Welcome to the Tuesday edition of The Mark Steyn Show, with a blizzard of lies, silence from the church, silencing from the corporations, a remembrance of whispering, plus mad Poles, American micro-editing, a celebrity fugitive, vacation planning, and much more.
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Mark will return this evening with the latest episode of his brand new Tale for Our Time, The Prisoner of Windsor.
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Maybe the question should be "Whose lives matter more"? We know about the hypocrisy regarding "Black Lives Matter" but I'm talking about the Wu Flu. Once again they use more positive cases as a sign we're all going to die but we know for a fact that it isn't a certainty but a possibility. Media acts certain that those who aren't sick haven't been exposed but can they prove it? No one knows for certain who is or isn't infected or has been and never knew about it. Even then, they say people will die if we don't make wearing masks mandatory. Just who are they really thinking about? Are they the same ones who hoarded supplies thinking of themselves when we thought it would just last a month? Do they view their own lives to be more important than everyone else's? Masks don't help if we touch our mouths and eyes with hands that we didn't wash or eat food that has the Wu Flu. They forget about the protests and highlight Trump rallies. This next wave should be a reality that this virus isn't going anywhere and we will all be exposed regardless of what we do or don't do.
Mark,
I remember, in late 60s, early 70s childhood, families would gather around the television to watch (Disney?) musicals, Sunday evenings. Every age loved "Hello Dolly", "Dr. Doolittle", "Born Free"...
Would younger families and children love the family, musical experience now?
PS. My son did, two decades ago.
Best regards,
Tim Owen
Mukilteo, WA
I'm waiting to see if anyone will bring the first, and hopefully the beginning of many class action suits against companies who deny service because of their cowardice when it comes to standing up to the mob. I won't be using PayPal again.
Was MLB at least nice enough to use the ashes of that poor person who was immolated by a peaceful protester in Minneapolis burning down a liqueur store to get justice for George Floyd to create their twerpy BLM stencils on every pitcher's mound?
The team formerly known as the Redskins have adopted their new name, "The Washington Football Team." This reminds me of the old generic food packaging with a solid white box with black block lettering, "FOOD." I am relying on Mark or another of the clever MCClubbers to come up with some inspiring lyrics for the fight song.
Or BEER, 99 cents a six-pack. 89 cents for LIGHT BEER.
I'm thinking about your challenge. The lyrics will have to match the team name: generic, bland and ordinary, maybe bordering on, yawn, tiresome. Suddenly, I feel like sleeping on it with a nice afternoon nap with my fluffiest pillow. "Snooze on" has to figure in the chorus. I'll start with the choruzzzzzz.
F is for the fatuousness of your politics,
O is for your obvious pandering,
(So obvious we had to use it twice,)
T is for the tedious social justice warring,
B is for the boorish hectoring
A is for you always bitching and moaning,
L is for the losers that you are
L is for the liars that you are.
T is for your tiresome mewling,
E is the ease of your offense,
A is for this asinine exercise,
M is for this monstrous waste of time.
Put it all together, it spells FOOTBALL TEAM,
and that is what you used to mean to me.
Eat your heart out, Oscar Hammerstein!
On the 53rd day of riots in Portland last night, Mayor Ted Wheeler participated and was tear gassed by the Feds along with 2000 others. The crowd is growing for these nightly events because they are so exciting but not particularly dangerous. There have people beaten and one guy hit in the head with a beanbag, but no fatalities. A whiff of tear gas makes a great story at the coffee shop the next day. The cancer of disorder grows as the local and state officials support it.
As the day dawned, the communique read, "All is quiet on the Western Front."
Meanwhile yesterday 70 miles south of the front while I was out gathering critical supplies I saw a motorcycle cop pulling over an SUV driven by and old lady, probably to give her a ticket for going 35 in a 25 MPH zone. And so we have have another convert to Defund the Police.
Oh, my goodness! As soon as that ancient intro began, I knew that record! We had it, and a bunch of other Paul Whiteman disks. I think my grandmother loved Whiteman, and her records came to us through my mother. I loved them, too; there was and still is something bouncy and good-humored about his style that entranced me when I was ten and still does, now that I'm 74. His "Carolina in the Morning" still makes me smile with pleasure.
As others have already noted below: The MS Show goes from strength to strength!
PS. Shawn Saavedra - from "Mark's Mailbox" - is a FIRST HOUR Founding Member! Great question and answer segment. The Last Copier in the Woods can't be far off.
The biggest expose of what a complete fraud Black Lives Matter is happening right now: In Chicago scores of black people are being shot and killed every single day while the incompetent buffoon mayor does nothing. Trump send in federal troops to stop the madness and the mayor is furious. In this situation who REALLY thinks #BlackLivesMatter ?
It's the same situation in Portland, Sabre Mike. It's beyond belief what is going on there as well. The city looks like it's end to end graffiti from the videos on tv, and the amount of destruction makes it look like a war zone while the mayor sounds like an oblivious fruit cake spinning around far out in outer space somewhere. These people are so myopic about holding onto power as their cities burn to the ground. As far as I can see the good people there have moved out to the suburbs, out of the area completely and the anarchists are the new voter base. At least this was the commentary of a guest Tucker had on and I have to believe it.
Perry's Paradox of Socialism - it is designed to fail.
The political bosses of America's major cities have not lost control - they are in control of the chaos.
Trying to fix the clown car is a conservative failure. It needs to be sent to the junkyard with the socialists in the trunk.
BLM is anti cop and anti America. They could care less about the black on black crime because they view it as normal and expect us all to see it the same way.
They're in control so long as they remain useful to their cause. When they bring the chaos close to them, be rest assured they will defend themselves if they decide not to run away. They view themselves a necessary to their cause and indispensable but they are nothing more than hood ornaments on a fancy car that can still run without them.
Mark, you played a brief clip from one of my favorite songs of the disco era, "Cherchez La Femme" by Dr Buzzard's Savannah Band. (1976) Lead singer was a girl named Cory Daye. They used the "Whispering" theme to start off. Also, great to hear Nino Tempo and April Stevens again. Their great hit was "Deep Purple" from the '60s. Looks like they tried the same style with "Whispering", but it didn't work out. Thanks.
It's heartening that Mark's mood lightens and his voice takes on a lilt and virtual "spring in its step" when he begins to talk of his first love: Music.
Mark,
I think I may just have pushed it with my last comment, which included too long a quotation plus a spoiler, but I'd really like to suggest Arthur Machen's The Terror (1917) as a worthy story.
It can easily be googled, so maybe people could read it for themselves.
But it reads eerily prophetic in these times, with amazingly accurate comments about censorship, plus an original view of revolution, involving a psychological abdication strangely parallel to our own.
Presuming that this site is aware that Google "blocked" it for awhile today. I was looking midday to see if a new edition of the MS show had been posted, and the search engine would not pull this site up. I thought maybe the MS site was down temporarily, but I saw this evening that other conservative sites also were "disappeared" by Google. (I could only find the site by typing in full address. The site could not be found if one only typed in "steynonline.")
Mark replies:
Get used to it, Annie. It's open war now.
Wasn't long ago that the internet was the solution to the chronic bias of the NYT-Network news cartel. Anyone who thinks the left is entirely incompetent should think again, they managed to herd folks into virtual pens and control info flow with great efficiency. And like a canal still used to float freight, the old NYT-Networks still push disinfo that google etc. pick up. The latest example is the fabricated issue, will Trump leave if he loses? Dems got the press to raise the question, and the news then showed one after another dem pol answering this "pressing" question. Trump's response for now is to say, "we'll see." (This horrifies the Chris Wallace types, who forget that they were horrified at this same thing four years ago, and voters yawned.) Trump can do better, turn the question around, "Chris, my question is, if I win will you let me stay?"
I had the same experience. The first thing that came to mind was that Google had blocked it. I see I was right.
Is it time to bring out the rusting Xerox copier and reach for the can of WD-40?
Trump sure does the button pushing better than anyone and I love him for that but what's the old lawyer line, "don't ask a question if you already know what the answer will be." That's where I wouldn't want him to go just yet.
Google has issued a non-explanatory explanation, and perhaps soon will issue a non-apology apology.
I'm not quite sure If I'm experiencing the same issue but I frequently lose contact with a "google not responding" message which blocks out this site for several minutes. It just happened after typing in the first sentence. It's now a daily occurrence. Perhaps I'm paranoid but it doesn't happen on other web-sites. I rather doubt that a million members are attempting to access this site at once. This interruption does not re-occur during a session.
Love the man but Trump isn't that clever. It would have been a great retort Paul. The press celebrated the Wallace interview of course. The best I can say about Chris Wallace is that he brings a level of diversity to Fox News. Wallace is a Democrat to his core and always has been.
Use Duckduckgo instead... Works fine and doesn't track and sell your data.
People still use Google? I thought it went obsolete with newspapers... ;-)
Maybe I just don't surf the internet enough but when I tap the address block on my phone, tablet or laptop browser, it's right there, so only one click for me. If I looked at half-dozen other sites more often, it would still only be a few days back in history. Worst case, I can still spell steynonline, or gatestoneinstitute, for that matter. And if my ISP and autocorrect program go full Antifa on me, I even know the lowercase acronym for hyper text transfer protocol whose name and syntactic punctuation shall not be typed in this hallowed space lest my post not be published or wreak havoc with the Comments Page code...though I've snuck the codes for bold and italics in on occasion.
LOL! Just discovered autocorrect for steynonline is stethoscope and antics for Antifa.
I use bing at the moment, annie, and I've never had a problem.
Me too but it was giving me fits the other day trying to find the actual text to IRS code for which I was getting conflicting advice from retirement advisors. Turns out, the IRS and Treasury Department don't maintain the actual code anymore; they've farmed it out to Cornell Law School.
Bing does generally work a lot better for me finding what I'm looking for the first time.
Good grief! But did any two accountants/cpa's/lawyer's/IRS agents, ever agree on what the tax code said about this or that? I've never their site but Bing has worked for most of my needs; plus, you generally get a very nice photo to enjoy.
What an amazingly simple tune (Whispering) but it somehow just works. The multiplicity of arrangements at various tempos that Mark sampled provides a perfect pretext to deploy the Saint Saens anecdote where a young conductor remarked to the great man that he thought the orchestral piece they had just sat through was taken at the wrong tempo, to which Saint Saens replied, there are two types of conductors: those who take it too fast, and those who take it too slow. There is no third type.
Am I the only one who cannot get enough of Mark's editors tales? Ah to be a fly in the room :)
My own modest 'editor interfering in work' story actually was at the National Post where two words-count 'em-TWO, were added to the end of an essay I wrote without my knowledge or consent, which ended up negating my entire position. When I objected, they would not change it back. My entire premise was obliterated by those two stupid words which I would have never, ever agreed to.
Mark is 100% correct to insist upon 100% full and total, complete and airtight control over every letter, space, piece of punctuation, capitalization, italics or other utterance that he writes.
No passion in the world is equal to the passion to alter someone else's draft.
- H.G. Wells
No, Laura, you are not the only one who loves these stories. I'm the guy who shouts at the TV news presenter, " . . .HADN'T GONE, you moron!! Past perfect subjunctive!! LEARN ENGLISH! . . .." I agree that Mark's work should be sent straight to the printer after a light scan for the odd typo. I hope he produces a collection of "editor" tales, with a foreword by Conrad Black.
Excellent suggestion, Paul. There are some amusing observations along these lines, shared by Conrad Black.
https://www.steynonline.com/8724/freedom-and-soviet-operettas
PS. Great visual of you shouting at the TV presenter.
I remember Conrad Black making those remarks, Kate. His own writing is superb and I'm sure he could tell a tale or two from both sides of the desk. As for the other, ever since winning my first spelling bee as a child, I've been hagridden by language, grammar, syntax. It's often made me unsuitable for gentle company.
Dear Mark Steyn: "Turning the other cheek is easier when the head is on the ground." That's perfect!
I saw the Federalist article this morning. The "cop shot kid" story was too good to check, and surely Derricka wouldn't lie about something so easily checked!? And consider the Atlantic's dilemma- if the editor (white person maybe) checks and finds the truth, it's a white man's truth and the Atlantic is part of the systemic .....nah, just print it.
Mark: Thank you for dusting off whispering. Since as you mentioned everyone has had a crack at it I felt compelled to look up the Chet Atkins version. It was not difficult to imagine the fun Chet would have had with the tune and he clearly did.
Just superb drumming by Peter Erskine on that Al Jarreau track.
Great show: enjoyed myself, and am much the wiser. Thanks, as ever.
One remarkable thing about Haghia Sophia was the speed with which it was built - twice. The original Church of Holy Wisdom, generally attributed to Constantine I, was burnt down in the Nika Riots of 532 (plus ça change). The replacement, with its spectacular dome, was consecrated in the following decade, fell down in 558, as the result of numerous earthquakes, quite a lot of shoddy workmanship and some bad mathematics by the architect, and was re-consecrated in 562. When you think it took about seven hundred years for the citizens of Cologne to finish their cathedral and that Sir Christopher Wren is one of the few cathedral architects to see their projects completed (he did take the precaution of living to be ninety), that is quite an achievement.
I shouldn't want Istanbul's famously seismic geology to do serious damage again to Haghia Sophia, but, if some mischievous spirit were to dislodge a wee bit of masonry on to Erdogan's head, that would be, ermm, poetic.
The video of Nancy Pelosi saying "People will do what they do" in reference to riots and statue toppling should be used repeatedly in campaign commercials from now until November. There is a great deal of "protest" footage that will pair nicely with her pithy little soundbite.
Yes: it was a rare jewel, and it will hopefully be made to be an expensive one.
Imagine President Trump saying the same thing when the Jussie Smollett hoax was first aired!
Pelosi's remark brings me back to another priceless gem spoken by Rep. Omar: [on 9/11] some people did some things.
So, they did what they did and do what they do and it's all what you would expect in a typical day in America.
I don't think I've loathed a "public official" as much since Harry Reid insinuated on the floor of the Senate that Mitt Romney hadn't paid his taxes. (Only to jest later about the bald-faced lie, "He didn't win, did he?") But if Nancy Pelosi is going to turn the other cheek, any house flies in the vicinity better give it a wide berth. That thing is strung tighter than the "real tennis" rackets in Mark's Prisoner of Windsor tale.
Indeed, F. That woman on her own is a comprehensive case for voting Republican. In fact, she is so preposterous that we spend far too little time on quoting her in detail: it's that embarrassing.
As if the caliber of office holders in Washington hadn't reached the far depths of the Swamp, she shows up She gets away with some slime ball kinds of maneuvering with A) money and B) her brother/husband and C) the general despicable nature of whatever she says.
Every time she opens her mouth, I think this woman must be the poster child for systemic ingratitude. How in Hades does a true America-hating scoundrel ever get elected to represent Americans and hold the position she does in the nation's power hub? There was nobody else up to the job in that district?
When she derides America for its imperfections, I want to scream no until the windows shake and tell her to open her eyes and see what a beautiful life she now has in America, more so than half the country, and say if it's so racist here go back to Somalia or anywhere just not here. It must've been such a great place that she decided to make her home here! With these Squad members it's often hard to pick which one is the easiest to despise.
Bravo! Another great show! You bring light into one's consciousness! You're a real master of elevating the spirit out of the blahs. I learn so many new things each show. The odd bit sometimes, like the person who invented monkey bars. Now it's hard to find simple monkey bars around in the playgrounds. Everything is state-of-the-art engineered and cutting-edge designed with plastic coating and padding so nobody gets hurt. But give me a big old healthy tree with a gnarled trunk and lots of strong limbs and that's the best monkey bars one could ever find.
All that whispering reminds me of something I read in the UK Spectator, years ago, a parody of the A A Milne poem which starts, "Hush, hush, whisper who dares. Christopher Robin is saying his prayers."
This version went:
"Hush, hush, whisper who cares. Christopher
Robin
has
fallen
down
stairs."
Mark: Should supporters of Tucker (and other doxing victims) endorse response-in-kind; or rely on an American sense of fair play to protect victims and shame perpetrators; or do you have a better plan than either?
"When I am weaker than you, I ask you for freedom, because that is according to your principles. When I am stronger than you, I take away your freedom, because that is according to my principles." – Frank Herbert (Children Of Dune)
How can one "shame" someone who has no concept of shame? We are operating in a theater with no Geneva or Hague Convention niceties. As someone put it... if Gandhi had intervened in WWII with the Japanese, he would be a headless torso floating down a river. It is tragic.. but we are beyond much of what kept a tamper on things. What happens now can't put things back together again no matter how hard we try and how hard we want them. Mao and Napolean were right.
I lost count long ago of how many times I've asked myself this. It's such a "heads they win, tails we lose" proposition. Anyway, this is one of the great challenges we face.
This is the asymmetry of the civil war currently raging. We have jobs, lives, scruples; they have nose rings. How many plumbers--Ruritanian or other--can afford to take time off to attend a Fund the Police rally? Trick question: there aren't any such rallies. It would never occur to decent folk to break into Joy Reid's or Brian Williams's home to intimidate them into silence. The bust of Margaret Sanger--infamous eugenicist and matron saint of genocide of the unborn--is perfectly safe from vandalism in its nook in the National Portrait Gallery. If Democrats want to name things after notorious racists, from Woodrow Wilson to Robert Byrd, we may point out the disgrace and the hypocrisy, but we are happy to leave the hypocrites in their disgrace. Just as they never let us forget Abraham Lincoln and Fredrick Douglass. Our weapon is our votes. If the first volley didn't convince them we were not to be messed with, maybe the second will. Doubtful, but it will be glorious to try.
Even Ghandi wrote love letters to Adolph Hitler. His statue has to go too.
I'll say it again because it can't be said often enough - the quality of these shows is consistently astounding. Everytime, another instant classic. And for Mark to include reminders to an (ex)NASCAR fan like me that NASCAR actually hates my guts even more than Barbara Streisand! Just more icing on the cake. If current events are going to be this bad, SteynShows are the only way I'll be able to take them.
In Denver a pro-police rally was attacked by Democrat Antifa/BLM stormtroopers, and the police stood nearby and didn't protect the people peacefully holding the event. Police refused to protect people rallying FOR police! Apparently it's time to change the motto on the police cars from "Protect and Serve" to "Pensions over People." Worse any officer obeying an illegal order not to protect the crowd is operating on the same moral plane as Nazi death camp guards—just not having reached the point where they start rounding up "enemies of the state."
David: After the WuFlu breakout and before the George Floyd singularity, wasn't the motto broadcasted 24/7 "together"? Here in Colorado, the enemies of the state occupy the Capitol issuing tyrannical fiats; the enemies of the state occupy the outside of the Capitol defacing it; the protectors of the state are ordered to stand down and allow the lawless to have their way with the law-abiding. Together sure didn't last long as we are being torn apart. How many of us are there to round up?
Here's another in the seemingly endless list of examples that fit neatly at the end of "you know your country is probably lost if..." Displays like this make me more inclined to go along with defunding the police. With friends like those, who needs enemies?
"ROAD"--- retired on active duty. Forget the idea of camp guards...this is the same as Dutch police following orders of the Gestapo. The Gestapo didn't arrest Anne Frank... the police did. "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
If we transported someone in the know from 1920 to 2020 and handed them a newpaper ( a decent one if available) the time traveler would say, "ah... the Bolsheviks have made it to America just like in Britain, Germany and France." A century of death and destruction and we are right back at,... "decade zero".
Goes without saying, but you'd certainly hear from somebody if any mosques were burned or a facsimile of the prophet were shown decapitated.
But where we are...nothing to see.
Thanks for the detailed history of "Whispering" on its centennial. I think I heard a few seconds of sister & brother April Stevens & Nino Temp's version from the 1960s. They're both alive and maybe still performing, I believe. He plays a pretty hot sax, too.
Great show AGAIN by the way. "Song Of The Week" is always a pleasure to listen to, especially today. Never heard "Whisper" before. I'm going to see if I can pull the Tommy Dorsey and Les Paul versions into my playlist. Thanks Mark.
The reason the right wing are fetishists for the right to free speech is because the right wing is the only side in the ideological battles that needs it as a shield. The left wing can make the most vile, repulsive, racist, bigoted, hateful and slanderous remarks and they do not require any protections from platforms like Facebook, PayPal, Twitter, et al. I think it comes down to the left is now fully invested in bad faith argument and debate about issues today. The advantage of engaging your ideological opponent using bad faith argument while your opponent attempts to argue in good faith is over time your opponent concedes turf little by little in an attempt to bring compromise from the other side. And if you refuse to compromise and continue with bad faith argument you will eventually get your opponent kneeling in front of you begging for mercy. We saw that literally this summer with uniformed police officers kneeling in front of the mobs begging for mercy which was disgusting. It's time for the pendulum to begin swinging in the other direction.
A few days ago, I wrote here that I would not fire the first (metaphorical) shot in a civil war with the left. I should have added that neither would I surrender. But all that is moot: we're in the middle of a civil war right now, and shots, literal and figurative, are flying all around us. The disgraceful, inexcusable, repellent—dare I say deplorable—behavior of the woke 12-yos at the New York Times to threaten to publish Tucker Carlson's home address (his new one, after he was forced by mob violence to leave his old one) is only the latest in asymmetrical warfare practiced by the former slaveholding family of that long discredited bog roll once considered a newspaper. Mark is so right: we live in an era of lies. Lies of commission, lies of omission; lies, damned lies, and (in the case of the Made in China virus) statistics. The contemporary left is actually a throwback: its tactics are Bolshevist and its goals are Jacobin. All the blood of the ruling class can't quench its thirst; it has already started to eat its own. Bon appétit!
Yep...1789 has just about replaced 1776.
Go ahead, J.: fire the shot. Only keep it above the belt. If it hits one of them in the head he'd only bleed a bit. Beneath the belt, you'd be in danger of damaging something sentient.
They'll need strong stomachs when they come to eat Mrs Pelosi, poor deprived souls that they are. And toothpicks.
Yes, another interesting show from Mark! Just started listening but I wonder if he will touch upon the NY Times attempt to docxx Tucker Carlson who preemptively struck back last night. It is amazing how the Times and its reporters whine when their own tactics are turned on them.