Mark Steyn's Blog, page 19

Raaa-cist!!!

A couple of weeks back, I had occasion to mention one Geoffrey Dunn of the Huffington Post, after he dismissed Clint Eastwood as just another bitter old white male Republican racist. That would be the Clint Eastwood who dated a black woman in The Eiger Sanction, made a biopic of the black saxophonist Charlie Parker, helped make black vocalist Roberta Flack a No. 1 pop star, etc.

Today Mr. Dunn returns to double down on his peculiar obsessions. Racism is everywhere in the Republican party:

Only a blabbering fool like Mark Steyn could deny the swirling hurricane.

When I wrote my original column, I said that I happened to be overseas, from which vantage the indestructible racial obsessions of American liberalism seemed extremely peculiar. They seem even more cobwebbed and parochial today, when there is an actual "swirling hurricane" out there: From Tunisia to Indonesia, persons of every conceivable hue are raining down curses on Obama; they're burning his effigy in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Lebanon, and beyond; Indian protesters wave placards showing Obama as a monkey. But only in America are Obama's critics "racist", and warnings of "swirling hurricanes" are reserved for the apparent epidemic of "empty chair lynchings."

Thus, the "pansy left," in Orwell's designation: They're fearless when it comes to fighting imaginary, phantom enemies. Not so useful for the ones actually out there.

Global Warming and Shrinking Manhood

Readers have asked me for an update on climate scientist Michael Mann's threatened lawsuit against National Review for mocking his hockey stick.

I don't really have anything new to report on that front, but I heard Rush mention this story the other day - CBS News, in an alarming story headlined "Male Genitalia Shrinking", is reporting that global warming may be responsible for a ten per cent reduction in male private parts over the last fifty years. According to this alleged Italian study:

Air pollution has been shown to 'negatively impact penis size'.

So no hockey stick there.

We may have to call these Italian scientists as expert witnesses.

Two's Company, Three's a Positive Role Model

A few years ago, when the gay-marriage bandwagon got rolling, some of us argued that "if the sex of the participants is no longer relevant, why should the number be?" The same-sex-marriage crowd swatted the polygamy shtick aside as utterly irrelevant, even though there are far more takers for polygamy than there will ever be for gay marriage, and it is, de facto, already recognized to one degree or another by multiculti types in the British Government pensions department and the French welfare system.

So here we are in 2012, and the Toronto District School Board has a new poster called "Love Has No Gender", full of happy couples but also happy triples. This poster is in every Toronto grade school.

Heather Has Two Mommies. Heather Has Two Mommies And A Big Bearded Daddy Who Wants To Marry Her Off To Her Cousin In Pakistan. Who are we to judge?

Bowing to the Mob

I see the Obama campaign has redesigned the American flag, and very attractive it is too. Replacing the 50 stars of a federal republic is the single “O” logo symbolizing the great gaping maw of spendaholic centralization. And where the stripes used to be are a handful of red daubs, eerily mimicking the bloody finger streaks left on the pillars of the U.S. consulate in Benghazi as its staff were dragged out by a mob of savages to be tortured and killed. What better symbol could one have of American foreign policy? Who says the slick hollow vapid marketing of the Obama campaign doesn’t occasionally intersect with reality?

On the latter point, after a week and a half of peddling an utterly false narrative of what happened in Libya, the United States government is apparently beginning to discern that there are limits to what even Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Susan Rice can say with a straight face. The official line -- that the slaughter of American officials was some sort of improvised movie review that got a little out of hand -- is now in the process of modification to something bearing a less patently absurd relationship to what actually happened. That should not make any more forgivable the grotesque damage that the administration has done to the bedrock principle of civilized society: freedom of speech.

##ad#The more that U.S.-government officials talk about the so-called film Innocence of Muslims (which is actually merely a YouTube trailer) the more they confirm the mob’s belief that works of “art” are the proper responsibility of government. Obama and Clinton are currently starring as the Siskel & Ebert of Pakistani TV, giving two thumbs down to Innocence of Muslims in hopes that it will dissuade local moviegoers from giving two heads off to consular officials. “The United States government had absolutely nothing to do with this video,” says Hillary Clinton. “We absolutely reject its content, and message.” “We reject the efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others,” adds Barack Obama. There follows the official State Department seal of the U.S. embassy in Islamabad.

Fellow government-funded film critics call Innocence of Muslims “hateful and offensive” (Susan Rice, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations) and “reprehensible and disgusting” (Jay Carney, White House press secretary). General Dempsey, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and senior Pentagon adviser to Variety, has taken to telephoning personally those few movie fans who claim to enjoy the film. He called up Terry Jones, the Florida pastor who apparently thinks Innocence of Muslims is the perfect date movie, to tell him the official position of the United States military is they’d be grateful if he could ease up on the five-star reviews.

Obama and Clinton’s two-on-the-aisle act cost $70,000 of taxpayers’ money. That may not sound much in the $16 trillion–dollar sinkhole of Washington, but it’s a pretty big ad buy in Islamabad, and an improper use of public monies. If government functionaries want to do movie reviews, they should have a PBS fundraiser, offering a “Barack & Hill at the Movies” logo-ed burqa for pledges of over $100, and a complimentary clitoridectomy for pledges over $500. I fought a long battle for freedom of expression north of the border when the Canadian Islamic Congress attempted to criminalize my writing, and I’m proud to say I played a modest role in getting Parliament to strike down a shameful law and restore a semblance of free speech to a country that should never have lost it. So I know a little about how the Western world is shuffling into a psychological bondage of its own making, and it’s no small thing when the First Amendment gets swallowed up by the vacuum of American foreign policy.

What other entertainments have senior U.S. officials reviewed lately? Last year Hillary Clinton went to see the Broadway musical Book of Mormon. “We reject all efforts to denigrate the religious beliefs of others”? The Book of Mormon’s big showstopper is “Hasa Diga Eebowai” which apparently translates as “F*** you, God.” The U.S. secretary of state stood and cheered.

Why does Secretary Clinton regard “F*** you, God” as a fun toe-tapper for all the family but “F*** you, Allah” as “disgusting and reprehensible”? The obvious answer is that, if you sing the latter, you’ll find a far more motivated crowd waiting for you at the stage door. So the “leader of the free world” and “the most powerful man in the world” (to revive two cobwebbed phrases nobody seems to apply to the president of the United States anymore) is telling the planet that the way to ensure your beliefs command his “respect” is to be willing to burn and bomb and kill. You Mormons need to get with the program.

#page#Meanwhile, this last week has seen the publication of two controversial magazines in France: One, called Closer, showed Prince William’s lovely bride, the Duchess of Cambridge, without her bikini top on. The other, the satirical publication Charlie Hebdo, showed some bloke who died in the seventh century without his bikini top on. In response, a kosher grocery store was firebombed, injuring four people. Which group was responsible? Yes, frenzied Anglicans defending the honor of the wife of the future supreme governor of the Church of England rampaged through Jewish grocery stores yelling, “Behead the enemies of the House of Windsor!” The embassy-burning mobs well understand the fraudulence of Obama and Clinton’s professions of generalized “respect” for “all faiths.” As a headline in the Karachi Express-Tribune puts it:

“Ultimatum to U.S.: Criminalize Blasphemy or Lose Consulate.”#ad#

The assistant attorney general of the United States has said he does not rule out a law against blasphemy, so that’s good news, isn’t it? Once we’ve got government commissars regulating movies, and cartoons, and teddy bears and children’s piggy-banks and Burger King ice-cream tubs and inflatable sex-shop dolls and non-sharia-compliant mustaches (just to round up a few of the innumerable grievances of Islam), all the bad stuff will go away, right?

If you’ll forgive a book plug before General Dempsey calls me up and asks me to withdraw it from publication, the paperback of my latest, After America, has just come out. On page 297, I speculate on how future generations will look back on our time from a decade or two hence:

In the Middle East, Islam had always been beyond criticism. It was only natural that, as their numbers grew in Europe, North America, and Australia, observant Muslims would seek the same protections in their new lands. But they could not have foreseen how eager Western leaders would be to serve as their enablers.#...#As the more cynical Islamic imperialists occasionally reflected, how quickly the supposed defenders of liberal, pluralist, Western values came to sound as if they were competing to be Islam’s lead prison bitch.

Gee, that’d make a pretty funny number for Koran: The Musical next time Secretary Clinton wants a night out on Broadway, wouldn’t it?

In the meantime, spare a thought for Abdullah Ismail, one of 10,000 Pakistanis who participated in a protest in Lahore the other day. He died after “feeling unwell from the smoke from U.S. flags burnt at the rally.” But don’t worry: I’m sure the new Obama flag is far less toxic, and there’s no risk of keeling over in mid-chant of “Death to America!”

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2012 Mark Steyn

Faceless Man in Gutless Press

I enjoy The New York Post and regard it as the least worst of the city's three daily newspapers. But, apropos the LA County sheriffs' enforcement of the Muslim Brotherhood's arrest warrant, this pathetic front page is not their finest hour.

What So Proudly We Inhale at the Twilight's Last Gleaming

To the list of Islamic grievances - film trailers, cartoons, teddy bears, false rumors of flushed Korans, Burger King ice-cream cartons, non-Sharia-compliant mustaches - we must now add the appalling toxicity of the American flag:

Around 10,000 people participated in the main rally organised on The Mall by the Tehreek Hurmat-i-Rasool (THR). The participants marched from Nila Gumbad to Masjid-i-Shuhada on The Mall. Despite a ban on rallies on The Mall, the road remained blocked for vehicular traffic from noon to 6pm...

One of the participants of the rally, Abdullah Ismail, passed away after he was taken to Mayo Hospital. Witnesses said he had complained of feeling unwell from the smoke from US flags burnt at the rally.

Poor Mr Ismail. If he'd burned an al-Qaeda flag, it is said to have a sweet perfume with a mildly narcotic quality. Now is the time for President Obama and Secretary Clinton to demonstrate our sensitivity by having the LA County sheriffs arrest some flag manufacturers.

Hearts and Minds

And again:

KABUL, Afghanistan — An Afghan police officer turned his gun on NATO troops at a remote checkpoint in the south of the country before dawn Sunday, killing four American troops, according to Afghan and international officials.

It was the third attack by Afghan forces or insurgents disguised in military uniforms against international forces in as many days, killing eight troops in all.

Maybe there's a screenwriter or a cartoonist LA County sheriffs could arrest.

Re: If Only Mitt Would Stop Preventing Us From Doing Our Jobs (The Sequel)

Further to yesterday's post, 2016 presidential nominee Joe Scarborough takes it to the next level: If only Steyn and Goldberg talking about me talking about Mitt preventing me from doing my job weren't preventing me from doing my job...

I use the term "court eunuchs" for the American media because their curiosity doesn't seem to function. In a week of dramatic and consequential news, nothing seems to arouse them (other than Romney press releases).

For example, the Egyptian president demands the arrest of an obscure American who made an unseen film. And whaddayaknow? Next thing that happens, back in the land of the free, a large posse of heavily armed officers descends on his apartment at midnight so that he can be "voluntarily" taken into custody for alleged "probation violations" - because, as everyone knows, in civilized societies breach-of-probation orders are always served at midnight on a weekend when the dark is so much more conducive to persuading householders to "volunteer".

Look at Jonah's post immediately below; look at the picture. What a pity Ambassador Stevens didn't enjoy the same level of "protection" as Mr Nakoula. Why, if only the United States could bring the same amount of firepower to bear in its Benghazi compound as it brings to a probation-violation arrest in Cerritos. But it's all about priorities, isn't it?

Any curiosity about that? Apparently not, judging from Scarborough's nothing-to-see-here tweets.

Jim Bennett compares Mrs Thatcher's response to the Ayatollah Khomeini's Rushdie fatwa with Obama's to the Muslim Brotherhood's demands. Salman Rushdie had been a vicious critic of the Conservative Party and the Prime Minister - he called her "Mrs Torture" - but Her Majesty's Government has provided him with safe houses and Special Branch protection for almost a quarter-century. By contrast, within 72 hours of Morsi's demands, Mr Nakoula is in a jail cell - "rounded up at midnight by brownshirted men for making a movie that embarrasses El Presidente".

The vacuum of American global influence is now swallowing the First Amendment. Any curiosity about that, journalists?

Media: If Only Mitt Would Stop Preventing Us From Doing Our Jobs . . .

If, like me, you've been wondering why the U.S. media has all but totally failed to cover the real issues in the Benghazi murders and the embassy seizures, wonder no more. "Mitt Romney Kept Us From Reporting On Security Failures":

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Talk about the conservative critique--and I think it's a fair critique, the conservative critique: that all you guys in the media were talking about Mitt Romney, you should have talked about the warnings with the embassy, etc., etc. And yes perhaps we should have.  But you know who didn't allow us to do that?

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Mitt Romney.

SCARBOROUGH: Mitt Romney. If Mitt Romney had kept his mouth shut, if he had not acted like a rank amateur, if he had not embarrassed himself--and by the way internally the campaign understands they screwed up, he's moved on, they know that... But Romney got in the way of the media looking at the president, going, wha-, wha-, what happened here? How did this happen? Now, those questions are going to be asked in the coming weeks. But they weren't asked in the first 24 hours because Romney was holding this horrific, irresponsible, press conference.      

As our friend Ed Driscoll remarks, Mitt apparently has the same impact on the media that certain cartoons and film trailers have on certain other demographics. One press conference and the massed ranks of American J-school alumni are jumping up and down in the street like inbred goatherds yelling "Death to Romney!" To avoid all this unnecessary inflaming, maybe the LA County sheriff could take Mitt into custody, too.

Media: If Only Mitt Would Stop Preventing Us From Doing Our Jobs...

If, like me, you've been wondering why the US media has all but totally failed to cover the real issues in the Benghazi murders and the embassy seizures, wonder no more. "Mitt Romney Kept Us From Reporting On Security Failures":

JOE SCARBOROUGH: Talk about the conservative critique--and I think it's a fair critique, the conservative critique: that all you guys in the media were talking about Mitt Romney, you should have talked about the warnings with the embassy, etc., etc. And yes perhaps we should have.  But you know who didn't allow us to do that?

MIKA BRZEZINSKI: Mitt Romney.

SCARBOROUGH: Mitt Romney. If Mitt Romney had kept his mouth shut, if he had not acted like a rank amateur, if he had not embarrassed himself--and by the way internally the campaign understands they screwed up, he's moved on, they know that... But Romney got in the way of the media looking at the president, going, wha-, wha-, what happened here? How did this happen? Now, those questions are going to be asked in the coming weeks. But they weren't asked in the first 24 hours because Romney was holding this horrific, irresponsible, press conference.      

As our friend Ed Driscoll remarks, Mitt apparently has the same impact on the media that certain cartoons and film trailers have on certain other demographics. One press conference and the massed ranks of American J-school alumni are jumping up and down in the street like inbred goatherds yelling "Death to Romney!" To avoid all this unnecessary inflaming, maybe the LA County sheriff could take Mitt into custody, too.