“When a Qatari sheikh came to live in L.A., an entire economy sprouted to meet his wishes. ‘His highness doesn’t like to hear no,’ one associate told a professor.” Harriet Ryan and Matt Hamilton tell the story:

Los Angeles has long enjoyed a reputation as a playground for the rich, but the handsome teenage prince who arrived nine years ago operated on a different level. He came from the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar on a private jet with a squad of servants, a bottomless natural gas fortune and the stated goal of a college education . . . From the moment Al Thani stepped off the plane, an entire economy quickly grew up around him to meet his wishes and whims: chauffeurs, a security detail, concierges, trainers, a nurse, an all-purpose fixer and even, according to several USC faculty members, a graduate student who served as his academic ‘sherpa.’

Before he started classes, a billionaire trustee arranged a private meeting between the university president and the prince’s mother, and once he arrived, the institution showered him with special treatment.

He was allowed to blow off class for dubious ‘security reasons’ as an undergrad, then was handed a master’s degree for a period in which he took several vacations in Europe and never stepped foot on campus.

His enablers went to extraordinary lengths to keep him happy: Forging documents, flouting university rules, plying a UCLA dean with a golden camel statue, giving a Rolex to a professor and even, accounting records and interviews indicate, buying a $500 gift for a DMV employee in an effort to secure a coveted vanity plate.

In other news: Vox Media apparently laid off 6% of its staff yesterday: “40% off its revenue forecast for the second quarter and plans to miss its full-year target by 25%.”

“Feral peacock divides Oakland neighborhood” is not a headline you read every day. “Down a short cul-de-sac in North Oakland, an unusual blue-and-green-feathered neighbor has recently moved into someone’s yard. His name is Bruce… or Paco, or Peter, or Pierre, or Abraham. Apparently, it’s difficult to settle on a name for the neighborhood peacock. Most neighbors are fans of the peacock on Occidental Street, saying the sight of him brings joy to the monotony of life during quarantine. But for a few, his presence is hell on earth — and they’ve taken to Nextdoor to voice their complaints.”

William Boyd on finding James Bond’s precise address: “I am in London. In Chelsea to be precise, at the entrance to Wellington Square off the King’s Road, where I am being interviewed for the French radio station RTL – à distance sociale – about James Bond. The reason why we’re at Wellington Square is because this is where James Bond lived. Obviously, James Bond is a fictional character and didn’t actually live anywhere. However, it is strange how in the case of some fictional characters a kind of reality begins to take over their lives, as if they really did live and breathe, had an actual address and a mortgage. I point out to the interviewer that, a few yards across the King’s Road from where we’re standing, almost directly opposite, is the entrance to Bywater Street. Believe it or not, I tell him, another famous fictional spy, John le Carré’s George Smiley, lived in Bywater Street. This extraordinary coincidence causes some excited consternation and we stop recording and cross the road. In Bywater Street, we start recording again. ‘George Smiley lived here? Amazing. What number?’ the interviewer asks. Number 9, I say. You see what I mean.”

Helen Andrews on the life and work of Curzio Malaparte: “In a century when so many intellectuals made the leap from communism to the Right, Curzio Malaparte was one of the few who traveled in the opposite direction. Born in 1898, he was a wunderkind of Italian fascism in his twenties, haunting the cafes of Florence with Filippo Marinetti and the Futurists and taking part in Mussolini’s March on Rome at the age of 24. His career as a fascist intellectual peaked in the early 1930s as he tried to push Mussolini in a more populist direction from the editor’s chair of various periodicals, including the daily La Stampa. World War II put a seal on a decade of gradual disillusionment, and by the time of his death in 1957, Malaparte had become such an enthusiastic Maoist that he left his house in Capri to the Chinese people for use as an artists’ colony . . . Diary of a Foreigner in Paris, published this month by NYRB Classics, records a scathing dinner party encounter with Albert Camus, who fixes Malaparte with a death stare from the moment he walks in. Another guest asks Malaparte to give his opinion of one of Mussolini’s former cabinet ministers. ‘Camus, without looking at me, replied that all these men, assassins, etc., should be shot.’ Malaparte shrugs off the insult as a young man trying ‘to give himself the air of a Saint-Just,’ but can’t resist describing for the reader an elaborate fantasy scene where Camus points a rifle at his blindfolded head in a one-man firing squad—and misses. The left-wing intellectuals’ contempt for Malaparte was amply returned. ‘I wonder what the hell Camus ever did to have the right to shoot others,’ Malaparte scoffs.”

Questioning—and testing—the authorship of Wuthering Heights: “Wuthering Heights is a cult classic, an incredibly significant piece of literature that challenged the social and moral structures of Victorian society, possessing characters and commentaries decades ahead of the novel’s time. First published in 1847 under the pseudonym ‘Ellis Bell’, the posthumous second edition that emerged in 1850 was attributed to the novel’s true author, Emily Brontë . . . But, in the wake of Branwell’s death in 1848, two of his friends, William Deardon and Francis Grundy, began circulating the rumour that it was in fact he and not Emily who had written Wuthering Heights. As recounted by Irene Cooper Willis, an anonymous article appeared in People’s Magazine in 1867 claiming that Emily, as ‘a timid and retiring female’, could not have written so coarse a novel.”

Glenn Loury discusses structural racism and other things with Glenn Yu: “People cry, ‘structural racism.’ Is that why the homicide rate is an order of magnitude higher among young black men? They say structural racism. Is that why the SAT test-score gap is as big as it is? They say structural racism. Is that why two in three black American kids are born to women without a husband? Is it all about structural racism? Is everything structural racism? It has become a tautology explaining everything. All racial disparities are due to structural racism, evidently. Covid-19 comes along and there’s a disparity in the health incidence. It’s due to structural racism. They’re naming partners at a New York City law firm and there are few black faces. Structural racism. They’re admitting people to specialized exam schools in New York City and the Asians do better. This has to be structural racism, with a twist—the twist being that this time, the structural racism somehow comes out favoring the Asians. This is not social science. This is propaganda. It’s religion.”

Photos: Comet over Mount Hood

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