I'm in Chicago this weekend - actually Schaumburg, for the municipally pedantic - with Sean Hannity, Dana Loesch, Ed Klein, Bobby Jindal, Big John & Amy, Steven Crowder et al for the Freedom Summit. I'll be on stage with Big John this afternoon, and afterwards signing copies of my brand new book, The [Un]documented Mark Steyn.
Book-promoting duties had me up bright and early this morning to take a ride downtown for Fox & Friends, where Tucker Carlson quizzed me about the President's curiously bloodless response to bloody terrorist attacks:
~Over at PJ Media, Kathy Shaidle has been wending her way through The [Un]documented Mark Steyn:
In those pre-9/11, pre-America Alone days, Steyn's columns were still political for the most part. Back then, however, our preoccupations were (in retrospect) more trivial.
Steyn nods to this fact in his all-new introduction. He looks back at a 1998 alt-history piece in which, a la "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," he's unable to set up an interview with Monica Lewinsky, so he settles for a chat with her infamous dress instead.
Since the scandal, we're informed, "that dress" has undergone "extensive reconstruction surgery" and has been "living quietly as a pair of curtains in Idaho."
Steyn acknowledges that writing such pieces was great fun, but:
'…then came the new century and the new war, and I felt like Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca when she tells Bogey, "I put that dress away. When the Germans march out, I'll wear it again." I put Monica's dress away. When the jihadists march out, I'll wear it again.'
Indeed. As Miss Shaidle points out, the new book "also includes examples of Steyn's live, free association musings when he's guest-hosted The Rush Limbaugh Show":
One afternoon, he walked listeners through "the cheery cut-out 'n' keep guide" to the safe disposal of those newfangled (and hardly harmless) new "curly" lightbulbs we're all obliged to use now.
These instructions sound more like a handbook for evacuating Chernobyl, except I don't think those Russian citizens needed a deck of playing cards (!?) to ensure their safety.
And two mason jars. And…
'You don't just need the drop cloth and the baby wipes and the pack of playing cards and the two mason jars and the new carpet, you also need additional items — like an eye dropper.'
My new book is almost as toxic as a curly-fry lightbulb, but, if you drop it, you don't need a mason jar. So there's that.
~In her weekly radio review, Kathy Shaidle also notes this characteristically generous tribute from Glenn Beck:
On the show to promote his new book, "The (Un)documented Mark Steyn," the author talked about everything from the terror attack in Ottawa to J.R.R. Tolkien's handwritten reply to a letter he'd written to him as a boy.
"Mark, I don't know why you're not on more," Beck said at the end of the interview. "I thoroughly enjoy you. You're really truly one of the bravest men alive today because you will not shut up or sit down."
A couple of other radio appearances you might have missed earlier in the week: with Jan Mickelson and Dana Loesch (with whom I'll be lunching shortly). This coming week, I'll be joining Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity on the telly, Bill Cunningham and Howie Carr on the radio and much more. For full details of all my media appearances each day, please check the "On The Air" box at top right.
~As for The [Un]documented Mark Steyn itself, that "great new book" (as Sean Hannity calls it), it's now available in hardcover from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and all major US retailers, and in Canada from Indigo-Chapters, Amazon, McNally-Robinson and other fine bookstores. It's also in Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks. It's already in the Politics Top Ten in both Canada and America. As this Amazon reviewer says:
Great, well written Mark Steyn at his pithy best. A must read for all clear thinking Americans.
Also clear-thinking Canadians. And Australians. And even Frenchmen.
