Earlier today Bob Loblaw tweeted something that I'd completely overlooked:
Today is the "future" dateline referenced in the @MarkSteynOnline column "Monica's Dress" where the dress (now a pair of curtains in Idaho) reflects back 20 years to its heyday leading up to the 1998 Bill Clinton impeachment trial.
That's true, it is: August 22nd 2018. Exactly twenty years ago, on August 22nd 1998, the Year of Impeachment, I wrote a column for The Daily Telegraph in London imagining an exclusive interview with the once famous dress two decades on:
August 22nd 2018
She is older now, her once dazzling looks undeniably faded, her famous beauty worn and creased.
"Sorry about that," she says. "I was supposed to get ironed yesterday."
Yes, it's "that dress" — the dress that, 20 years ago this month, held the fate of a presidency in her lap. It has been two decades since the day she gave her dramatic testimony to the grand jury and then promptly disappeared into the federal witness protection program. Even as she recalls her brief moment in the spotlight, she looks drawn. But that's because, following extensive reconstructive surgery, she's been living quietly as a pair of curtains in Idaho.
"What do you think?" she says, saucily brushing her hem against the sill as her pleats ripple across the mullions. "It cost less than Paula Jones' nose job."
To be honest, I was lucky to get the interview. The dress was supposed to be doing the BBC — the full sob-sister treatment, Martin Bashir, the works—but, to protect her identity, they wanted to do that undercover secret-location protect-your-identity trick with the camera that makes part of the screen go all fuzzy and blurry.
"Are you crazy?" she yelled at them. "It'll look like I've still got the stain."
I'm occasionally asked why I don't write Monica-type columns so much these days. Well, the short answer is what came after Monica and impeachment on a Tuesday morning in September. The longer answer can be found in the prologue to my book The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, personally autographed copies of which are exclusively available from the SteynOnline bookstore and make a delightful twentieth-anniversary gift for the stained dress in your closet. As I wrote in the book:
A decade or so back, early in the 2004 presidential election season, a publisher took me to lunch and pitched me a book. She wanted me to write a John Kerry election diary. Easy gig. All I had to do was follow him around and mock him mercilessly. Well, I hemmed and hawed and eventually she got the picture and said, "Okay, what would you like to write a book about?"
And so I replied, "Well, I've got this idea for a book called The End of the World."
And there was a pause and I could feel her metaphorically backing out of the room, and shortly thereafter she literally backed out of the room. But not before telling me, somewhat wistfully, "You know when I first started reading your stuff? Impeachment. Your column about Monica Lewinsky's dress was hilarious." She motioned to the waiter. "Check, please!" And I got the distinct impression she was feeling like the great pop guru Don Kirshner when the Monkees came to him and said they were sick of doing this bubblegum stuff and they needed to grow as artists...
The Nineties were a lot of fun for a columnist. A third Clinton term and I could have retired to the Caribbean. 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.
It looks like I'll be waiting longer than Miss Bergman. "August 22nd 2018" was a fictional conceit when I wrote my column. Here it is, and end-of-the-world-wise we're not where we should be.
~I'll see you on the radio at 5pm Eastern with Peter Shurman, in for John Oakley on Toronto's AM640. As the second year of The Mark Steyn Club cranks into top gear, we're very appreciative of all those who signed up in our first flush and have been so eager to re-subscribe - and we hope as summer draws down that later members will feel the same way. We thank you all, and hope to see at least a few of you on our inaugural Club Cruise next month. For more information on the Steyn Club, see here.
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Sorry Canada, Scotlands snowflake SNP minority (will even smaller after next election) government have got it in for you first leader John MacDonald.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-45275651
Next they will blame all of us for the demise of the Neanderthals. Damn my ancient ancestors. Euro-Asia was their land and the Denisovians. I just hope out ancestors call them nasty things like ginger or white.
What a pile of crock.
I find it very interesting that the SNP (a Scottish nationalist party) is disowning one of its own most successful sons (the founder of one of the richest countries in the world). The Scots should be embarrassed that a nation that has contributed so much to the world has reduced itself to being an identity politics grievance group. What a waste. Be proud Scotland!
Ten years ago the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library had an impressive, and surprisingly engaging, exhibit of many of the actual dresses worn by First Lady Nancy Reagan. Alongside the dresses were photos and video footage prompting recollection of the historical times when Ronnie was at the helm with Nancy by his side. There is currently a similar mini pop-up exhibit inside the South Coast Plaza in Orange County, with dresses worn by Mary Todd Lincoln, Jacqueline Kennedy, Betty Ford and other first ladies. But missing from the exhibit was any contribution from the Bonnie and Clyde of Pennsylvania Avenue pantsuit and dress collection.
17 years. England's lost. Italy is noticing it's out of air and chained to the bottom of the sea. Germany's pretending it's not dead, like Monty Python's parrot.
At home, we've lost Minnesota. We've lost New Mexico. We've lost the coasts.
The attack on free speech came from the Left and islamists, making common cause against the middle. We've lost the constraint on power. We've lost (among others) the FBI, the DoJ, the NSA, the CIA, the IRS, and even less important but historically respected NASA.
We've lost Kate Steinle and Mollie Tibbets.
17 years. I think we've passed the inflection point.
Mark is our Cassandra.
It's hard not to be depressed for my kids' future.
Sadly, most all of what you mention here is true, Allison. Today was such a terrible news day, especially with what we learned about the sweet young woman, Mollie Tibbetts. Life will never be the same for her family and their grief and distress is only comprehended by us in some limited way. Also, it freshens the wounds for those others who lost loved ones to premeditated murder and vehicular manslaughter by drunken illegals driving around in uninsured cars with fake ids. I repeat myself, I'm sure, but we need some big wall, and at this point we're not fussy about how it looks. Very soon, too, without waiting for one more dead American to mourn. And we sure don't want to hear about how they are all here to share in our American dream. We don't have anything in common with people who are here gaming the system and killing our innocent citizens.
I only know, "Hey, hey we're the Monkees", but whenever I hear their name I a reminded of a rare old movie, "The Jerky Boys" where Ozzy Osbourne makes an appearance and the Monkees are mentioned - "The f'n Monkees, you're kidding me!" Still makes me LOL.
A shirtdress has always been appealing to me and that looks like it a nice classic one. Too bad it was so terribly ruined, like Monica's life.
The MSM to learn a lesson from the curtains and pull themselves together.
On that end of the world thing, I received an email via my LinkedIn account touting an article in Bloomberg News about the ascendance of Generation Z. According to the article, by next year Generation Z (those born after 2000, or 1996 depending on the study quoted) will outnumber the vaunted Millennial generation. The article then goes on to tout how Generation Z is much less self-centered and is more self-reliant than Millennials. How one can conclude that about a group of people who are under 22 years old by any measure is beyond me. At any rate, the article goes on to state that Generation Z will pose a challenge for advertisers and purveyors of pastimes such as golf. Apparently the average American golfer is over 50.
I found the article to be rather "meh" until I got to the end and the helpful map, which is where the money shot really was. Apparently, in the developed world and mostly developed world Millennials still outnumber Generation Z, in many cases by a lot. But in Africa, in places like say Niger, the young nippers outnumber Millennials by almost 2.5 to 1. So, in a few years Generation Z may indeed pose a challenge to advertisers and purveyors of golf, but not in the way Bloomberg would have us believe.
Re Matthew McWilliams's Africa point, here's David ["Spengler"] Goldman in the new Claremont Review of Books:
"The refugee crisis of the past several years will seem trivial in comparison to what we will face a generation from now. At constant fertility, over the present century the number of people aged 20 to 30 years will grow from 1.2 billion to almost 4 billion. Nearly all of the growth will occur in Africa, with some contribution from South Asia (notably Pakistan, where total fertility is 3.6 children per woman versus 2.4 in India). Abysmal governance and dwindling resources portend a humanitarian catastrophe on an unimaginable scale.
"In 2016, roughly 5,000 Africans died trying to reach Europe by boat. The United Nations estimates that 2 million have attempted the journey since 2014. What will the West do when not thousands, but millions, of desperate people appear on its borders? Last year the liberal media excoriated presidential advisor Steve Bannon for citing Jean Raspail's 1973 novel, The Camp of the Saints, in which Europe succumbs to an inundation of desperate immigrants. We are not far from such circumstances."
Since I'm a subscriber, I'm not sure if the article is out from behind the paywall, but in case it is, here's trhe link: https://www.claremont.org/crb/article/howl-at-the-moon/
Just some input from another experience. The migrant crisis has been heavily funded and advertised, so it dangled an artificial incentive that usually isn't there. Famines in Africa skew heavily to artificially-induced due to conflict... usually instigated by outside meddling. Climate-induced famines trend in the Sahel climatic zone, which is perpetually a marginal area, but the rest of Africa has pretty much outstanding agriculture with superb growing conditions all the time. Huge greenhouses produce high-quality vegetables and flowers which are daily air-freighted to European markets Africa's biggest problem has been is lack of good roads to move farm production to markets. Those are coming and the boom in economic activity is astounding to see when a good road is opened.
City shanty-towns are being converted to upscale suburban neighborhoods everywhere. Finally, no thanks to meddling environmentalists who blocked electrical development projects for years via onerous 'environmental impact studies' requirements, electrical power lines are making their way into rural towns. Labor-intensive wood stoves so adored by U.S. universities are steadily being replaced by Africans in African kitchens with European and Japanese brand propane and electric stoves.
African universities are packed to overflowing, with students who stand outside the lecture rooms to listen through the windows and at the doors, quite dedicated to achieving diplomas in medicine, engineering, business, physics and agriculture.
It's far better than the published news has made it out to be. Most Africans are staying put, they love their countries and work hard to improve their family and local community life.
Well I have to get this joke in here, which I believe is original Steyn.
Why do they call it the Lewinsky scandal?
Because if they called it the Clinton scandal, people would have to ask, "which one?"
(rimshot)
More like Monica's dress...on and off of her... but I digress.
Can we have those 20 years back please? It wasn't an innocent time back then what with OKC, Waco, Ruby Ridge, Ron Brown and such but the past 20 have been really rough. Just when the Ship of State gets a chance to be righted and repaired right now we get more of Lanny Davis, the Clintons and a Ken Starr evil twin. The more things change.....
Heh heh, the ship of state will never be righted. America crossed the event horizon some time ago. There's no going back once you cross that line. Outsiders just see you shift redder and redder, and then you implode.
Thomas Wolfe.... "you can't go home again."
So it is.... a lingering hope that the perpetrators of this plunge will have at least a brief moment of shock realizing what they did (fat chance that).
So the question lingers.... will China under communism or Islam prevail? I bet on Islam. All the Green Party and Environmentalists will be posthumously happy as the world devolves into goat herding settlements.