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Camelot it ain’t.
Page Six regrets to report that a press dinner to boost Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s presidential campaign devolved into a foul bout of screaming and polemic farting on Tuesday night.
The White House hopeful attended the affair at Tony’s on the Upper East Side, no doubt hoping to impress the ladies and gentlemen of the Fourth Estate of his worthiness to sit at the very same Oval Office desk once occupied by his late uncle.
But a shouting match over climate change broke out between two boisterous old men, sending the evening down an extremely unfortunate path.
The gaseous exchange — to which Page Six bore reluctant witness — began after a guest asked Kennedy, founder of ecological organization Waterkeeper Alliance, about the environment. And it seems that the mere inquiry was enough to set off apparently drunk gossip-columnist-turned-flak, the event’s host Doug Dechert, who became enraged and screamed at the top of his lungs: “The climate hoax!”
Meanwhile, octogenarian art critic Anthony Haden-Guest, who appeared to have been sleeping happily for most of the dinner, was roused by the sudden rumpus.
Haden-Guest suddenly opened his eyes and denounced his longtime pal Dechert, calling him a “miserable blob.” “Shut up!” implored Haden-Guest.
Dechert continued to scream wildly about the climate change “scam” while Haden-Guest peppered him with verbal volleys from across the table, calling him variously “f*cking insane” and “insignificant!”
RFK Jr. meanwhile, the putative president of the United States, watched calmly on.
Here, it seems, Dechert sensed the need for a new rhetorical tack, and let rip a loud, prolonged fart while yelling, as if to underscore his point, “I’m farting!”
The room, which included a handful of journalists as well as RFK Jr.’s campaign manager, former Rep. Dennis Kucinich, was stunned, seemingly unsure about whether Dechert was farting at Haden-Guest personally or at the very notion of global warming itself. (Regrettably, we may assure readers that there was no room for doubt that the climate changed around the dinner table).
The candidate maintained a steady composure in the face of the crisis, as he reflected, perhaps, on JFK’s refrain that the United States remains always the city on the hill.
Another attendee attempted optimistically to change the subject, telling Kennedy how much she admired his father, the tragic attorney general, Robert F. Kennedy. Sadly, and somewhat inexplicably, another guest brought things back to climate change, leading to another round of yelling.
We are told Dechert and Haden-Guest have known each other for three decades.
Dechert told us when asked to comment about his, er, outburst the next day: “I apologize for using my flatulence as a medium of public commentary in your presence.” (He also asked us to refer to him either as a “gallivanting boulevardier” or a “beer-fueled sex rocket.”)
But the beer-fueled sex rocket, who picked up the tab for the evening as its host, was unapologetic about his views, telling us that he has “zero tolerance for the climate hoax scam nonsense in any venue that I am personally funding.”
The gallavanting boulevardier has had a colorful history of sparring — sometimes rather literally — with the press and, more specifically, with Page Six reporters.
Brit Haden-Guest — who has written for Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and penned books like “Studio 54, Disco and the Culture of the Night” — tells us, “I’ve known Doug many years. We have had spats before about this and that. We are not quite the same politically, but that doesn’t affect relationships in the UK. But I thought this was pretty ridiculous.”
He continued, “Doug said it was a hoax and scam. A scam for who? Who is benefiting? That’s not a political thing, it’s a human existence thing.”
Haden-Guest says fighting in public very “unusual” for him, “but when it is preposterous and it’s a life or death issue with the planet, to treat it as a zany political thing is foolish.”
During the verbal battle Haden-Guest had told the flatulent Dechert, “I am done with you.”
By the next day though, the stink seemed to have had dissipated. “I didn’t mean it,” Haden-Guest said. “I am sure we will talk again.”
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