fun! How could the advertisement in question, which doesn’t even promise to put Jared and his wife in prison, aim to create anything other than a fun, light, atmosphere?

July 27th, 2020
President Trump Marks the Thirtieth Anniversary…

of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

June 21st, 2020
Too bad they didn’t do their…

flyover a week or so ago. Would have made a terrific additional visual in this.

April 28th, 2020
Bravo, Palmer.

America eats shit in some obvious ways (see the post below this one), but is also an amazing place. When idjits on the school board in Palmer Alaska banned some of the twentieth century’s greatest novels (details here), people there rose up and blew them a big ol’ collective raspberry.

Ever since an Alaska school board voted to remove five books from elective high school classes, the titles of the works have come alive throughout the community. One city council member reads excerpts from her favorite book on Facebook every night. An attorney began a movement to reward students who read them. Hundreds have joined a Facebook group to voice their opposition to the removal. And a local bookstore owner says donations have been pouring in since the vote from community members who want her shop to give teenagers those books for free. “There’s been a huge response from the community,” says Mary Ann Cockle, owner of Fireside Books in Palmer. “The outpouring of support and concern about banning and censorship has been quite a surprise — but in a good way.”

Nice one.

October 16th, 2019
UD’s Congressional District: A Cut Above.

Her Representative, Jamie Raskin, calls Giuliani’s two Ukrainian … uh… associates… “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.”

UD‘s figuring most pols are going to go with Mutt and Jeff or Tom and Jerry or Tweedledum and Tweedledee. The 8th District does Shakespeare.

September 25th, 2019
‘I should sue you for libel … You usually say incredibly stupid things … Shut up, shut up, you don’t know what you’re talking about, idiot!’

Transcript of Rudy Giuliani’s remarks to his soon to be third ex-wife.

No, wait. That was him on Fox today.

January 13th, 2019
Class will…

tell.

January 4th, 2018
UD thought the wife of the treasury secretary had cornered the market on…

… contempt for the lower orders while wielding luxury brands, but the ever-classy culture of the NFL has birthed Jacqueline Kent Cooke, much-cherished daughter of Redskins owner and “billionaire bully” Jack Kent Cooke.

Jacqueline’s years of psychotherapy (her mother started her on it when she was seven) seem to have helped her overcome any repressions she may have harbored about stealing, drinking, and driving. In 2008, a police officer

followed Cooke and her friend after they left [a] restaurant without paying around 5:15 a.m.

The police report said the officer saw Cooke’s keys to her BMW 325i fall out of her purse when she went back inside the restaurant to pay the bill, though she denied the car was hers.

The officer advised her to take a cab home, police said.

Police said Cooke pulled up her skirt to moon the officer, and then gave him the middle finger, before eventually getting into the BMW and starting the engine.

She was booked for a DUI, and, once in the police station, elaborated on the vileness of the lower orders, here embodied by the police.

In the ten years that have elapsed she has added anti-semitism and assault to the mix.

Cooke, 29, allegedly whacked Matthew Haberkorn, 52, outside the Upper East Side restaurant Caravaggio [yesterday] and left him with a bloody gash on his head …

Haberkorn [who – poor Jacqueline – is a high-profile personal injury lawyer] said he had just finished dining with his wife, mom and four daughters when the socialite started the encounter by hurling the slur at his mom on the way out of the eatery.

“I went to the bathroom as we were leaving,” Haberkorn told The Post. “She made a comment to my mother, ‘Hurry up, you Jew,’ as she was getting her jacket.”

When Haberkorn confronted the woman about the comment, that’s when she unleashed her bag attack.

Here’s the thing, though:

The purse appeared to be a Lulu Guinness Women Chloe Mirror Perspex Clutch, which normally costs more than $400.

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And yes, of course it was all filmed. By one of Haberkorn’s daughters.

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She’s in court. It’s being investigated as a hate crime.

Meanwhile, Deadspin, one of UD’s favorite websites, doesn’t disappoint in the comments department.

“Ahhh the Upper East Side. Finally, a place where I can feel comfortable voicing my anti-semitic views!”

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Another good one, in Tablet magazine:

[T]his is why we stay on the Upper West Side, where the altercations are all among us Jews and usually involve the deli line at Zabar’s or the narrow aisles at Fairway.

********

Mel Gibson chimes in.

She forgot to mention the international relations angle.

December 27th, 2016
“You might say I’m a product of Hollywood inbreeding,” [Carrie] Fisher wrote in her memoir, Wishful Drinking. “When two celebrities mate, something like me is the result.”

RIP Carrie Fisher. Funny. Smart.

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