Taki Theodoracopulos

Taki Theodoracopulos (Template:Lang-el; born August 11 1937), originally named Petros (Peter) Theodoracopulos but better known as Taki, is a Greek-born journalist and writer living in New York City, London and Switzerland. His column "High Life" has appeared in The Spectator for the past twenty-five years, and he has also written for National Review, the London Sunday Times, Esquire, Vanity Fair, the New York Press, and Quest Magazine, among others. In 2002 Taki founded The American Conservative magazine with Pat Buchanan and Scott McConnell. He was also publisher of the British magazine Right Now!.

Background

Taki's family originally came from the Ionian island of Zakynthos (Zante.) His father was a shipper who served in both the Greek Army during World War II's Balkan campaign and the anti-German Greek Resistance. He made a substantial fortune after the war in shipping, and later in his life was the owner of Karavel, one of Athens' biggest hotels at the time. Taki, who was supposed to take over the family business, was educated at the Lawrenceville School and the University of Virginia, but chose first the life of the international playboy, and then the war correspondent's and the gossip columnist's. Taki is married to Princess Alexandra von Schönburg, to whom he constantly refers in his articles as "the mother of my children".

Politics

Although most of Taki's writings concern his life among the rich and famous, his political views always find their way into the text. His politics may be safely placed on the Right, but he holds controversial, sometimes close to contradictory, views on many subjects, a fact which makes many conservatives and right-wingers unwilling to associate with his positions. In his Spectator pieces, Taki comes across as a staunch defender of family values, yet he admits to actively pursuing wives he found attractive; he values friendship and comradeship, but some of the men he "cuckolded" (his expression) were close friends; he professes Christianity, but supports abortion rights and admits to violating most of the Church's commandments; he is strongly pro-American, but usually writes dismissively of American foreign policy; he supports America's "war on terror", asserting it is "fought the wrong way", but takes the Palestinian, not the Israeli, side in the Middle East conflict; he is a fierce anti-communist, but has "no time" for the new Russian rich, whom he collectively labels "kleptocrats" and "nouveau-Russes"; he is a confirmed elitist and opponent of mass vulgarity, but reserves his harshest invective for the spoiled rich—among whom he admits he belongs; and so on. Consistently, nonetheless, Taki takes traditionalist, royalist and paleoconservative positions.

Taki is an outspoken critic of the current Iraq War and lays the blame for the "fiasco", as he calls it, on American neoconservatives, who have "destroyed the legacy of Ronald Reagan", levying harsh criticism on people like David Frum, William Kristol, and John Podhoretz. He considers war supporter Christopher Hitchens to be among "the former Trotskyites now masquerading as patriotic Americans". (Hitchens, originally British, is now a naturalised American.)

Taki is vocal in his criticism of vulgarity in both the media and in professional sports, but occasionally uses profanity himself in interviews, and says this is because he went "through hell" in the Navy. Some of his more controversial statements are to be found in his articles on contemporary immigration policy (see below).

He was prominent in the campaign to free the former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose arrest he considered inconsistent with international law. [2]

Lifestyle

Taki is a former captain of the national Greek karate team (at one time he was a six-dan black belt), has represented Greek tennis in the Davis Cup, and is a keen skier. As an avid sailor, he has owned a series of sailboats and has expressed contempt for modern "gin palace" cruisers. Taki is also known for a lifestyle that reportedly revolves mainly around dinners, parties, alcohol, gambling, and the pursuit of women. In this, he reflects his open admiration for Ernest Hemingway and Hemingway’s traditional view of masculinity.

In 1984, Taki was arrested at Heathrow Airport for cocaine possession, for which he served a three-month jail term in England's Pentonville Prison. His memoir Nothing to Declare came out of this experience, and was described by Kirkus reviews as a "sometimes whiny, sometimes charming, always opinionated running commentary on his life, his friends, and his time behind bars." Taki, in his personal website, lists Pentonville Prison as a place of education, alongside the schools he attended.

Taki's behavior has led to a number of fights and altercations over the years. This includes brawls on the streets of Manhattan, karate matches in the Pentonville Prison recreation room and confrontations over women in the ski resort town of Gstaad, Switzerland.

Ethnic slurs

Taki has been criticised for using ethnic slurs by the newspaper The Guardian. In 2003 Scotland Yard investigated complaints over a column he wrote in The Spectator that referred to a shooting incident in the north of England in which Taki asserted "Britain being mugged by black hoodlums." The Yard's "Diversity Directorate" decided not to press charges.

On New York City's Puerto Ricans:

"A bunch of semi-savages ... fat, squat, ugly, dusky, dirty and unbelievably loud. They turned Manhattan into Palermo faster than you can say 'Spic'."

On Africa:

"Democracy is as likely to come to Bongo-Bongo Land as I am to send a Concorde ticket to my children."

On Britain's Black population:

"What politically correct newspapers refer to as 'disaffected young people' are black thugs, sons of black thugs and grandsons of black thugs ... West Indians were allowed to immigrate after the war [and] multiply like flies."

Due to Taki's characterization of himself as a "soi-disant antisemite", coupled with strong criticism of the Israeli government and its supporters in the United States, The Spectator no longer permits him to write about Israel or Jewish affairs. In a follow-up Spectator column, Taki stated that he does not consider himself an anti-Semite and that the term "soi-disant antisemite" was used by him in the meaning of "so-called" rather than "self-styled". Taki claims some of his comments are intended "to piss off politically correct journalists" and not to be taken at face value, and that he wasn't bothered himself by ethnic slurs in his youth. "The Italians were called wops, the Jews were called hymies, I was of course a greaseball, and every Hispanic was a spic. Well, we all got along famously! It was rough, but it was fine. Obviously, one doesn't like to be called a greaseball, but you know — Greek, greaseball . . . Now, of course, all that is very, very unacceptable."

Quotations

Some of Taki's comments.

On Cherie Blair

"Not that I'm calling Cherie Blair a whore. She couldn't be one even if she wanted to; not good-looking enough."

On Hillary Rodham Clinton

"She, too, could not make a living from the world's oldest profession because of ugly looks and terrible ankles."

On himself

"I'm a family man, a provider, I pay my taxes, I'm white (although always sun-tanned) ... I inherited from my old man ... I employ people, I own a yacht ... you name it, I'm guilty of it."

...

"Suddenly a black man in his late 20s walked up to us and spat right in my wife’s face. It was a horrible enormous gob of spit, and poor Alexandra just stood there in disbelief and in distress, saying nothing. Nor did the man. When I screamed at him how dare he do such an awful thing, he turned and started to walk away. I thought I saw him smile. Then he turned once again and sucker punched me right on the nose. Blood squirted out from both nostrils, blinding me for a split second. He got two more punches in, cutting my eye and lower lip.

Mind you, he wasn’t very good, because if you can’t put someone down after three shots, you shouldn’t be in the fighting business. Although stunned, dizzy and partially blind, I managed to grab him and we started to wrestle. He was much stronger than I, but once he got me down I immediately reversed him, put an arm bar on him, and announced to him in a polite manner that if he spat or even said a word–which until then he hadn’t–I would break his arm at the elbow. I then began doing just that. He howled to high heaven and started to wimper. When I released the pressure he lay quiet as the proverbial mouse."

On William and Jack Straw

"In Cool Britannia we don't send the son of a left-wing prick like Straw to jail for dealing [drugs]; we vote him president of the Oxford Union [sic, Straw was elected president of the Oxford University Student Union ] instead. (Apparently he is as much of a dictator as his father, and just as phony)."

On Bill Clinton and Tony Blair

"[They] are, of course, the masters of the direct lie, able to look straight into the camera and tell incredible whoppers that would make Mother Teresa blush. The man [Tony Blair] is pathetic, almost on the level of Bill Clinton, except for the hair."

On Ian Hislop

"Hislop deals in ruining people's lives through falsehoods, half-truths and gossip ... When that court high up in the sky gives the final verdict, the poisoned dwarf will come off second best."

"Hislop is a dwarfish Quasimodo who scares not only the horses, but also ladies from polite society and especially children. He should not be permitted outdoors during sunny days and school holidays."

His animosity toward Hislop is based on the latter's frequent jibes at him in Private Eye magazine. Taki is often described in the publication as "Taki Takealotofcokeupthenos". Taki sent a letter to the magazine, threatening legal action against being labelled a "cocaine dealer", despite a stated personal pledge never to sue anyone. The Eye issued a disclaimer, stating, "Taki is not a cocaine dealer, merely a convicted cocaine smuggler, a liar, and fascist sympathiser."

On Government & Politics

"All governments are monopolies of organized force, inherently unjustifiable. And once accepted, they are bound to get out of control sooner or later. No, there is no longer a Right or a Left. Bush’s mammoth expansion of government power and spending makes LBJ look like Robert Taft, the last true conservative—and peace lover, I might add. ...Labels are for fools."

Books

• Taki, High Life, selected by Andrew Cameron, illustrated by Michael Heath. London: Viking, 1989. ISBN 0-670-82956-0
• Taki and Jeffrey Bernard, High Life, Low Life, introduction by Richard West, edited by Cosmo Landesman. London: Jay Landseman, 1981. ISBN 0-905150-27-9
• Taki, Nothing to Declare: Prison Memoirs, London: Penguin, 1992. ISBN 0-14-013256-2
• Taki, Princes, Playboys & High-Class Tarts, foreword by Tom Wolfe, illustrations by Blair Drawson. Princeton: Karz-Cohl Publishers, 1984. ISBN 0-943828-61-9

External link

• Taki's Top Drawer