Welcome to the Tuesday edition of The Mark Steyn Show, with another update from the Summer of Stupid, plus your way or the Norway, Irish troubles then and now, transitioning from here to there, Campaign 2020 poll musings, Gandhi and Garvey, Hugh Hefner and Joni Mitchell, 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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Speaking of American wokeness being oppressively imposed on the Irish, is there an uglier word than the horrid "Latinx" being imposed on those of Hispanic descent by white American University professors and editors? From what I've read Latin people themselves hate the word and it's not even easily pronounced by native Spanish speakers. The point has been made that this trend is culturally disrespectful to the Spanish language, to which the "woker than thou" response is that Spanish itself is oppressive in its use of gendered nouns thus needs reforming by touchy white women. More and more these days I worry that having one's head spontaneously explode could be a real thing.
Thank you for allowing Me to retrieve a Lambert Hendricks and Ross experience,
The Town Tavern , King st Toronto, summer of 1959 Cool crowd, fake ID , 20 ft away from performers 2 sets 3 beers.,
Maybe a $10 buck cover charge
I missed this when it was published, celebrating the completion of my 74th revolution of the sun. Another stem-winder from Mark.
I believe Robert Benchley lived at the Garden of Allah during his Hollywood career.
Couple of very good points presented.
Only the Democrat Party can get away with using racist generalizations of blacks by saying "if you get car jacked, let them take your car" or "if they want your cell phone, give it to them" while travel bans and border walls are racist. If Trump said not to go to certain areas of America because you'll get robbed or shot, he'd be called a racist but if you're a Democrat you get a free pass.
"The future belongs to those who show up."
The population of Nigeria is on course to double in the next thirty years to over 400 million. By 2060 - with a projected population of 480 million - Nigeria will be the world's third most populous country (with the US falling to third place).
Nigeria's population explosion is amongst "Sharia Muslims" - not Christians - with a majority of women in Sharia states preferring families of 10 and more children or 'any number of children God gives them' according to a comprehensive demographic review ("The changing religious composition of Nigeria: causes and implications of demographic divergence" - M Stonawski et al).
The gender-non-conforming anarchists on US streets (once referred to as "Woko Haram") have a shared hatred of western civilisation, but they'll be outbred by Boko Haram.
PS. The shows get better and better! From Daniel Mannix in 1920 to COON® in 2020.
Correction: "... with the US falling to fourth place" (by 2060).
The US will also be "older", as will China (as the latter falls to second place, behind India).
But the recent BBC article (via Laura's Links) - "Fertility rate: 'Jaw-dropping' global crash in children being born" - drew predictable comments about fewer human beings better for the planet.
When it comes to population projections, the best laid plans of mice and men oft go askew. There are plenty of hazards on the horizon and Robert Malthus will be right sooner or later.
I wonder if "The future belongs to those who show up," is a corollary to Wood Allen's, "80% of Life is showing up?" Which came first? More mysteries to ponder.
A few weeks ago Joe Biden announced from his bunker that he wants Islam taught in our public schools. Of course it caused an uproar from liberals and conservatives concerned about separation of church and state issues - at least that is what I expected but in 2020 America it didn't raise a ripple of push-back or protest from either side. The national media ignored it all together and although Fox News did run the clip there was no followup discussion. Much of western civilization now consumed by self-loathing has also seemingly lost the will to re-produce. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has come right out with it - having children is immoral. Amazing times we live in Kate.
The public schools where I live beat joe biden to it. When my middle son was in seventh grade he had to write a report on islam and give a presentation. The material the teacher gave him painted islam as a morally superior, happier code to live by than the Christian one. I wonder if the progressive young woman teaching the class ever projected her thoughts to a future dominated by islam and how that would pan out for women, especially the feminist types like herself, and gays. I doubt it.
Much thanks Kitty - at least one member of this web-site thought this was important and worthy of discussion. A comparative study of religion in our schools wouldn't bother me so much as long as the Bible, Qua'an and the Vedas were given equal weight in an objective manner which is of course impossible today. As for our progressive young female teacher I too doubt she ever gave it a 2nd thought.
Annie Ross. I just looked up "ShortCuts" (one of my favorite films although many scenes are hard to watch but many other scenes are quite funny in an ironic way and make me laugh) to see who she was in the movie. She was great as an actress but especially as a singer in the movie. Her last scene when she is despairing over the death of her daughter goes in the hard to watch category, but she was great.
Thanks for telling me who she was in real life.
I really enjoyed the part about Annie Ross. I am partial to lyricists who aren't, I believe the saying goes, too on the nose; the Let's Fly piece seemed to fit that preference. It's also kinda cool that she almost alludes to today's movement to "unplug" occasionally and get away - although she notes it's to a place without "mailman, doorbell or telephone...". One wonders how she'd cope with the smartphone omnipresent kids of today. :-)
I have a friend who briefly worked with me, and while he was doing so, wrote most of a really strong album, back in 1997. He'd come in daily with clever phrases and lyrics. One that never made it into a song was "I'll tip my hat to every cat, who's wallet's gone from flat to fat..." Twenty three years later and I still remember that phrase like he just told me this morning.
Well done, Mark. I hope everyone is staying safe out there. I've been a bit down, after reading Mark's thoughts on the unhappy warrior, Dr. Mike Adams. I lost a kid who worked with me similarly about 18 years ago, never saw his problems coming, he didn't show it at work. I blamed myself for awhile, even though we weren't especially close. I finally decided he needed someone to tell him, "The world is better with you in it."
So I'm saying that to you all now: The world is better with you in it. Be safe, be strong, keep on keeping on.
Always great to see you comments here, George!
George, the article about Mike Adams brought me down too. A close friend lost his son to a self-inflicted gun shot a few years ago, and it hit me pretty hard. No one suspected him of having any problems, so we were all shocked. So keep your head up, because the world is a better place with you in it, also.
Thanks, Kate, that means a lot to me.
Thanks for the kind words. My thoughts and prayers are with your friend and you.
Hi Mark,
I would love to hear your thoughts on this. Our older daughter got married on Saturday on a ranch near a tiny town in central Montana. Of course, we had the usual dinner and dancing after the ceremony.
As I listened to the music, which was multigenerational (something for everyone), as a wedding is by definition multigenerational, I was struck by the thought (which could be completely wrong, but maybe isn't) that the song choices by the DJ might be rather universal for such events and not really related to location or even region. Can it be that we really do have some common cultural thing across the country and it shows up in wedding reception music choices being at least somewhat the same where ever in the country you are. A few of the songs I remember playing were "YMCA" "Sweet Caroline" "I love rock and roll" and "Hound dog". Can it be that there is a shared culture despite every effort to say it doesn't exist. I couldn't stop thinking about this.
Jill
Mark,
Back when I was both a UK Resident and a UK Subject I was a big fan of the show "University Challenge" and enjoyed watching some very bright minds fish out obscure pieces of esoterica from their obviously well read minds. I even learned some things.
I have maintained my love for the show even to the present day and enjoy watching a whole new crop of wunderkinder push their way out of the soil and into the momentary sunlight. I was watching the recent contest between Imperial College London and Strathclyde University. It was an engaging battle but I was struck in the middle of the contest by the Music Question.
For those very few readers who do not know the Music Question is where a piece of music is played and the team has to say who composed it, played it, reinvented it or whatever. In this contest the Subject matter of the music question was - and I am not kidding - Atlanta Rap and Hip Hop Scene. We suffered through 3 bonus questions with blank looks from the earnest Strathclyde Team who seemed woefully uninformed as the Rap and Hip Hop 'doins' in the Atlanta area. This got me to wondering and - ultimately to the writing of this question.
In all the Questions I have heard in the music round I have heard classical music questions, I have heard contemporary music questions (usually dealing with slightly obscure bands or performers) what I have never heard is a set of questions dealing with - Hymns. Oh yes there is the odd question about Faure's Requiem or Mozarts Great Mass (all of them beautiful) so clearly the embargo on hymns is only for religious music that the audience might actually understand.
It is not that I am a believer - I am not - but even a philistine like myself can at least grant the idea that there are some beautiful hymns and that are strikingly well written and have high regard within the culture of the West.
Just pondering on the vagaries of question setters and the Beeb (Interestingly enough the program is produced by ITV for the BBC)
As always, Mark, enjoying your thoughts on today and on things past. Thank you for giving some intellectual fodder for us tired old brains to think on.
Mick,
Long, long ago, I actually appeared on University Challenge (we made it to the second round). Nobody seemed to get the music piece, and I thought it sounded like a bat fluttering.
So I said to myself "What the hell", hit the buzzer and said "die Fledermaus". To my surprise, Bamber Gascoigne said "correct".
But thanks for your comment about the hymns! That had never occurred to me!
There's a German website (you'll find it if you Google robokopp) which is a very good source for song lyrics (that's where I found the Confederate words to The Star-Spangled Banner") and which has folksongs grouped by country. Many of the ones listed under "England" are hymns.
Regarding the confusion between the Confederate and Norwegian flags, we could mess with their heads a bit. The Vikings actually DID keep slaves, many of whom were Irish, and apparently mitochondrial DNA and blood groups in Iceland and the Faroes show strong connections with Ireland
There's a place in the Faroes, on Vagar, called Trælanýpa, where worn-out slaves were thrown into the sea... it's supposed to be quite a nice walk, and is billed as a tourist attraction.
Meanwhile, when the slave raiders from the Barbary Coast came to Iceland and the Faroes they made no distinction between the descendants of slaves and those of the owners...
Most Norwegians live the the southern end of their country. Do you really think the striking similarity between the Norwegian Flag and the Stars and Bars is a coincidence?
As to the slaves, after thinking about it, the French apparently gave us a worn out Nubian Slave Princess and passed her off as Lady Liberty. I am triggered! (Je suis déclenché!)
I thought ancient Egyptians were supposed to be black. They had Hebrew slaves. They aren't allowed to have had black slaves?
"I thought ancient Egyptians were supposed to be black."
There was a DNA study on ancient Egyptian mummies that proved this wrong. The findings showed that ancient Egyptians were racially closer to modern white southern Europeans than to modern Egyptians.
Wow this is the first time I have listened to the show. Exceeded expectation!
It's about time!
Where have you been?
Is it possible that the next generation, no matter what color, could by some miracle, actually read documents and remnants of history, and perhaps produce a reverse of the pendulum?
Perhaps buy us some time? or maybe that's naive at this stage.
Loved the explanation of the Nubian slaves,.. per Lucy, if you can't be right be wrong at the top of your lungs.
And I plan to write notes in support of the Nordic Pineapple Inn. There is no way those flags should be confused, other than stupidity.
Never fail, I go along for months feeling inferior to all the commenters here, only to hear Jimmy Rabbitte explaining to the Northside Dubliners that they are proud black Irish. Colm Meaney wrote a tribute to Alan Parker (Variety, 8/4/20) and the last sentence: "I doubt we'll ever see his likes again, as we say in Ireland."
Hey Mark,
The current march of the morons seems to want us all to vote early, starting in September. I note that William Tecumseh Sherman captured Atlanta on September 2nd, 1864 (memorialized in the now banned movie, Gone With The Wind). If massive early voting by mail existed back then, we likely would have had President George McLellan, and it is quite possible that the Confederate States of America would still exist. Care to comment on how events, my dear boy, can affect things political?
Re: the Nubian slave girl statues -- they really don't look all that Nubish. They really have more of a nouveau French Venus de Milo/Statue of Liberty vibe. Besides anyone who has ever watched a Cecil B. deMille documentary knows that being a slave in ancient Egypt wasn't that bad a deal. The slaves spoke excellent English in with upper class accents and were well treated except by the odd overseer having a bad day. As long as you didn't get crushed by an obelisk being rolled by on logs or mind stomping straw into mud for bricks, it was a simple, but happy, way of life. The slave girls got to do exotic, modern dance routines in front of the Pharaoh in his well lit, air conditioned palace. This was while the Celts were living in reed huts in Ireland. Those Yankee hoteliers should have known better.
As I recall, the slave girls usually won the hero in the end. Things usually ended badly for the queens and princesses.
Dear Mark
this was a great show. I so love the 100 years ago items which show the world was not that much simpler than today. And the Annie Ross piece was wonderful as I had never heard of her and it is a great tale of innocence and strength and inspiration and redemption. Please keep. finding such wonderful material. And sometimes I want to tell. you not to worry so much. Yes, it is terrible that so many undeserving people are being murdered in the streets of Portland etc. And I wish children were learning about Aristotle and Gandhi in the schools (warts and all) than having ill educated leftie half wits make it up on the fly. But our world is wonderful and beautiful. And God loves us all. And all he asks is that we do our best to love him and to love our neighbours. I like your passion for what is right and good and your evangelism (lower case) to make this a more aware and better world. Let us pray that we can continue the immense material progress of the last century and layer on top a spiritual awakening. Thank you for what you are doing.
You hear a story like the one involving the "Confederate" Norwegian flag at that Michigan B&B and think "that's it, they can't get any more obnoxiously stupid than that" and then you get today's report that "Kindergarten Cop" has been cancelled from a (yes) Portland-area outdoor film festival because a local writer complained it was really no different than "Birth of a Nation." I guess you'd have to be a local writer from Portland to figure that out.
At one time in the past I'd just assume these stories were put-up jobs and check to see if the calendar said April 1st but no more.
The World is my Onion.
Kindergarten Cop is actually trans-phobic. I was thinking on that point a while ago. It's just a throw away line by one of the students which they could easily just cut out. Maybe there's more that I don't know about?
Has anyone anywhere gone after Crocodile Dundee yet? There's that one little comment about the "marching with the gay nazis," and of course the bar scene with the guy dressed up like a shela.
I inevitably find the "100 years" segments to be the most fascinating of all. Somehow the "news" from 100 years ago manages to blend seamlessly into the current newsframe (and the stories are often racier than the current stories!)
Yeah I agree, the 100 years ago and song of the week are fantastic history lessons. I get so immersed into them that usually by the end of the show Ive forgotten what got me so pissed off during the first 20 minutes or so of the show - i.e. the civilizational collapse portion. I've learned so much during the 100 years ago and song of the week segments.
Is there anyone besides me that thinks that the crazed tranny from Mark's previous show should be the keynote speaker at the democrat convention? It could just scream "I am a women" continuously, maybe alternating with "and you are a racist". I would actually watch some of that, during happy hour here at the house.
Mark, you make the road to the Apocalypse so entertaining I almost look forward to the trip.
The murder statistics out of Chicago are so horrific that I have occasionally wondered, if, when they seem vaguely to slow down, all the gunmen are either in the hospital, or in the morgue. Unfortunately, the supply of killers, victims, guns and ammunition is always quickly replenished. Not many of the killers go to prison, on murder charges, anyway, because there is a culture of omertĂ in the most violent neighbourhoods, but I assume they have a habit of ending up with premature funerals.
I would be all for cordoning off an area where they could blast each other to bits (oh wait, they tried that in Seattle; they called it CHAZ). It's the collateral damage—beautiful young boys and girls pictured in graduation gowns and Sunday Best struck down in the first blush of youth by stray bullets—that breaks my heart. To torture Yeats, the worst are full of passionate intensity, and Chicago's best lack convictions.
No rational person could doubt which side is full of passionate intensity or which lacks all conviction, however the truly frightening first stanza of 'The Second Coming' applies to the whole of America in 2020. I saved a Newsweek column from 50 years ago by Stewart Alsop - yes, the magazine employed actual journalists back then - when he wondered during those dark days of rioting and bombings whether America might one day come apart all at once like Oliver Wendell Holmes one-hoss shay "built in such a logical way it ran a hundred years to the day but it went to pieces all at once; all at once and nothing first just as bubbles do when they burst". We have just 3 months to get our answer.
I finally got back into the London National Gallery, the other day, after many months of exile. Joni Mitchell's "Two heads are better than one" reminds me of the great Holbein portrait there of Princess Christina of Denmark, already a widow in her teens. Henry VIII of England was interested in gaining her hand in marriage, but the very sane Dane said that she'd be happy to marry Henry, if only she had a spare head.
Marcus Garvey Park, north of Central Park, has always struck me as a depressing place. As far as I know, it's the only place where you can't drive in a straight line down Fifth Avenue. Instead, you have to go around the grey, dank square, which, I'd guess, in the de Blasio renaissance, is probably a place where you'd be unwise to stop, these days.
Hearing the high dudgeon of the academic so exercised by the depiction of slavery in art reminds me of the old joke:
Q: How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: That's not funny!!!
One wants to say lighten up, sweetheart, it's just a statue, but one would just get in trouble.
With all future performances of Aida canceled, may I keep my recording? It's got Leontyne Price, if that helps. (I suppose Verdi's Nabucco will have to go too.) Farewell to some of Michelangelo's most magnificent sculptures and perhaps my favorite Velázquez portrait (of Juan de Pareja, whom Velázquez actually owned at the time, but later freed). If you're exhausted trying to imagine all the "problematic" masterpieces that need to disappear, Harvard's Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has already done the heavy lifting. Skip is co-editor of The Image of the Black in Western Art. Its 26,000 examples will keep the most woke awake.
Well said, J. One would of course not want to overlook the point that the academic is of a particular type: as trendy as superficial in opinion, thick as a plank, probably appointed pursuant a policy of tokenism, and certainly capable of commanding respect only for her assertive loudness.
I like Cellini. Now there was a busy soul who ploughed every furrow in every direction, and produced some fine bronzes evidently in his spare time.
We have clearly decided that primitivism is the direction we should go as a culture. If you look at the pagan dances of primitive tribes they are done to a monotonous drumbeat that varies little. The whole performance is always devoid of any sort of beautiful and nuanced melody and harmony. If you watch documentaries or read articles about such things we are usually told we are witnessing something of great cultural meaning and profundity and that we westerners are just to chauvinistic to appreciate the depth of feeling and expression. This is like being told that all grievances, no matter how ridiculous, are always profoundly important. The fact is you can only have beautiful and nuanced melody and harmony in culture within a strong framework of truth. The drumbeat we have chosen is, racism, racism, racism. The beat of the tom toms never stops and truth is not permitted to interrupt the beat. It's practically meaningless and it makes you brain dead. It's everywhere. Like all primitive, pagan tribal dances it's gibberish. I'm letting my western chauvinism hang out.
There was some discussion here a while back about the concept of the noble savage. That used to be a term largely confined to the salons of fashionable intellectual drivel. Now it has broken all bounds and animates a large number of people. On it's face, the term noble savage is an absolute oxymoron, but that depends on what your definition of noble is. I gather that noble now means, and always meant in this context, that you possess the means to exercise lots of power, and arbitrarily at that. So the term now makes sense. Arbitrary power wielded with savagery is what defines the so-called noble savage. The noble savage prince sits on his throne of skulls while his idiotic minions beat out racism, racism, racism. Pass the hash pipe.
Devastated to hear of statues outside The Shelbourne. Have had many cocktails at The Horseshoe Bar.
Ireland has given up more freedom to The EU and to the cancel culture of the US.
It would now appear that Ireland had more autonomy pre 1921.
I will contact the hotel and ask that they be returned.
"The future is there for those who show up for it." The Democrats have been the ones showing up for it while erasing our past at the same time. To them, the future is only what they have yet to order you to do.
That's a great line about the future. In my lifetime pretty much everything they have advocated has eventually come to pass, no matter how ridiculous. I see no reason to believe the outcomes will be any different for their current laundry list of insane proposals. It's just a matter of when.
I've worn out Mark's proclamation that the future belongs to whoever shows up for it. It is a very clever line. I think Mark crafted it in response to the stupid bromide "the future belongs to the children", which is utterly false. To paraphrase, the future belongs to whoever outnumbers everyone else and is able to lord it over everybody else. Think Islam in Europe circa mid-21st century.
Yes. Mark doesn't harp on it much, but he released a compelling video a while back about the remorseless Mediterranean demography and how the populations of the southern regions will simply row or sail over and take the northern regions because there won't be anyone left there with the will to stop them. Rinse and report for Western Europe a decade or two later.
I doubt, even if the most dramatic demographic scenarios came to pass, that "Islam" will take over Western Europe.
They won't even have time to put up any statues of Mohammed (even if that were allowed) before they start getting pulled down for "homophobia".