Suspicions Confirmed! The Publishing World is all whom you know. Last night Symposia was at Le Cirque with five or six literary mainstream ladies, one of whom was celebrating the publication of a new novel, if you can use that word to describe a series of sexual puns. No wonder our serious "physics and coincidence" tome received no notice.

To think I was so anti-Vietnam War. The sight of obese slovenly Michael Moore thinking he has wisdom in that Fahrenheit movie gives us a visceral right-wing revulsion.

New York is actually as provincial as Chicago. It really holds little interest unless one is in the entertainment business, and that includes the print media these days. Increasingly Symposia finds "culture" claustrophobic.

Symposia sees why Arthur Carter continues publishing the Observer; it has an original voice and in this issue mocks Clinton (cringe -- even hate to write the noun)in such a way as to support Paula Jones' claim, "Something is wrong with this man." Cela va sans dire.

Mein Gott! Now Hollywood has made Cole Porter look ridiculous. Kline is profoundly charmless in this empty film.

Oleg Cassini on a TV fashion show about great icons: Jackie Kennedy wanted to be queen of the world. For some reason Symposia finds narcissicism so aesthetically displeasing; modesty and lack of that fierce brand of American competitiveness so much finer.

Dan Rather is an idiot and his interview with the Mongrel President an abomination. Symposia believes absolutely nothing either Clinton says.

Reading Scaasi's totally sychophantic memoirs. These dopey dress designers are something else, Mon Dieu. (That Lagerfeld a freak show). Mamie Eisenhower never wore a brassiere and Barbara Bush has only 8 toes. Puleeze Arnold!

In these northern climes just as the days get longer they immediately start to get shorter. A good reason to retire to tropical places since in the north the denizens live for 2 months out of the entire year and spend the other 10 anticipating these.

Society so-called (was it this way as well at the time of the Duc de Saint Simon?) is largely women and gays. The latter are usually quite poor, live in studio apartments and pay their way by being escorts. There are two kinds of gays--the regular guys and the self-creations who think they are somehow important but who like Bernard Lafferty are a pack of frauds.

We are force-fed like so many geese in Lyons what the powers deign to give us. In the 1970s we really believed we could make a difference by banding together for good, but now we know that is just another illusion and we read about those buffoonish Americans vying to spend money to restore Versailles.

Mon Dieu they are going to darken the Empire State Building for Ronald Reagan who has been dead ten years. We were abroad for the entire duration of his presidency and on the other side of the Atlantic he was considered rather a rightist...dare I say...clown? No that is not the precise word, however...

Nancy Reagan's farewell touching in a dotty kind of way, though she was not one our favorites, since she consulted astrologers and other necromancers to give EVEN MORE meaning to her life (how much do you need?)Symposia's favorite first ladies were Pat, Lady Bird and now Laura, the least favorite Hilary (shudder!)and Rosalyn (trop serieuse)and Jackie (who forgot to mask her superiority complex and who treated women like hors d'oeuvres and men the main course).

Frances Shand Kydd, RIP, was a character out of Evelyn Waugh. At her daughter's wedding we thought she had the look of madness, or maybe it was just the look of extreme eccentricity and being above the law.

The galleys for Gloria Vanderbilt's new memoir It Seemed Important at the Time (what a dumb title!)reveal an exceptionally libidinous woman with the whole world of men at her disposal, Brando, Sinatra (who would want these roughians!), Howard Hughes.

Anthony Burgess who wrote A Clockwork Orange and not much else does delight us in his essays, One Man's Chorus. A Mancunian he dares to say things that are not politically correct such as the fact his hometown has become "Asiatic". Symposia recently went to Jackson Heights, Queens (to sample the Indian food--very mediocre!) and was indeed a foreigner in her own city.