Mark Steyn's Blog, page 28

Dissent Is the Highest Form of . . . No, Wait

Maggie, the strange thing about that Molly Redden piece on Mark Regnerus in The New Republic is the way it's written with complete assurance that no one will find it the least bit weird that a supposed journal of ideas is calling for someone to be expunged from polite society for the crime of disagreeing with them.

And what outrage has this fringe wacko -- er, sorry, widely-published peer-reviewed fringe wacko -- committed? Why, he "traffics in the mid-century notion that the timing of marriage should be arranged around a woman’s 'most fertile years'”! Can't have that, can we? If he wants to traffic in mid-century notions, he should be playing Branson.

Well, there's a lot of "mid-century notions" around -- like Social Security and Medicare -- and Ms. Redden and her colleagues on the left insist that they're inviolable and we having to keep trafficking in them even unto national bankruptcy, notwithstanding that these programs require "mid-century notions" on fertility rates to fund them. Maybe the question of which "mid-century notions" are sacrosanct and which are beyond the pale and any relationship between the two would make an interesting debate. But, like far too many "liberals," Ms. Redden feels that's too much of a chore and it's easier just to get everyone she labels "retrograde" banned.

I hate to bring up other "mid-century notions" but intellectual diversity on the left is increasingly indistinguishable from Tupperware night with the Stepford Wives.

Dissent is the Highest Form of ...no, wait

Maggie, the strange thing about that Molly Redden piece on Mark Regnerus in The New Republic is the way it's written with complete assurance that no one will find it the least bit weird that a supposed journal of ideas is calling for someone to be expunged from polite society for the crime of disagreeing with them.

And what outrage has this fringe wacko - er, sorry, widely-published peer-reviewed fringe wacko - committed? Why, he "traffics in the mid-century notion that the timing of marriage should be arranged around a woman’s 'most fertile years'”! Can't have that, can we? If he wants to traffic in mid-century notions, he should be playing Branson.

Well, there's a lot of "mid-century notions" around - like Social Security and Medicare - and Ms Redden and her colleagues on the left insist that they're inviolable and we having to keep trafficking in them even unto national democracy, notwithstanding that these programs require "mid-century notions" on fertility rates to fund them. Maybe the question of which "mid-century notions" are sacrosanct and which are beyond the pale and any relationship between the two would make an interesting debate. But, like far too many "liberals", Ms Redden feels that's too much of a chore and it's easier just to get everyone she labels "retrograde" banned.

I hate to bring up other "mid-century notions" but intellectual diversity on the left is increasingly indistinguishable from Tupperware night with the Stepford Wives.

There's a Bear in the Woods (But Not in Red Square)

It seems that Tsar Putin's gay evolution is taking rather longer than President Obama's:

A Moscow city court has upheld a ruling banning gay pride parades for the next 100 years.

The Tverskoi district court had previously ruled that Moscow authorities' decision to prohibit gay public events from March 2012 to May 2112 was legal.

No word on whether this will affect future performances of the Russian strongman's oddly homoerotic rendition of "I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill".

(via Scaramouche)

New Kids on the Barack Block

My weekend column is about President Obama's assiduous courtship of small-town America (Beverly Hills). But I missed this one. The other day, the Leader of the Free World had a private meeting with ...Angela Merkel? Putin? the Chinese Politburo? Perish the thought:

Before heading off for a breakfast Thursday that officially concluded his two-day fundraising trip to Los Angeles, President Barack Obama met privately at the Beverly Hilton with two dozen of Hollywood’s hottest young stars, urging them to involve themselves in his re-election campaign.

Among those who met with the president were The Avengers star Jeremy Renner, Glee actress Dianna Agron, Star Trek’s Zachary Quinto, Southland’s Ben McKenzie, Jessica Alba, Bryan Greenberg, Adam Rodriguez, Zach Braff, Brandon Routh, Ian Somerhalder, Jared Leto, Kal Penn and Sophia Bush.

No relation, presumably. As Miss Bush subsequently tweeted:

Bush: "It was amazing to see @iansomerhalder @ZacharyQuinto @DiannaAgron and @BryanGreenberg with the POTUS today. Good peeps. #YoungAmericans."

Alba: "Got up bright & early to hear @BarackObama speak w an awesome group"

Somerhalder: "Totally surreal morning. Met up with some friends, had coffee with President Obama now tweeting.The 21st century… Let’s do this." Sooh after, he followed up with, "Just spent my morning w/this man talkn green energy,a better America&being a young American-wow"

Wow indeed. I'm inclined to agree that POTUS talking green energy with an awesome group of young American peeps is totally 21st century.

Our Celebrity President

Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee a few days ago -- that’s 60 years on the throne. Just to put it in perspective, she’s been queen since Harry S. Truman was president. At any rate, her jubilee has been a huge success, save for a few churlish republicans in various corners of Her Majesty’s realms from London to Toronto to Sydney pointing out how absurd it is for grown citizens to be fawning over a distant head of state who lives in a fabulous, glittering cocoon entirely disconnected from ordinary life.

Which brings us to President Obama.

Last week, the republic’s citizen-president passed among his fellow Americans. Where? Cleveland? Dubuque? Presque Isle, Maine? No, Beverly Hills. These days, it’s pretty much always Beverly Hills or Manhattan, because that’s where the money is. That’s the Green Zone, and you losers are outside it. Appearing at an Obama fundraiser at the home of Glee creator Ryan Murphy and his "fiancé" David Miller, the president, reasonably enough, had difficulty distinguishing one A-list Hollywood summit from another. “I just came from a wonderful event over at the Wilshire or the Hilton -- I’m not sure which,” said Obama, “because you go through the kitchens of all these places and so you never are quite sure where you are.”

#ad#Ah, the burdens of stardom. The old celebrities-have-to-enter-through-the-kitchen line. The last time I heard that was a couple of decades back in London when someone was commiserating with Sinatra on having to be ushered in through the back. Frank brushed it aside. We were at the Savoy, or maybe the Waldorf. I can’t remember, and I came in through the front door. Oddly enough, the Queen enters hotels through the lobby. So do Prince William and his lovely bride. A month ago, they stayed at a pub in Suffolk for a friend’s wedding, and came in through the same door as mere mortals. Imagine that!

So far this year, President Obama has been to three times as many fundraisers as President Bush had attended by this point in the 2004 campaign. This is what the New York Post calls his “torrid pace,” although judging from those remarks in California he’s about as torrid as an overworked gigolo staggering punchily through the last mambo of the evening. According to Brendan J. Doherty’s forthcoming book The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign, Obama has held more fundraisers than the previous five presidents’ reelection campaigns combined.

This is all he does now. But hey, unlike those inbred monarchies with their dukes and marquesses and whatnot, at least he gets out among the masses. Why, in a typical week, you’ll find him at a fundraiser at George Clooney’s home in Los Angeles with Barbra Streisand and Salma Hayek. These are people who are in touch with the needs of ordinary Americans because they have played ordinary Americans in several of their movies. And then only four days later the president was in New York for a fundraiser hosted by Ricky Martin, the only man on the planet whose evolution on gayness took longer than Obama’s. It’s true that moneyed celebrities in, say, Pocatello or Tuscaloosa have not been able to tempt the president to hold a lavish fundraiser in Idaho or Alabama, but he does fly over them once in a while. Why, only a week ago, he was on Air Force One accompanied by Jon Bon Jovi en route to a fundraiser called Barack on Broadway.

Any American can attend an Obama event for a donation of a mere $35,800 -- the cost of the fundraiser hosted by Dreamworks honcho Jeffrey Katzenberg, and the one hosted by Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg, and the one hosted by Will Smith and Jada Pinkett, and the one hosted by Melanie Griffith and Antonio Banderas, and the one hosted by Crosby, Stills, and Nash. $35,800 is a curiously non-round figure. Perhaps the ticket cost is $36,000, but under Obamacare there’s a $200 co-pay. Those of us who grew up in hidebound, class-ridden monarchies are familiar with the old proverb that a cat can look at a king. But in America only a cool cat can look at the king.

However, there are some cheap seats available. A year and a half ago, big-money Democrats in Rhode Island paid $7,500 per person for the privilege of having dinner with President Obama at a private home in Providence. He showed up for 20 minutes and then said he couldn’t stay for dinner. “I’ve got to go home to walk the dog and scoop the poop,” he told them, because when you’ve paid seven-and-a-half grand for dinner nothing puts you in the mood to eat like a guy talking about canine fecal matter. And, having done the poop gag, the president upped and exited, and left bigshot Dems to pass the evening talking to the guy from across the street. But you’ve got to admit that’s a memorable night out: $7,500 for Dinner with Obama* (*dinner with Obama not included).

#page#And here’s an even better deal, for those who, despite the roaring economy, can’t afford even $7,500 for non-dinner with Obama: The president of the United States is raffling himself off! For the cost of a $3 non-refundable online-application processing fee, you and your loved one can have your names put in a large presidential hat from which the FBI background-check team will pluck two to be ushered into the presence of their humble citizen-executive. That’s to say, somewhere across the fruited plain, a common-or-garden non-celebrity will win the opportunity to attend an Obama fundraiser at the home of Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker, co-hosted by Vogue editor Anna Wintour, the British-born inspiration for the movie The Devil Wears Prada. I wish this were a parody, but I’m not that good. But I’m sure Sarah Jessica and Anna will treat you just like any other minor celebrity they’ve accidentally been seated next to due to a hideous faux pas in placement, even if you do dip the wrong end of the arugula in the amuse-bouche.

#ad#If you’re wondering who Anna Wintour is, boy, what a schlub you are: She’s renowned throughout the fashion world for her scary bangs. I’m referring to her hair, not to the last sound Osama bin Laden heard as the bullet headed toward his eye socket on the personal orders of the president, in case you’ve forgotten. But that’s the kind of inside tidbit you’ll be getting, as the commander-in-chief leaks highly classified national-security details to you over the zebra mussel in a Eurasian-milfoil coulis. For a donation of $35,800, he’ll pose with you in a Seal Team Six uniform with one foot on Osama’s corpse (played by Harry Reid). For a donation of $46,800, he’ll send an unmanned drone to hover amusingly over your sister-in-law’s house. For a donation of $77,800, he’ll install you as the next president-for-life of Syria (liability waiver required). For a donation of $159,800, he’ll take you into Sarah Jessica’s guest bedroom and give you the full 007 while Carly Simon sings “Nobody Does It Better.”

There are monarchies and republics aplenty, but there’s only one 24/7 celebrity fundraising presidency. If it’s Tuesday, it must be Kim Cattrall, or Hootie and the Blowfish, or Laverne and Shirley, or the ShamWow guy#...#I wonder if the Queen ever marvels at the transformation of the American presidency since her time with Truman. Ah, well. If you can’t stand the klieg-light heat of Obama’s celebrity, stay out of the Beverly Wilshire kitchen.

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

Bozo the Jurist

I wrote yesterday about an important legal victory for free speech up in Canada, in which I was privileged to play a small part. Whenever I mention the subject, a percentage of American readers always respond, "Thank God we have the First Amendment." But free speech is under threat here, too, albeit in subtler ways. Michelle Malkin has a good column on the attempts by a fellow called Brett Kimberlin to ruin by any means necessary the lives of those who cross him:

Free speech is under fire. Online thugs are targeting bloggers (mostly conservative, but not all) who have dared to expose a convicted bomber and perjuring vexatious litigant now enjoying a comfy life as a liberally-subsidized social justice operative. Where do your elected representatives stand on this threat to our founding principles?

At a hearing in Maryland arising from Kimberlin's "lawfare" campaign, the blogger Aaron Walker was arrested. Aside from the merits of the case, I was struck by the appalling performance of the presiding judge, one C. J. Vaughey. As is increasingly the way with our decaying justice system, there is no easily searchable court transcript, only an audio tape that a few individual bloggers have been painstakingly transcribing. Judge Vaughey comes across as a near parodic combination of bluster, ignorance and narcissism:

THE COURT: –You’ve decided to battle, and he comes back. And see, you’re — you — you’re the kind of guy, you don’t want to get into this to settle this, mano y mano. You want to get all these friends who got nothing else to do with their time, in this judge’s opinion, because — my God, I’m a little bit older than you are, and I haven’t got enough time in the day to do all the things I want to do. And I thought by retirement, I would have less to do. I got more! Because everybody knows I’m free! So they all come to me. But you, you are starting a — a conflagration, for lack of a better word, and you’re just letting the thing go recklessly no matter where it goes. I mean, you get some — and I’m going to use word I (ph) — freak somewhere up Oklahoma, got nothing better to do with his time, so he does the nastiest things in the world he can do to this poor gentleman. What right has that guy got to do it?

WALKER: He has no right to do that, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Well, he’s — you incited him.

WALKER: But, your honor, I did not incite him within the Brandenburg standard though.

THE COURT: Forget Bradenburg [sic]. Let’s go by Vaughey right now, and common sense out in the world. But you know, where I grew up in Brooklyn, when that stuff was pulled, it was settled real quickly.

WALKER: I’m not sure what that means, your honor.

THE COURT: –Very quickly. And I’m not going to talk about those ways, but boy, it ended fast. I even can tell you, when I grew up in my community, you wanted to date an Italian girl, you had to get the Italian boy’s permission. But that was the old neighborhoods back in the city. And it was really fair. When someone did something up there to you, your sister, your girlfriend, you got some friends to take them for a ride in the back of the truck.

Over the years, I've faced unsympathetic judges in various courts around the world, but I can't recall ever listening to such a stream of unjudicial drivel from the bench as that which poured from Judge Vaughey. If Andy McCarthy or Ed Whelan or our other legal eagles can help me here, I'm genuinely curious: Is this Vaughey clod unusually awful? Or all too typical?

Re-Education Camp

You don't generally get to pick your battles, and, if you'd asked me circa 2007 if I wanted to spend much of the next half-decade battling for the restoration of freedom of speech in Canada and elsewhere, I'd probably have decamped to the South Sandwich Islands. But then the Canadian Islamic Congress and their statist enablers in the "human rights" racket attempted to impose a de facto lifetime publication ban on me, and so I found myself conscripted to the cause.

It's been a long, slow process, but the victories have been real. Section 13 of the Canadian "Human Rights" Code has as a practical matter been rendered unenforceable. It's now about to be removed from the law formally. It passed its third reading in the House of Commons, which means it only requires a vote in the Senate and Royal Assent (yes, yes, calm down, Kevin Williamson et al), and it's history. This twit from Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition is a good example of what we've been up against:

New Democrat public safety critic Randall Garrison said Wednesday that, due to the large number of hate crimes, the human rights commission needs to have the power to combat the issue online and force individuals and groups to remove websites containing hateful speech.

Removing the sections from the human rights code will effectively strip the commission of its power to educate Canadians and shut down inappropriate websites, he said.

“We do have a serious problem,” Garrison said. “If you take away the power to take (websites) down, it’s not clear they have any mandate to even to talk to people about it and educate them about it.”

Clear off, you twerp. I don't want the state to have a "mandate" to "educate" the citizenry about their thought-crimes. Even if I did not object on principle, one thing I've learned during this five-year campaign is that the statist hacks Canada's official opposition is so eager to empower are, almost to a man, woman and pre-op transsexual, either too stupid or bullying to be entrusted with the task. Mr Garrison himself would appear to be a fine example of the former, at least.

If it's a choice between an unlovely citizenry with all its flaws or an overbearing state policing their opinions, I know which is the lesser evil. What a shame a "progressive" "liberal" "socialist" like Randall Garrison has such a low opinion of his fellow citizens.

The Unbearable Straightness of Being

The Atlantic's Garance Franke-Ruta observes that "Americans have no idea how few gay people there are":

In 2002, a quarter of those surveyed guessed upwards of a quarter of Americans were gay or lesbian (or "homosexual," the third option given). By 2011, that misperception had only grown, with more than a third of those surveyed now guessing that more than 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian. Women and young adults were most likely to provide high estimates, approximating that 30 percent of the population is gay. Overall, "U.S. adults, on average, estimate that 25 percent of Americans are gay or lesbian," Gallup found. Only 4 percent of all those surveyed in 2011 and about 8 percent of those surveyed in 2002 correctly guessed that fewer than 5 percent of Americans identify as gay or lesbian.

Over at Powerline, John Hinderaker comments:

How on Earth can the average American believe that one-quarter of the men and women he sees every day are gay? Does that make any possible sense? Are one-quarter of your relatives gay, or your co-workers or neighbors? Of course not (unless you live in certain precincts of San Francisco). Glenn Reynolds’s explanation, perhaps tongue in cheek, was that there are so many gays on television, and I think that must be at least part of the answer. A vastly disproportionate number of characters in TV sitcoms and dramas are homosexual. A second and closely related factor is that homosexuality features disproportionately as a theme in movies, books and so on. It is an extraordinary instance of culture eclipsing reality.

I'd add that the schools talk about it non-stop. At my kids' tiny and pitifully non-diverse rural grade-school, by Second or Third Grade the class wags are minded to declare themselves gay just to make the dear old guidance counselor feel her work has not been in vain. My favorite example of "culture eclipsing reality" is the poignant tale I cited recently of the Gay-Straight Alliance at Pembroke Academy in New Hampshire:

The school-approved GSA began five years ago with an ambitious platform of exciting gay activities. “They had plans for group events, like bake sales and car washes, but they never came to pass,” explained Ms Yackanin, the social studies teacher who served as the GSA’s first advisor.

From a lack of gay bake sales and gay car washes, the GSA has now advanced to a lack of gays. “The students just stopped coming,” said Mrs McCrum, the new Spanish teacher who took over the GSA at the start of this school year. This is the homophobic reality of our education system: a school gay group that has everything it needs except gays. Mrs Yackanin is reported by the Pembroke Academy paper as “saying to heterosexuals that the GSA is a resource for the entire school community.” C’mon, you guys, what’s wrong with you? No penetrative sex with other boys is required, or even heavy petting. It’s all about getting together in the old school spirit and organizing a gay car wash.

Given the relentless but boring propagandizing of the culture, I would expect the Gallup trend to continue: By 2020, polls will show that Americans think 87 per cent of people are gay, and Pembroke Academy will have made participation in the gay bake sale compulsory.

Onward and Upward...

If, as is claimed, President Obama is the tightest tightwad since Ike, you'll be relieved to hear those throw-granny-off-the-cliff Republicans still like to splash it around:

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives, which took office in January 2011, has enacted federal spending bills under which the national debt has increased more in less than one term of Congress than in the first 97 Congresses combined.

In the fifteen months that the Republican-controlled House of Representatives--led by Speaker John Boehner--has effectively enjoyed a constitutional veto over federal spending, the federal government’s debt has increased by about $1.59 trillion.

As I always say, debt-per-capita comparisons with Greece or anyone else matter less than the hard-dollar sums. Nobody anywhere on the planet spends this much money that it doesn't have. And at some point the political institutions of the United States have to demonstrate the capacity for serious course correction. 2010 didn't do that. If 2012 doesn't, the world will conclude that America is determined to spend to the end, and make its dispositions accordingly.

All-You-Can-Eat News Buffet

Like Richard Fernandez, I too was grabbed by this headline:

Canada Cannibal Says He Believed Victim Was An Alien

But I confess I was a bit confused. I thought it was about the Canadian porn star who ate his gay lover a few days ago and then mailed a leftover foot to the Tory Party and a leftover hand to the Liberals. No idea what extremity he mailed to the New Democratic Party, but the Post Office appears to have misplaced it.

However, it turns out the cannibal/gay story is a different one from the cannibal/alien story. (I wrote about the latter here.) You wait ages for a Canadian cannibal story, and then they all show up at once.

(If you're concerned that Americans aren't pulling weight in this area, don't worry.)

PS If I had to bet, I'd predict a modest rise in cannibalism cases in the years ahead. Ours is not an age that values the maintenance of traditional inhibitions, and I'd be surprised if this one were to hold.

[UPDATE: Commercial possibilities?]