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It has to be said, since this business with the Canadian thought police got going, that not all my "defenders" are as full-throated as one might wish. In fact, a certain recurring shtick set in pretty quickly. “Mark Steyn’s book about Muslim demographics may contain some cynical statistics and Islamic stereotypes,” wrote Peter Jackson in The Telegram of St John’s, Newfoundland, “but his observations are not totally without merit.”
“Not totally without merit”, eh? That’s not exactly what Broadway producers call a money quote. Happily, Kathy Shaidle is a rollicking exception to the rule. In recent days alone, she's dusted off the all-time pithiest distillation of free-speech absolutism by Colby Cosh, and republished the Danish cartoons under the headline "Come and get me, you fairies." Her general approach was spelled out in this post:
If your response to the Maclean's/Steyn case isn’t tainted with outrage, sarcasm and a profound sense of urgency, there is something wrong with you... I’m getting as worried by these prissy attitudes emerging around this case as I am about the case itself.
She's right. I don't mind the Muslim shills sending out for the form letters from the Supreme Islamic Council of Moose Jaw or whatever cockamie pressure group's fired them up, but to read some of the non-Muslim responses in Maclean's or at the CBC website or The Calgary Herald is to wonder how many Canadians are auditioning to be the eunuchs in the new caliph's harem.
By the way, Kathy Shaidle has a new e-book out. I'm so square I'm not sure I quite know what that is, but I've read it, and it reads like an old-fashioned non-e-book, only better. You should get it. It's her collected columns mostly from The Toronto Star, and it begins with a fine jest on the Star's pedantic copyeditor who would have rewritten Al Jolson into saying, "You have not seen a single thing yet." Miss Shaidle doesn't miss the Star's copyediting, but, if they had any sense, they'd miss her. she's the nearest Canada has to those Fleet Street gals who get a page all to themselves of a mid-market tabloid like the Mail or the Express or the Standard and use it as a kind of virtuoso highwire act of punditry. She has fans around the world: in the course of the last year, I've sat in a restaurant on the beach at Malibu and at the Savoy Grill in London and listened to various long-distance admirers regale me with favourite examples of her prose. If anyone of Toronto's dozy editors had any sense, she could be the Dominion's Julie Burchill. I especially like her more or less regular headline over the week's all too predictable gay-activist item - "More KY For The Slippery Slope". It's fantastically rude, but also a fine crack, as one would hope the larkier gays would be the first to acknowledge. Anyway, Acoustic Ladyland takes in everything from the comparative coolness of Sandra Dee and Hunter Thompson to the loss of the Empress of Ireland two years after the Titanic in 1914. She's one of those writers who can pretty much write about whatever tickles her fancy, including, impressively, ear wax:
He'd squirt a strong, swift stream of water into each ear - expelling some stuff truly shocking in volume and appearance - and I could hear again.
(Unfortunately, it was the 70s, so what I got to hear again was mostly Supertramp.)
Actually, she's very good on bodily imperfection. Among her tips on cellulite:
The Apollo astronauts christened the moon's craters with poetic names like 'Sea of Tranquility'; why not do the same with yours?
This after a Scottish survey showing one in five men think cellulite is a type of battery. Of course, it's not all contemplation of ear wax. There's a moving reminiscence of Ronald Reagan and a magnificent demolition of Bishop Spong. She pulls off what so many columnists try but usually miss: moral seriousness and groovy cultural references. You need this book.
Full disclosure: I've met Kathy Shaidle just once, at Conrad Black's pad. We spoke for two minutes and then I suggested to Doug Kelly, the editor of The National Post, that he stop wasting his time trying to re-hire me and get Kathy instead. He was, as they say, politely non-committal. Still, with my own brief moment in Canadian media drawing to a hatemongering close, I'll mention it to my boss at Maclean's when we lunch next week. And, while you're waiting for editors to come to their senses, buy Acoustic Ladyland.
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