The Kushner conundrum

I have two special girlfriends, Lynne and Fiona, the ladies who guard The Spectator’s entrance against the outraged #MeToo gels and woke lackeys who occasionally take umbrage against the poor little Greek boy’s scribbling. My guardian angels recently sent me some personal letters posted long ago, which I will eventually answer, especially one from Lady Mary Gaye Curzon, a very old friend, whose beautiful daughter Cressida — a Spectator Notebook contributor — dodged a bullet when Harry Halfwit went Hollywood. Although months in arrears, please accept my apologies, Helen Holland, Mary Ruskin and Anthony Johnson; such are the joys of the mail during and after a pandemic.

Last week in the Bagel I had dinner with Michael Wolff, whose Too Famous, a collection of his essays and columns, has just hit the bookshops. Unfortunately, two females at the table next to us, with horrendously high-pitched annoying voices, made it impossible to hear ourselves, but this is Noo Yawk, and our neighbours sure were Noo Yawkers. I had read Michael’s piece about The Sextator, as wannabes used to call us once upon a time, but had not seen the one about ‘President Jared’.

Boy, what a creep-survivor the Donald’s son-in-law turns out to be. According to Michael, Kushner emerges as a person with totally false values, looking out solely for number one, the national interest be damned. I first heard of Kushner when he bought a Bagel paper called the New York Observer, one that gave him a personal platform for his social climb, although it was an expensive one at 11 million big ones, or, as Wolff wrote, ‘11 million more than it was worth’. I had known his wife-to-be Ivanka when she and my son were friends as children.