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Thank you for your kind (and unkind) letters from around the world. Mark reads all mail, but especially enjoys the vicious ones. Each day Monday to Friday we pick six of the best for our Daily Delivery. So drop a line to Mark's Mailbox, and on Friday if you're chosen to be the one and only Letter of the Week you'll join our roll of winners from four Continents and receive a copy of Mark Steyn From Head To Toe. Congratulations to this week's winner:
Letter of the Week
MARK MISTAKEN ABOUT MALAYSIA?
You mentioned recently that of all Muslim countries, you'd choose Malaysia to live in if you had to.
I certainly understand your very valid points about the British legacy that gives Malaysia several advantages over her much maligned big brother, Indonesia. However, I wonder: Have you ever scratched at the very carefully maintained veneer of moderation and modernity that Malaysia presents to the world? Underneath it, as is becoming more and more evident by the day (particularly in light of the recent church attacks), Malaysian Muslims both in and outside government are proving to be much more radicalised than those in Indonesia (although, with the very distinctive exception of Aceh, nowhere in Indonesia do Sharia policemen operate as they do in Malaysia).
Indonesia over the past dozen years has produced four very moderate, pro-western, democratically-minded presidents who have cracked down hard on Muslim terrorism (admittedly after a period of initial denial that such a thing could be happening). Even under Suharto did Indonesia keep the Islamists in check and very much in the western camp; no-one with such harebrained ideas as Mahathir of Malaysia has ruled Indonesia since Sukarno was deposed in 1966.
I’ll go further and make a very sinister observation about Malaysia: All of her neighbours— Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia— have had Islamic terror attacks, yet not her. Indeed, Malaysia is the only major Muslim majority nation in the world never to have suffered terrorist attacks. Is this due to Malaysia's good governance? Perhaps, but I would point to the glaringly obvious fact that many, if not most, of the senior terrorist operatives in the region turn out to be either Malaysian themselves or Malaysian educated. I also don’t think it’s a wild guess that Kuala Lumpur has made a rather dirty deal with the devil over the past decade or so.
As for digging the Malaysian chicks, forget about it; you've no chance.
Miko Hills
MARK REPLIES: I don't disagree with much of what you say. Malaysia has enjoyed two great advantages - English Common Law and a non-Muslim mercantile class. To mark the 50th anniversary of independence, it toyed with replacing the former with Sharia, and the latter may yet have their energy and innovation clipped by the remorseless, incremental Islamization of life. The increasingly nutty Dr Mahathir has been a disastrous influence.
As for Indonesian "moderation", I think this was not in spite of the Suharto dictatorship but because of it. Insofar as Islam can be "moderated", it depends on the overarching culture - for example, Soviet Communism in the Central Asian -stans, or that crazy Turkmenbashi guy in post-Soviet Turkmenistan. These are not encouraging examples for democratic societies seeking to avoid falling prey to the Sharia set.
Still and all, the decline to which Malaysia seems wedded is very sad. Oh, and Malaysian chick-wise, I did just fine, although it was a long time ago.
SPEAK VAPIDLY AND CARRY A LARGE TELEPROMPTER
Your recent post on The Corner about Obama’s SOTU was really intriguing to me. First, I think you're exactly right about Obama "being a total bust of an orator." Even during the campaign back in 2008, I was leery of the claim that he was a "great" orator, though many friends of mine thought that he was an exceptional speaker. But speaking "great swelling words of vanity" (to borrow a phrase from the Bible) does not a good orator make— nor does it, ultimately, make up for deficiencies in speaking ability.
Second, as to Obama's upturned chin, I was talking to someone several months ago about it and he remarked that it very much reminded him of old preachers (specifically Jerry Falwell). Basically, these preachers would, during their sermons, use an upturned chin to make important points, to give an image of them speaking with great authority. Obama is clearly trying to create an aura of his authority (which is why it comes off as arrogant to many of us) while he speaks. Does Obama want to give the impression that he speaks with divine authority? The fact that he thinks all that needs to be done to fix the world is for him to speak the word— and the fact that a vote for him was a vote to stop the oceans from rising— suggests this is a very good possibility.
Jonathan
STAGECRAFT SNOBBERY?
My take on that chin is that it is part and parcel of his teleprompter-enabled visage of grandeur. Obama’s choice to not have a teleprompter in front of him always struck me as a calculated bit of stagecraft where he can spend most of his speeches gazing up and off into the distance– gazing “into the future,” as it were– pretentiously exaggerated by the little pauses for a capture-the-moment photo-op. Ergo, it strikes me that the teleprompters are cranked up high with clear-eyed intentionality. Just another part of his incredibly grating ersatz MLK delivery.
Gary Stoll
ALMOST (WORKERS’) PARADISE
C’mon Mark, it’s obvious why Obama turns his chin up: He sees himself as living 1930s Socialist-Realist poster, where the characters all stare— heads slightly upturned— toward the workers’ paradise just over the horizon.
Peter Murphy
South Amboy, New Jersey
CHIN MUSIC
I agree with you wholeheartedly about Obama and his upturned chin. I teach an acting class once and a while, and if Obama were my student I would tell him: “This (play/scene/speech) is not about you— it’ about the person you are talking to.”
When President Obama speaks, it is always about Obama— matter what he is saying— which makes whatever he says unbelievable and boring. Regan and Clinton knew who they were talking to; you could almost see who they were taking to standing on the podium with them. You can see who Obama is speaking to as well: himself in a mirror.
He reminds me of the 7-year-old kid who likes to sing and dance in front of a bunch of adults at a barbeque or birthday party. He likes to do this because he knows no matter how bad or annoying he is, he will get the desired reaction from the adults watching him: “Awww… such a sweet boy! So talented! He’ll be president some day!” But, of course, the cuteness always quickly wares off, and the adults just hope he’ll go play with the other children so that they can continue on their adult conversations.
Chris Thometz
YOUTH IS WASTED ON THE PRESIDENTIAL SPEECHWRITING TEAM
Why is no one talking about the president’s speechwriter and the fact that he’s 27 years old, while the president’s speeches have been sounding like mediocre faux-high minded speeches (that would be sort-of OK for a freshman rhetoric class) for a year? I don’t understand how it is that the administration hasn’t gone out looking for someone who has been communicating as an adult for at least 10 years. Our ability to respond to the challenges we face is primarily dictated by our life experiences, and there is no way the president’s speechwriter could write for what average Americans are now going through right now.
Also note that it is the mistake of the inexperienced to think that when they are disagreed with it is simply enough to restate their case. The administration’s attitude seems very much derived from the youth and inexperience of both the POTUS and his boy-wonder speechwriter.
John Reeder
WHERE MEN (AT WORK) PLUNDER?
You mightn't know that the publishers of "Kookaburra Sits In The Old Gum Tree" are suing Men At Work for their use of the melody as the flute motif in “Down Under”; thought I’d let you know.
No musical gags please— not when there's a lot of cash involved!
Willy Zygier
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