Gstaad
This is the worst news I’ve had since the surrender at Stalingrad. The Spectator’s deputy editor has become engaged to a former adviser to my favourite minister, Iain Duncan Smith. But how can this be when the deputy editor is already engaged to me? If true, what does it make her — words fail me — a bigatrothed? All I know is that I’m flying to London in order to investigate. If the worst comes to the worst I am going to hit my rival so hard he’s going to have to look up to tie his shoelaces. Enough said.
I could also sue, but it ain’t my style. Although I’ve heard rumours that my rival is a habitual user of body wax, I will not get personal. The deputy editor’s actions probably have much to do with my ageing looks, something that I cannot help or do anything about unless I go under the knife, or use Botox, but I’d rather be a cuckold than look like Lily Safra. They say that being good-looking is useful in so many ways, such as not losing one’s fiancée to a younger man, but life is, after all, unfair.
In fact, one Daniel Hamermesh, an American professor, has written a long and boring article in the International Herald Tribune about ugliness. He says it’s unfair. That’s quite a discovery, even for a professor. Hamermesh claims that workers who are among the bottom one seventh in looks earned 10 to 15 per cent less per year than those assessed to be in the top third where looks are concerned. Which in a lifetime translates to as much as $230,000. Gee, that’s a lot of moolah to lose for being ugly. Paraphrasing Trotsky, every man has the right to be stupid, but Hamermesh abuses the privilege. The prof claims that good looks help attorneys pleading cases, politicians seeking votes, and teachers trying to get their theories across to students. Which leads me to believe that Hamermesh being steered early on towards an academic career surely constitutes a shocking case of child abuse.
He keeps the best for last: his solution for helping the ugly cope with a world that prefers beauty is to offer legal protection to the uglies. ‘Ugliness could be protected by small extensions of the Americans With Disabilities Act,’ he writes. ‘We could even have affirmative-action programs for the ugly.’ Eureka! He admits that there could be objections, as many people might choose not to classify themselves as ugly. But with a chance of obtaining extra pay and promotions amounting to 230,000 big ones, there are large enough incentives to do so.
Oy vey! Uglies could become a protected species, like gorillas, Serena Williams or John Prescott. Just think of the Pandora’s Box that would open if such legislation were passed in America. The UK would blindly follow, then the rest of Europe. There are far more ugly people than beautiful ones, even in Hollywood. This would cause a far greater financial crisis than poor old Greece ever did. Would we have to pay compensation to Silvio Berlusconi, to Dominique Strauss-Kahn, George Papandreou, Roman Abramovich, the Rolling Stones, Harvey Weinstein, Serena Williams’s family, or, come to think of it, Wayne Rooney with new implants included.
No, this will never do, we tax payers cannot afford it, but when was the last time professors took practical matters into account. Daniel Hamermesh, an economics professor at the University of Texas, wants to push the US towards new legal frontiers, and to hell with what happens next. I could use 230,000 greenbacks because a couple of my mistresses demand raises, but I am not about to do a Bride of Wildenstein in order to become a protected species and collect. And speaking of the unspeakable Wildensteins, a friend has pointed out to me that what I wrote about Anne Sinclair’s grandfather, Paul Rosenberg, was absolutely wrong. Her uncle, he says and I have ascertained, was a very good man and very honest, the trouble being I was writing about her grandfather Paul, not her uncle Alexandre.
Otherwise everything could not be more hunky-dory. My friend Sir Alistair Horne has just published a wonderful book with the charming title But What Do You Actually Do? (a standard question of know-nothings to writers they collar at cocktail parties). After 25 major historical works, Alistair should answer that he compiles lists of ignoramuses and morons, and ‘your name will now be included on my list’. Not that writing is all he’s done. He ended the war as a captain in the Coldstream Guards, was attached to MI5 in the Middle East, and was a foreign correspondent for the Daily Telegraph. I have known him for more than 40 years. He was responsible along with Bill Buckley and Arnaud de Borchgrave for kick-starting my career, has encouraged me throughout my life where writing is concerned, and if his delightfully anecdotal book has one fault it is about yours truly. He devotes two pages to Greece’s greatest writer since Homer and makes me out to be someone no one would dream of dropping as a fiancé. He is much too kind; if only I were the man he claims I am. Alistair won the Hawthornden prize and the Wolfson prize and along with our very own Paul Johnson is our greatest living historian. ‘A Literary Vagabondage’, the subtitle, is published by Weidenfeld. Thanks, Al.
Comments