Prince Andrew and me

No use piling on where Prince Andrew is concerned. It’s a sorry business, and he’s not among the brightest either. Back in the summer of 2007, in St Tropez, I had a boatload of guests and we all went to a party given by the Rubin family in their villa. It was a very gay night, in the old-fashioned meaning of the word. We were joined by a comely seductress from the Far East and the prince with the highest IQ on the planet, Andrew. He was polite but distant, concentrating on his companion. That’s when I told my friend Debbie Bismarck that Andy had no chance. Just watch me, I said.

I inched my way up to the babe in question, signaled to her that I needed to tell her something, and when she had excused herself from Andy’s monologue I informed her that the Prince would neither marry nor keep her. But as a producer of Chinese westerns I could employ her forthwith. She dropped him like the proverbial hot you-know-what. My friends were laughing, although some thought that I had been rude to the Prince. ‘Not at all,’ I told them. ‘I know women, and he does not.’

Things did not turn out as planned, though. My friend Nick Scott, who caught on quickly, sat beside me talking shop — Chinese westerns — and making me laugh so hard that even the babe realized there was something wrong. Especially when Nick told her I had had Bruce Lee killed for refusing a role. She went home alone — probably for the first time in her young life.

So, as previously stated, Andrew is not the brightest of the bright. He is, however, more articulate than Jabrill Peppers, a man who attended the academically demanding University of Michigan for four years and now plays for the New York Giants football team. After a loss last week he addressed the press corps and said: ‘I ain’t really care about how y’all feel, how nobody feel.’ I hope Peppers did not major in English, but if he did, I’m not surprised. There are many dumb people around. Apparently 270 million-plus social media followers of Kylie Jenner buy her products, making her the youngest billionaire. Here we have a rather plain to ugly-looking young woman who has many millions of idiotic followers and we go around calling Prince Andrew stupid.

Who was it that said one never goes broke underestimating the public’s taste? H.L. Mencken, the sage of Baltimore, that’s who, and the sage was no dummy. Epstein the child molester would never have got to him. Mencken was suspicious of ‘sudden’ wealth, and Epstein’s sure was sudden. But are royals supposed to know the difference? When they stick to their own kind of people they’re called aloof and indifferent. When they mix with the recently arrived, they get into trouble sometimes. The sweatless one obviously fell under Epstein’s spell, but so did many others who should have known better and are now off the hook because two prison guards were shopping for furniture on the internet while, as some have speculated, persons unknown allowed the prisoner to escape justice. Maybe.

Yes, stupidity reigns supreme, especially when some clown from London asks: ‘Is it time to stop looking at Gauguin altogether?’ Why? Because he fathered children with the young girls he lived with in Tahiti back in 1893. In those days young girls were betrothed and married at ages that would now land people in the pokey. And in France, of all places. There are countries in the world where it still happens but we’re not supposed to look at Gauguin paintings any more. We turn a blind eye to child molesters in places where they have lotsa moolah, but there are no excuses for old Paul.

It’s total and utter rubbish, as ridiculous as those in Western universities, the media and the arts who are striving to dismantle our cultural and religious traditions. In the meantime, defenders of European culture are nowhere to be found, except in this magazine. Intellectuals both here and in America are working to discredit our past and, while they’re at it, to demolish our future. Looking at a Gauguin will not turn you into Epstein, but reading the New York Times or tuning into the BBC will turn you into a soulless moron.

Moral superiority is what the PC mob is after, hence all the stuff about toxic masculinity, white privilege, Gauguin’s pictures — even Randy Andy’s stupidities. People are not all fools, and they should see through the baloney. These cretins trying to rule our hearts and minds are in the majority, alas, especially in American universities, where the proportion of liberals to conservatives among the faculty ranges from three to one to as much as 28 to one.

Oh yes, I almost forgot: Jeffrey Epstein was a big, big liberal, as were most of his friends. Andrew should start hanging out with right-wingers like me, except that in his case I’m not available. For some strange reason I prefer people with brains.

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the US edition here.