Keeping up with the Rees-Moggs

What RFK Jr gets right

Many of the things Robert F Kennedy Jr says about public health are clearly nuts, says Nicholas Florko in The Atlantic. Vaccines don’t cause autism; mobile phones do not cause brain cancer. But the basic idea behind his effort to “Make America Healthy Again” is correct: the US is not healthy, and the current system “has not fixed the problem”. The country is facing a catastrophic decline in life expectancy and an epidemic of diet-related chronic diseases. One study found that just 12% of the population are considered metabolically healthy. And many of the Biden administration’s policies have “barely scratched the surface”. Regulators have pledged to lower salt in foods but its targets are “entirely voluntary”, and a promise to add warning labels to unhealthy items has come to nothing. Given the scope of the nation’s health problems, these measures seem “comically inadequate”.

The fact that Kennedy is even a remotely viable political figure shows just how little credibility the public health establishment has. Biden’s team were heavily criticised for abandoning a ban on menthol cigarettes after pressure from the tobacco lobby. Meanwhile, America’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention has been “beleaguered by claims” that it was simultaneously too slow and too aggressive at fighting Covid. More recently, it has struggled to stop the spread of bird flu. Time and time again, America’s “public health bureaucracy” has shown it is simply trying to manage the nation’s health problems rather than preventing them, “despite the billions of dollars” pumped into it every year. RFK Jr may not have a perfect plan, but he’s at least “promising a break from the status quo”.

The North Korean diplomats moonlighting as drug-dealers

North Korea’s embassies and consulates are, of course, tightly controlled by Pyongyang, says John Beck in Air Mail. But they are expected to finance their own operations – “and send additional funds home” – through whatever means they can. Until recently, the North Korean embassy in Berlin ran a hostel in its compound. Before it was forced to close in 2020 for breaching UN-backed sanctions, the backpacker hotspot was praised for its “friendly staff and cheap beer”. Its rather more salubrious counterpart in the Bulgarian capital Sofia is hung with chandeliers and paintings of ballerinas, and rented out as a wedding venue. Workers at the embassy in London – a red-brick family house in Ealing – aren’t so lucky. They have been known to buy second-hand furniture at flea markets that they then repair and sell on.

This diplomatic moonlighting has a long history. In 1976, Norwegian police uncovered an operation that used diplomatic bags to smuggle alcohol and cigarettes into Oslo for sale on the black market. A North Korean diplomat was arrested in Mozambique in 2015 with 10lbs of rhino horn and almost $100,000 in his car. Two years later the diplomatic residence in Pakistan, where alcohol is prohibited, was found to contain more than a thousand bottles of Johnnie Walker and 200 cases of wine, worth around $150,000, which the Koreans were bootlegging. This may be more than mere opportunism: In 2013 a South Korean newspaper reported that North Korean diplomats were being supplied with “state-made methamphetamine” to sell on the streets of the cities they were dispatched to. Ealing please, driver.

From rural poverty to rivalling the Beatles

When Cher announced she was publishing her memoir in two parts, there was a certain amount of “sniggering”, says Hadley Freeman in The Sunday Times. It turns out there may not be “enough paper in the world” to contain a life as ludicrous as hers. The pop star’s big break came at the tender age of 16, when she met her future husband Sonny Bono, who was 27, in a coffee shop. Bono was working with record producer Phil Spector at the time, so Cher began hanging out in his studio. One day, the singer Darlene Love was late for a session, so a “frazzled” Spector put Cher behind the microphone – and “that was that”. When US radio DJs insisted her voice was “too masculine”, a 19-year-old Mick Jagger suggested she try Britain. He was right: Sonny & Cher were a resounding success with records sales that rivalled Elvis and the Beatles.

Cher’s mother Jackie Jean barely survived a childhood of “absolute poverty” in rural Arkansas. She “went through men like Kleenex”, and when she found out, aged 19, that she was pregnant by a drug addict and gambler called Johnnie Sarkisian, she decided to get an illegal abortion. But while lying on the operation table she changed her mind – and several months later she gave birth to Cher. Sarkisian later burnt down their family home while high, nearly killing them all, and Cher spent her childhood dragged around the country as her mother “tried in vain to become a star”. Years later, once Cher had achieved the success her mother dreamt of, Jackie Jean said: “You know sweetheart, one day you should settle down and marry a rich man.” Her daughter replied: “Mom, I am a rich man.”

Cher: The Memoir, Part One by Cher is available here.