Mark Steyn's Blog, page 5

Woman of Chutzpah Update

As I mention below, Michelle Obama and John Kerry's presentation to Samira Ibrahim of the U.S. government's "Woman of Courage" Award (scheduled for tomorrow) has been put on hold pending belated State Department investigation of various tweets damning Jews, favoring Hitler, and expressing the desire to see America burn.

Miss Ibrahim says her Twitter account was hacked. This seems technically improbable.

Is the government that investigated Miss Ibrahim and decided she was a fit person to meet the first lady and get a gong from the secretary of state the same government that investigates you and decides whether you need to be vaporized by a drone? Or is that an entirely different level of checks and balances? 

Woolly Thinking

With Washington committed to prudent, sensible gun-control measures all reasonable people can agree on, there are still a few paranoid gun kooks out there bitterly clinging to their firearms and wondering what they'll be left with to ward off crime.

Answer: pom-poms.

Virgin on the Ridiculous

Samira Ibrahim is one of those women subjected to the post-Mubarak Egyptian Army's "virginity tests," and objected to it. Tomorrow at the State Department in Washington, in the presence of the first lady, Miss Ibrahim will be presented by John Kerry with the United States government's "Woman of Courage" Award. Our friends at The Weekly Standard have rounded up a few more examples of Miss Ibrahim's courageous stances.

On the Bulgarian bus driver and Israeli tourists murdered by a suicide bomber last summer:

An explosion on a bus carrying Israelis in Burgas airport in Bulgaria on the Black Sea. Today is a very sweet day with a lot of very sweet news.

Her favorite Hitler quote:

I have discovered with the passage of days, that no act contrary to morality, no crime against society, takes place, except with the Jews having a hand in it. Hitler.

And her reaction to the Cairo mob raising the al-Qaeda flag over the U.S. embassy:

Today is the anniversary of 9/11. May every year come with America burning.

You can view Miss Ibrahim's tweets here.

The United States has the biggest, most expensive government on the planet. For an ordinary U.S. citizen merely to be ushered into the presence of the president and his wife requires a Social Security and background check. But nobody thinks to do a Google search before getting the first lady and secretary of state to give an award to a terrorism-supporting America-hater.

I don't know whether it takes "courage" for a woman who wants to see "America burning" to accept an honor from Michelle Obama and John Kerry. But, if the U.S. government has a Woman of Chutzpah Award, I certainly hope she makes the shortlist.

CPAC Tentwatch

Jonah Goldberg, Mark Krikorian and NR's editors have written here about CPAC's decision to exclude Chris Christie, GOProud, and those who believe in enforcing the nation's immigration laws. I know nothing about the organization's internal machinations, but the latest expulsion I take personally. On the only occasion I've ever spoken at CPAC, I had the honor of being introduced by Pamela Geller. Back then, some fellows were trying to rule her beyond the pale and leaning on me to get her kicked off the much coveted (ha!) Steyn-intro spot. I told 'em to take a hike: She's a fearless fighter on free speech and other issues, and I wish there were more with her spirit. Yet five years on it seems she too is unacceptable to CPAC:

For the last four years, Pamela Geller of AtlasShrugs.com and the American Freedom Defense Initiative have held events at CPAC featuring guests she invites to discuss the influence of Islamism on America. But this year, the American Conservative Union (ACU) has no room for Geller or her message...

In years past, the events were standing room only thanks to their popularity, but that apparently was not enough to counter pressure brought to bear from somewhere to exclude Geller’s message.

After the fiasco of last November, it's appropriate for the American right to consider new strategies. Narrowing the message, restricting the debate and enforcing conformity doesn't seem an obvious winner.

Supremacist Courts

Jay, re last week's Canadian Supreme Court decision, there's no doubt (after some partial victories by us northern free-speechers in recent years) that it's a serious setback for freedom of expression. The defendant, Bill Whatcott, is not partial to those of a homosexual bent. If one feels otherwise on these matters, it's reasonable to be offended by his observations. But it's entirely unreasonable to criminalize them. Bruce Bawer, who falls into the protected class on whose behalf the Canadian jurists claimed to act, says take your finely balanced, reasoned, nuanced judgment, and shove it:

Don’t do me any favors. I feel far less threatened by the likes of Whatcott than I do by courts that consider it their prerogative to limit the liberties of a free people in such an arrogant fashion. The justices seem not to recognize – or to care – that if you want to live in a truly free society, you’ve got to be willing to share that society with people who consider you an abomination and who feel compelled to shout their views from the rooftops.

He's right. Bill Whatcott is far less of a threat to liberty than those six judges. What's weird about all this is that, around the world, supposedly free peoples are happy to accord the bench (even a bench whose arguments are as incoherent as the Ottawa guys') a monopoly power on all the great questions of the age. Even as every other societal institution in the West -- church, monarchy -- has lost authority, blokes in black robes have accrued more and more. South of the border, Paul Mirengoff has a post today on what he calls "the Supreme Court's empire" -- i.e., the notion that five judges have the power to redefine marriage. Which, in effect, means an institution that predates the United Sates by several millennia will be defined for a third of a billion people by whichever way Anthony Kennedy feels like swingin' that morning. The universal deference to judicial supremacism is bizarre and unbecoming to a free people.

As a subject of Her Canadian Majesty, I reject not so much the supreme court's ruling as their claim to jurisdiction. And I advise my compatriots to do the same. If you chance to run into one of these bozo jurists at a dinner party and they want to explain how subtle and nuanced their reasoning is, tell them, "Well, you're entitled to your opinion. And so am I."

Sequestageddon

A few weeks ago, Ann Coulter announced that she was bored of American politics and was spending her days watching Turner Classic Movies. I confess that, when it comes to Beltway melodrama, I too am fighting vainly the old ennui, and minded to plump up the pillows and settle back with a bucket of bonbons and a beribboned Shih-tzu for an all-night Norma Shearer marathon. At least, unlike Washington, there’s a chance you may catch something you haven’t already seen a hundred times before. For example, I’ve a yen to see Roberta (RKO, 1935), in which Irene Dunne sings:

Yesterdays

Yesterdays

Days I knew as happy sweet sequester’d days#...#

I believe that was the last known use of this blameless and mellifluous word until it was conscripted by the political class for this month’s dreary Mayan Apocalypse of the Month thrill ride. Say what you like about those Mayan guys, but they only schedule an apocalypse once every 5,126 years. Only Washington would try to pull it off every six weeks. If I understand correctly, by the time you read this, the planes will be dropping from the skies; the drip-feeds in every emergency room will be dry; every creature on the endangered species list will have broken free from our pristine federally manned national parks to be left for roadkill in the potholed asphalt of America’s crumbling interstates; you’ll turn on your bathroom faucet only to find the town reservoir choked with fecal coliform; the Ebola virus will be rampant across Ohio, Florida, New Hampshire, and other swing states, where it will nevertheless enjoy higher approval ratings than Marco Rubio and every other prospective GOP nominee. The sequester supposedly cuts $44 billion from the federal budget -- or from the rate of growth of the federal budget. Whatever. $44 billion is about what the United States government borrows every nine days, so it’s not a lot. But it’s apparently responsible for everything that matters in American life.#ad#

That being so, maybe it would be easier to reinstate this critical $44 billion and cut the other $3.8 trillion, which is apparently responsible for nothing other than Harry Reid’s beloved federally funded cowboy-poetry festival and the cost of the dress uniforms for the military detachment accompanying the first lady at her Oscars appearance. Congresswoman Maxine Waters, ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee, warned of “over 170 million jobs that could be lost” thanks to the sequester. There are only 135 million jobs in America, but the sequester gods are so powerful they can eliminate every job in Canada, Britain, and Germany too. Why, because of this weekend’s looming Mayan Apocalypse, President Obama declined to deploy a carrier to the Persian Gulf, concerned that it might be left on the other side of the planet completely sequestered with no fuel to limp back home and insufficient stores in the mess-hall larder to cook up federally compliant slop. So, when the mullahs go nuclear and drop the big one on Tel Aviv, it will be the fault of the Republicans for failing to agree to a prudent, balanced, fiscally responsible plan -- like the Senate’s latest deficit-reduction proposal, which, as is traditional, increases the deficit (by $7 billion).

It’s not just the U.S. fleet and air-traffic control and clean water that have been swept into the garbage can of history by Sequestageddon, but even the most venerable Beltway colossus. In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, but surely Bob Woodward is here to stay -- or so we thought until he ventured some very mild criticism of the president’s negotiating technique, which appears to be a cross between a suicide-bomber and Cleavon Little taking himself hostage in Blazing Saddles. In a flash, Woodward’s four decades of loyal service were forgotten and the court eunuchs of the Obama media turned on their own: He’s about one news cycle away from being revealed as on the take from the Koch brothers and the real father of Trig Palin.#page#

Speaking of the first lady’s Academy Awards appearance, I see she gave the Oscar for Best Film to Ben Affleck’s movie Argo. If you haven’t seen the picture, it’s about a group of government operatives whose ingenious plan to achieve their objectives depends on creating a fake movie as a cover story. Obama seems to have taken this inspiring tale to heart. In the Affleck version, the fake movie is a space opera for which John Goodman rustles up a few cheesy costume designs for some generic aliens. They make a promotional brochure, take out an ad in Variety, and hold a well-attended press conference, awash in cocktails and canapés. But there is no movie. And so it goes with Obama’s monthly cliffhangers. The White House press corps show up for the reception, and they all excitedly report the intriguing teasers about the white-knuckle thriller coming soon to your town: This weekend, Les Sequesterables, starring Maxine “I Dreamed a Dream” Waters and a cast of hundreds of millions of downtrodden laid-off extras; next week Zero Debt Thirty, in which Paul Ryan proposes cutting $30 from the federal budget and all civilized life comes to an end; next month Django Short-Changed, in which a retired bounty hunter discovers his Social Security check is a buck seventy-three lower than usual because cruel plantation owners like Mitt Romney aren’t willing to pay their fair share; and coming soon No Silver Linings Playbook, in which Barack Obama warns yet again that total societal collapse is just around the corner but at the eleventh hour manages to avert it by swooping in with a daring, last-minute tax increase.#ad#

Government-by-fake-disaster-movie seems to be going swimmingly for Obama. Every Republican attempt at fiscal discipline now ends with both higher spending and more taxes: That’s the way it went with the Christmas blockbuster Fiscal Cliff, and that’s the way to bet with Les Sequesterables, too. Even the IRS can’t keep up: “Tax season” is upon us, and yet they’re not accepting tax returns from millions of Americans because the IRS hasn’t yet managed to process the tax changes passed in the dead of night at New Year. American government is a joke -- and, sadly, not one of those jokes that everybody takes seriously and kicks up a fuss about, like Seth MacFarlane’s “We Saw Your Boobs” song that The New Yorker attacked for its “hostility to women in the workplace” or Joan Rivers’ joke about Heidi Klum’s Oscars gown that Abraham Foxman’s Anti-Defamation League is busy issuing stern denunciations of. No, in an America in which every throwaway gag is a hate crime, Obama’s fake disaster movie of the month is the only joke we all go along with, even though he’s insulting our intelligence far more than Seth and the Los Angeles Gay Men’s Chorus singing “We Saw Your Boobs” to Anne Hathaway and Halle Berry.

Can you pierce the mists of time and go back all the way to the year 2007? Back then, federal spending was 40 percent lower than it is today. In a mere half-decade, has all that 40 percent gravy become so indispensable to the general welfare that not even a teensy-weensy sliver of it can be cut?

If you really believe that, then America is going to die, and a gullible citizenry willing to give this laughable charade the time of day will bear ultimate responsibility. We have seen the boobs, and they are us.

— Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2013 Mark Steyn

Islam Is an Assassination Target's Best Friend

Some of us wrote about the attempt to kill Danish free-speecher Lars Hedegaard at point blank range a few hours after it happened. But the wise old hands at The New York Times waited almost a month, until (in keeping with their famously torpid motto "All the news that's fit to print") they found an angle that would not discombulate the sensibilities of their delicate readers. Lo and behold:

Danish Opponent of Islam Is Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak

Brilliant! You don't really have to bother reading it after that, but Andrew Higgins fills the allotted space anyway:

COPENHAGEN — When a would-be assassin disguised as a postman shot at — and just missed — the head of Lars Hedegaard, an anti-Islam polemicist and former newspaper editor, this month, a cloud of suspicion immediately fell on Denmark’s Muslim minority.

Here we go! The great thing about actual violence by Muslims is that it provides an excellent opportunity to agonize about purely hypothetical violence against Muslims. Or as a droll correspondent of the great Australian wag Tim Blair put it, in a note perfect parody of coverage of the London Tube attacks:

British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow’s Train Bombing

And, eight years on, so it goes. Diana West, in a fine analysis, pierces the "cloud", which is mostly Mr Higgins' fog of discreet evasions. Whether or not a "cloud of suspicion" should fall on "Denmark's Muslim minority", it should certainly fall on The New York Times and the Danish and Swedish press, which can't seem to resist giving the impression that it would be best "for the future of humanity if the gunman had had better aim" - and therefore, in some vague, not quite explicit sense, Mr Hedegaard is a legitimate target, and the real "victims" here are poor blameless Muslims.

What sort of "newspaper" takes a month to publish a news story? It's certainly not because they're covering all the other stuff going on in Scandinavia. The last time I appeared with Lars in Copenhagen, the event had to be protected by PET, the Danish Security & Intelligence Service (very stylish fellows). The other speakers included a guy whose kitchen had been firebombed, and a lady whose family restaurant had been shot up. Gosh, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a "cloud of suspicion" and gunsmoke. But, either way, The New York Times can't see a thing.

Islam is an Assassination Target's Best Friend

Some of us wrote about the attempt to kill Danish free-speecher Lars Hedegaard at point blank range a few hours after it happened. But the wise old hands at The New York Times waited almost a month, until (in keeping with their famously torpid motto "All the news that's fit to print") they found an angle that would not discombulate the sensibilities of their delicate readers. Lo and behold:

Danish Opponent of Islam Is Attacked, and Muslims Defend His Right to Speak

Brilliant! You don't really have to bother reading it after that, but Andrew Higgins fills the allotted space anyway:

COPENHAGEN — When a would-be assassin disguised as a postman shot at — and just missed — the head of Lars Hedegaard, an anti-Islam polemicist and former newspaper editor, this month, a cloud of suspicion immediately fell on Denmark’s Muslim minority.

Here we go! The great thing about actual violence by Muslims is that it provides an excellent opportunity to agonize about purely hypothetical violence against Muslims. Or as a droll correspondent of the great Australian wag Tim Blair put it, in a note perfect parody of coverage of the London Tube attacks:

British Muslims Fear Repercussions Over Tomorrow’s Train Bombing

And, eight years on, so it goes. Diana West, in a fine analysis, pierces the "cloud", which is mostly Mr Higgins' fog of discreet evasions. Whether or not a "cloud of suspicion" should fall on "Denmark's Muslim minority", it should certainly fall on The New York Times and the Danish and Swedish press, which can't seem to resist giving the impression that it would be best "for the future of humanity if the gunman had had better aim" - and therefore, in some vague, not quite explicit sense, Mr Hedegaard is a legitimate target, and the real "victims" here are poor blameless Muslims.

What sort of "newspaper" takes a month to publish a news story? It's certainly not because they're covering all the other stuff going on in Scandinavia. The last time I appeared with Lars in Copenhagen, the event had to be protected by PET, the Danish Security & Intelligence Service (very stylish fellows). The other speakers included a guy whose kitchen had been firebombed, and a lady whose family restaurant had been shot up. Gosh, sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between a "cloud of suspicion" and gunsmoke. But, either way, The New York Times can't see a thing.

Man in Urgent Need of Self-Sensitivity Training

 Today's edition of the Toronto Star effortlessly produces the headline of the day:

Black police officer faces charges for not investigating racial taunts against himself

Re: The Void

Jonah, re Alvin Felzenberg on the "void Bill Buckley left", I agree there's plenty of funny guys around. What I think Mr Felzenberg is getting at is an urbanity and wit that gave him a luster way beyond politics. See here, for example: Bill with Brigitte Bardot.

I'm not sure who the 2013 equivalent of Bébé is, but I can't see whoever she is being thrilled to be photographed in a nightclub with you or me or even John Podhoretz. And, in some vague unquantifiable way, I think that's a bit of a loss. You notice that the lefties don't mind Rush being on his own show or turning up on Fox News, but they go bananas when he judges Miss America or does a guest shot on "The Family Guy". They want a world in which the price of avowed conservatism is exclusion from the broader culture: Bill Buckley cocked a snook at that, very stylishly, for half-a-century.