MISS LONELYHEARTS IS STILL GETTING LETTERS. When I first read Nathanael West's strange and episodic story 60 years ago I thought it was just picaresque, a sort of dark Damon Runyon. Now I know how prophetic it was. It tells the same story of the deadness and disorder that stalks the land today. We still have deadbeat dads, police gunning down unarmed citizens, maimed and crippled veterans coming home from war, except for the ones in coffins. We have drug ODs, drunks, abortion taboos and enough mayhem and melancholy to fill every newscast. Week after week Miss Lonelyhearts (a nameless young man) got letters from unfulfilled lives, troubled and tortured people, heartaches aplenty which prompted despairing but hopeful advice in his newspaper column. The only difference between now and 1940 is that we get the letters sent to us personally on the news, the papers and the internet only we've added corruption in the capitol, and fallen political idols. We're getting to be cynical like his boss Shrike who belittles any compassion for anyone. So here we are, decades later, in the same eternal despair. However there is another more likable character West created (an anti-hero of course) in his scathing novel of Hollywood: “Day of the Locust”. His name is Homer Simpson. Ring a bell?

Style: the decline of.

How many pairs of jeans did Frank Sinatra own? None. How many did Fred Astaire own? Not a one. I haven’t worn a pair since high school. But of course millions do, looking like a massive army of ditch diggers. Clothes are language so dress up and speak well for yourself. Perhaps clothes are my private vice incurred from all my years in London where looking smart is a civic duty. Yes, I had my suits and jackets custom made on Savile Row but I suggest you could go to Costco and still come out looking like a million dollars. The cosmetic mogul Harry Revson said to women: “You have plenty of clothes but you don’t have a look—get one!” Tap into your inner Fred Astaire or Audrey Hepburn. I was in Wynn on the Vegas Strip this week. My son Tony is getting married there next month. I was there when he picked out his tux and I’ve seen his fiancee’s wedding dress. They are going to look very smart and there won’t be any Elvis impersonators at the service. Wynn is like a tastefully done airport with hordes of poorly dressed people milling about. They simply don’t fit the venue. I suppose a pair of ripped jeans, a cheap Led Zepplin t shirt and a baseball cap proclaiming “Ukiah Lumber” is a hip look, but remember that clothes make the man . Don’t join the “schlepers and lepers”, adopt my motto: Dress British, Think Yiddish. OK, so I’m a snob but I will put in a good word for jeans. I have a picture of Marilyn Monroe lying on a bench hoisting a couple of small barbells. She’s wearing a pair of jeans and a bra. She looks wonderful.

It's always 1984 at the Pentagon

One of the prime slogans of Orwell’s “1984” is “War is Peace”. That’s using Newspeak, the official language of the Party. I prefer Oldspeak: “War is War”, especially our ten year war in Afghanistan, our war without end. A US soldier kills helpless civilians after serving four hellish tours of duty. There’s a surge. There’s a pause. A General leaves. A new General takes over. It doesn’t matter. Karzai gets mad. Karzai cools off but mostly he gets paid millions of dollars of our tax money. We’re stuck in Doublethink with the Pentagon’s 27,000 public relations staff systematically falsifying our goals. Let’s go back to a real Commander-in-chief, Dwight Eisenhower, who famously warned of a permanent arms industry of vast proportions. He said, “the danger of military influence over public policy will drive spending and encourage fear and even war”. During Eisenhower’s two terms, precisely one American was killed in combat, by a sniper in Lebanon. In the beginning, Washington and Hamilton wrote that “wise American leaders will avoid the necessity of an overgrown military establishment which is particularly hostile to republican liberty”. As for us, a Russian general warned us about the Afghans : “You’ll see. You’ll see”. Will we? As that wise philosopher Pogo Possum said many years ago, “We has met the enemy and he is us.”