Shaidle on Speech and the Unhappy Left

As many of you know, my dear friend and fearless comrade in so many battles, Kathy Shaidle, died just before dawn on Saturday. Among the many hats she wore, Kathy was our dazzling movie columnist every week, and over the weekend I rounded up a few favorite moments from her film essays.

But Kathy had plenty more to say on many other subjects, so here are a few excerpts from recent appearances on camera on The Mark Steyn Show. I was particularly struck by an insight prompted partly by being on the receiving end for years of an extraordinary number of repulsive misogynist emails and tweets from pajama boys of the "Kathy Shaidle really needs a good f***" variety: As Kathy saw it, many of the footsoldiers of the activist left are profoundly damaged people. It is perhaps a chicken-and-egg conundrum: Are they attracted to leftism because they are damaged? And does being on the left then damage them further?

At any rate, Miss Shaidle has interesting things to say on all kinds of questions. Click above to watch.

~It was a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, aside from my tribute to the irreplaceable Kathy. In our first Clubland Q&A of the New Year, I took questions from Mark Steyn Club members live around the planet: You can hear the full show here. On Saturday I presented a new edition of The Mark Steyn Show, which I opened by firing my lawyers and closed by talking to Peter Noone of Herman's Hermits. Our Sunday song selection was "Try a Little Tenderness", and our marquee presentation was the launch of our new Tale for Our Time - George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four, in which (as Steyn Clubber Ian Chandler puts it) we are now all living as unpaid extras. Part Two will air in a few hours' time. If you were too busy invoking the 25th Amendment all weekend long, I hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week gets going.