That Meanie McMeanikins, James Wolcott, cheerfuly mixes his Martinis with Alastair Macaulay's (copious, alas) tears. OC's more sentimental (she after all is now an adoptive Italian, no?) view: lascia che Alastair pianga. But maybe it's just us.
Sometime during the transatlantic flight Senor Suavity seems to have transformed into a complete hayseed who writes as if he's pinning corsages with each compliment and who inserts himself into the nougat center of every review. Perhaps the pale enamel of Croce's Mother Superior austerity inhibited Macaulay during his first American sojourns, but now that she's vacated the scene to her mink ranch in Rhode Island, he's free to express every quivering sentiment and glandular effusion he once stored below deck, lathering and slathering his prose with palmfuls of the "simple creamy English charm" that was the blight and despair of Anthony Blanche in Brideshead Revisited. Worse, the cream has curdled, and the charm is so unctuous it seems to be begging for applause.
Macaulay impeachment proceedings to begin soon via Vanity Fair's
meaniest, most literate, Bush-loving (just kidding signor Wolcott!!!) blawg.