Steyn's Year
Part Two
AUGUST
RIGHT: Is it likely that Californians have got themselves all whipped up with the Recall Fever just to install another rent-a-hack like Lieutenant-Governor Cruz Bustamante? Or will they figure, what the hell, let’s go all the way and take a flyer on Arnie? Everything about this race – from the compressed schedule to the multiple candidates – favours him... Hasta la vista, Grayby.
The Sunday Telegraph, August 10th
EPISCOPAL BIBLE STUDY
The Bishop of Maryland made a painful attempt to square the awkward Biblical strictures on homosexuality with Bishop Robinson’s vigorous sex life. His line is that God isn’t against gay sex per se, just gay sex practiced by heterosexual men. Really. “We might say about the Sodom passage,” he elaborated, “that it is not really about a group of gay men behaving badly, but a group of heterosexual men behaving atrociously.” Similarly, in Romans, Paul isn’t objecting to homosexual men having sex with each other, just heterosexual men having sex with each other.
Who knew? So God’s cool with practicing straights, He’s cool with practicing gays, it’s just bi-guys He’s got a problem with. Or have I misunderstood the Bishop’s argument?
The Daily Telegraph, August 9th
THE RUTHLESSNESS OF TOLERANCE
Throughout the Western world, “tolerance” has become remarkably intolerant, and “diversity” demands ruthless conformity. In Saskatchewan, The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix was fined by the Human Rights Commission for publishing an advertisement quoting Biblical passages on homosexuality. Fining publishers of the Bible surely can’t be far off.
The Irish Times, August 9th
REPUBLICAN NAZI ALERT!
Arnold was born in the Austrian town of Thal, but not until 1947, and thus was technically unable to join the Nazi Party no matter how much he may have wanted to. But he certainly has family ties to the Nazis. His wife’s grandfather, Joe Kennedy, was one of America’s most prominent Nazi sympathisers.
Oh, wait. That’s not the Nazi family ties the Dems had in mind?
The Sunday Telegraph, August 10th
IT BETTER BE GOOD
Any dirt Democrats dig up on Arnold is going to have to be nuclear. When you’ve been a popular celebrity for 20 years, the only way you can be damaged is with something that’s dramatically inconsistent with what the public thinks it knows about you. “Womanising” won’t cut it, not for a movie star. If it’s oral sex with a starlet in his trailer, the public will shrug. If it’s beating up a pre-op transsexual hooker, you’re in business. But in a two-month campaign anyone who wants to take him down is going to have to move fast.
The Sunday Telegraph, August 10th
THE PEOPLE'S CHOICE
Arianna Huffington is a trickle-down populist, who figures if you network at enough A-list parties word will eventually leak out to the 29 million Californians who weren’t invited.
The Wall Street Journal, August 15th
DEDUCTIBLE PUNDITRY
I was interested to learn from Thursday’s Los Angeles Times that the pundit Arianna Huffington doesn’t pay any state or federal income tax. She’s got a gazillion-dollar-a-month divorce settlement from her gay Republican ex- and an 8,000 square-foot seven-million dollar home in swanky Brentwood where she throws lavish celebrity parties. But she pays no income tax because in recent years she’s reported some $2.7 million in tax deductions on her business.
Wow. I wish I was in that business.
Hang on a minute. I am.
The Irish Times, August 16th.
BLACKOUT!
Americans have internally absorbed 9/11. They’re not waiting to be led sheep-like through lame photo-ops by Mayor Bloomberg. The bad news is that as of Saturday morning the Department of Homeland Security website, which is supposed to be the one-stop shop for all your national emergency updates, still had nothing at all on the blackout. The good news is nobody cared.
The Sunday Telegraph, August 17th
PARIS WHEN IT SIZZLES
“The US and British armies have entered the gates of hell,” thundered George Galloway last month. “Soon it will be 100 degrees at midnight in Baghdad, but there will be no respite from the need for full body armour.”
As usual, George was a little off. The gates of hell are on the Peripherique and it’s 100 degrees at midnight in the pissoir on the Metro. To date, two US soldiers are believed to have succumbed to the heat in Iraq, whereas over 10,000 people have succumbed to the heat in France. That would make George’s brutal Iraqi summer about one five-thousandth as lethal as the brutal Gallic summer, which has killed more people than the brutal Afghan winter (now 23 months behind schedule), the brutal Iraqi summer and the searing heat of the Guantanamo torture camps combined and multiplied by a thousand.
The Daily Telegraph, August 23rd
LEAVE IT TO THE U.N.
Last week Mr Vieira de Mello’s luck ran out. He died in a complex that was virtually unprotected because he and his subordinates had turned down offers of increased security from the US military. He died in a building whose guards are Baathist spies originally assigned by Saddam as the UN’s minders, but whom Mr Vieira de Mello decided to keep on the payroll. He died in an office whose precise location the suicide bomber somehow knew well enough to park directly under, just as a key high-level meeting began. If it weren’t tragic, in the proper sense of the word, it would be laughable.
The Spectator, August 30th
SEPTEMBER
RIGHT: The humanitarian touring circuit is now the oldest established permanent floating crap game. Regions such as West Africa, where there’s no pretence anything will ever get better, or the Balkans, which are maintained by the UN as the global equivalent of a slum housing project, suit the aid agencies perfectly: there’s never not a need for them. But in Iraq they’ve decided they’re not interested in staying to see the electric grid back up to capacity and the water system improved if it’s an American administration at the helm.... For six months, their Chicken Little predictions of humanitarian catastrophe in Iraq have failed to emerge. If the country gets by perfectly fine without them, that may be a very useful lesson.
Meanwhile, who’s staying on? The private sector: Bechtel and Halliburton and all the other supposed Bush cronies invited to help re-build post-war Iraq. According to the conspirazoids, Dick Cheney planned 9/11 so that he’d have an excuse to topple Saddam and his old company Halliburton could make a killing. Fine. Let’s take that as read. The fact is, right now, Oxfam and the other do-gooders have fled, and the only folks standing shoulder to shoulder with the Iraqi people are the wicked capitalists.
The Irish Times, September 22nd
POSTER BOY
As we now know, Dr Kelly was in favour of the war. Not only that, but his most significant point of disagreement with the government is that they were (officially) opposed to regime change, while he thought it absolutely necessary. In that respect at least, he was more hawkish than Blair, Straw and Colin Powell. He had more faith in the existence of WMD than half the cabinet on either side of the Atlantic. Yet a man who believed there was no option other than war has been enthusiastically adopted by the anti-war crowd as an emblem of their cause.
The other day, a terrorist called Sawad, who helped mix the Bali bomb, expressed his gratitude to the anti-war movement. “I want to thank the Australian people who supported our cause when they demonstrated against the policies of George Bush,” he said. “Say thank you to all of them.” Aussie peaceniks reacted somewhat huffily to this endorsement, insisting Sawad was no pal of theirs. True. They weren’t on the side of the Bali bombers, anymore than Dr Kelly was on the side of the anti-war movement. But Sawad found the peaceniks useful, just as the peaceniks found Dr Kelly useful. And you can’t blame Sawad for being confused as to what, underneath the opportunism and narcissism and Sixties nostalgia, the anti-war movement is actually for.
The Daily Telegraph, September 6th
LET'S ROLL!
After 9/11, my wife bought me a cellphone, so that, in the event I found myself in a similar situation, I could at least call my family one last time. It's not much use up here in the mountains, so I never bothered getting it out of the box. If I ever am on a hijacked plane, while everyone else is dialling home, I'll be calling AT&T or Verizon trying to set up an account.
But, of course, no one will ever hijack an American plane ever again - not because of idiotic confiscations of tweezers, but because of the brave passengers on the fourth flight. That's why the great British shoebomber had barely got the match to his sock before half the cabin pounded the crap out of him. Even the French. To expect the government to save you is to be a bystander in your own fate.
The Daily Telegraph, September 13th
THE DEMOCRATIC DERANGEMENT
In the race for the Democratic Presidential nomination, the “centrist” candidates hoped to make their stand on the intriguingly nuanced distinction that Bush was far too slow to act on doubtful intelligence re 9/11 but far too quick to act on doubtful intelligence re Iraq. It doesn’t make much sense but its very lack of consistency is what passes for “moderation” in the modern Democratic Party. Unfortunately, the more the moderates attack Bush for his handling of the war, the more the livelier lads on their left attack the moderates for the feebleness of their attacks on Bush. Most of the Senators running for the nomination have been tugged so far to the left by the anti-war frontrunner Howard Dean, they’re now running against their own voting records as much as against the President.
The Irish Times, September 15th
I see the party’s new darling Howard Dean now wants to launch a major mental health initiative. Given that he’s turned a handful of hitherto dull but sane Senators into gibbering, frothing lunatics, it’s the least he could do.
The Chicago Sun-Times, September 21st
GENERAL CONFUSION
Now that Howard Dean has driven most of his plausible rivals crazy, we have a new Voice of Sanity – General Wesley Clark, whose responses to questions on the war make the French foreign minister sound like a straight-shooter... He's a four-star general whose general position is that real men don’t have positions unless they’re approved by the French.
The Nation, September 21st
For now no one knows a thing about Wesley Clark. In fact, he doesn't seem to know much about him. One day, he's pro-war. Next day, he's anti-war. Then, just to clarify, he says he can go either way: 'I've said it both ways because when you get into this, what happens is you have to put yourself in a position...'
For someone who's supposed to be this season's John McCain, Clark so far is doing a very good impression of the most tentative, equivocal and hair-splitting of the Democrat hacks he's supposed to be the straight-talking alternative to.
The Spectator, September 27th
OCTOBER
RIGHT: California is in crisis. The electorate understands that, their media don’t. It’s CNN who, while sniffing that this election is a “circus”, runs tedious featurettes on the pornographers, sitcom actors and other fringe candidates. Meanwhile, the public winnowed the 130 candidates down to a quartet almost immediately. Indeed, the only folks obsessed with joke candidates were the media professionals who took ex-London socialite Arianna Huffington’s campaign seriously. In last week’s debate, Arianna and Arnold bickered constantly. The pundits assured us Arianna had come out on top. The next poll showed her with 0.4% and she withdrew from the race shortly thereafter. So much for media savvy. The only bottom that’s an issue in this election is Gray Davis’, and on Tuesday all it will be feeling is the electorate’s boot.
The Daily Telegraph, October 4th
NATIONALIST NON-MOVEMENT
The main reason for conjuring up a Palestinian state would be to call their bluff. For six decades, nothing the Palestinians have done has made sense if the objective is to secure a state of their own. But, if the objective is to kill Jews, it all makes perfect sense. That’s why, in West Bank towns, you see no evidence of nationalist fervor, only of Jew-killing fervor... Today Arafat is received by the UN as a head of state, subsidized by the EU and, under Oslo, physically installed in a pseudo-presidential compound. Yet he shows absolutely no desire to run anything other than a murder operation... Arafat is a head of state in no hurry to get a state to head: having to attend to trade and highways and so forth only cuts into his core business.
The Irish Times, October 6th
MISSION IMPLAUSIBLE
If sending Joseph C Wilson IV to Niger for a week is the best the world’s only hyperpower can do, that’s a serious problem. If the Company knew it was a joke all along, that’s a worse problem. It means Mr Bush is in the same position with the CIA as General Musharraf is with Pakistan’s ISI: when he makes a routine request, he has to figure out whether they’re going to use it to try and set him up.
The Spectator, October 11th
Wilson was never an intelligence specialist, he’s no longer a “career diplomat”, but he is, like so many other retired ambassadors, on the payroll of the Middle East Institute – which is to say, on the payroll of the House of Saud.
Think about that. To investigate Saddam Hussein’s attempted acquisition of nuclear material, the United States government sent a man in the pay of the Saudi government. If it’s true, as Dr Mahathir says, that the Jews control America, they seem to have hired an awful lot of Saudi front men to cover the fact.
The Chicago Sun-Times, October 19th
RECALL FEVER
This week the Continentals could hardly wait for the polls to close to throw up their hands and shriek “Quelle horreur!” Der Spiegel put Arnold on the cover over the headline “Das verkommene Paradies” – the rotten paradise. Le Monde warned of “le danger Californien”. In L’Humanite, Claude Cabanes turned in a column headlined “The American Bad Dream” and declared that the election of a “cardboard Hercules” was merely the latest stage in the “decomposition of a completely worm-eaten political system”.
Ah, yes. What a shame the Californian political system is so worm-eaten it’s unable to offer voters the civilized choice M Cabanes had in his last Presidential election.
The Daily Telegraph, October 11th
THE LATEST ZIONIST PLOT
Last month mass hysteria apparently swept the capital city, Khartoum, after reports that foreigners were shaking hands with Sudanese men and causing their penises to disappear. One victim, a fabric merchant, told his story to the London Arabic newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi. A man from West Africa came into the shop and “shook the store owner’s hand powerfully until the owner felt his penis melt into his body.”
I know the feeling. The same thing happened to me after shaking hands with Hillary Clinton.
The Chicago Sun-Times, October 26th
ALARMING NEW STRAIN
My own theory is that, just as Canada was the only western nation afflicted by SARS, so too it may be the only western nation afflicted by Sudanese Vanishing Penis Syndrome. I’m not a trained physician – if I were, I’d have left Montreal and be working in Houston – but, insofar as I understand it, in Khartoum what happens is that the foreigner shakes hands with the Muslim and the Muslim subsequently discovers that he has “lost his penis”. But, in this distinctively Canadian variant, what happens is that the foreigner shakes hands with the Muslim and it’s the foreigner – in this case, the Canadian politician – who discovers that his manhood has completely disappeared. No doubt M Chretien entered the room intending to treat Dr Mahathir to a vigorous Bush-like demonstration of moral clarity only to shake his hand and get that strange shrinking feeling.
I wish I could say that this was the first known Canadian case of Sudanese Impotence Syndrome. But, judging from Bill Graham’s remarks whenever a Canadian gets tortured or murdered by an Islamist thug regime, it seems to have infected the entire government. In Sudan, the affliction is known as “vanishing penis”; in Canada, it’s known as the “soft power” doctrine. You’ll recall “soft power” is what Lloyd Axworthy claimed Canada was good at “projecting”. But, as those Sudanese guys would tell you, soft power is hard to project at all.
Ask A Washed-Up Canadian, October 24th
NOVEMBER
RIGHT: Driving through a big swathe of western and northern New Hampshire the other day, I saw gazillions of Dean signs and none for any other candidate except one John Edwards sign in Hanover. Kerry’s been in the Granite State a lot longer than the Americans have been in Iraq and he’s getting nowhere, he’s bogged down in a “quagmire”. Maybe the reason he keeps mentioning Vietnam every ten minutes in New Hampshire is because for him the parallels between the latter and the former are becoming more and more ominous. Could it be that he and Clark went into this thing without (drumroll, please) a plan?
Maybe it’s time to start thinking about an exit strategy.
The Chicago Sun-Times, November 2nd
CENTRAL PLANNING
What is it the Democrats think Bush did wrong? Simple. In his 18-month rush to war with Iraq, he didn’t have a plan. “When you put American troops in harm’s way, you better not do it without a plan,” says General Clark. “I said at the time that it was critical for us to have a plan,” says Senator Edwards. “This president has no plan of any kind.”
So presumably Clark, Kerry and Edwards have a plan? You better believe it! Years ago, John Lennon and Paul McCartney said, “There are always two things we do when we sit down and write a song. First we sit down. Then we write a song.” That’s the Democratic plan for Iraq in a nutshell. Their big in-depth plan is to a) sit down and b) make a plan. The sitting-down part – with the UN, the French, the Guinean Foreign Minister, etc – could easily have gone on so long they’d never get around to b).
The Chicago Sun-Times, November 2nd
JEWS MAKING TROUBLE AGAIN
The European Union’s Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia has decided to shelve its report on the rise of anti-Semitism on the Continent. The problem, as reported in The Sunday Telegraph, is that the survey had found that “many anti-Semitic incidents were carried out by Muslim and pro-Palestinian groups”, and so a “political decision” was taken not to publish it because of “fears that it would increase hostility towards Muslims”.
Let’s go back over that slowly and try not to get a headache: the EU’s main concern about an actual epidemic of hate crimes against Jews is that it could provoke a hypothetical epidemic of hate crimes against Muslims... A tolerant society is so reluctant to appear intolerant, it would rather tolerate intolerance.
The Daily Telegraph, November 25th
CHRETIEN'S LEGACY
Canada’s “national identity” is supposedly to be found in its “social programs”; Canadians are supposedly willing to pay higher taxes in order for a more equitable society. Quite where the 50% of income the government takes winds up is hard to see... The hospitals in Canada are so overloaded they’re unable to observe even basic hygiene procedures, a basic failing which covers everything from the Ontario health system’s incubation of SARS to Labrador’s gift of Chlamydia to its gynaecological patients. M Chrétien lectured Wall Street that, while Canada had fewer millionaires than America, it also had fewer poor people. But what you can’t help noticing is that the plutocrats we do have are almost all well-connected Liberal Party types or businessmen whose businesses are either subsidized or regulated by the government.
There are words to describe the kind of society that kicks veterans’ widows out on the street while giving the former riding secretary who approves the decision a $160,000 expense tab, that lavishes billions on corporate welfare on Lib-friendly businesses but can’t wash the instruments between pap smears: “Welfare state”? “Just society”? Try “kleptocracy”.
Ask A Washed-Up Canadian, November 21st
ROOT CAUSE
The war on terror is, in one sense, a Saudi civil war that the Royal Family has successfully exported to the rest of the world. The rest of the world should see that it’s repatriated.
The Spectator, November 22nd
MY ENEMY'S ENEMY
It’s one thing to dislike Bush, it’s one thing to hate America. But it’s quite another to hate America so much you reflexively take the side of any genocidal psycho who comes along. In their terminal irrelevance, the depraved left has now adopted the old slogan of Cold War realpolitik: like Osama and Mullah Omar, Saddam may be a sonofabitch, but he’s their sonofabitch.
The Chicago Sun-Times, November 23rd
DECEMBER
RIGHT: Twelve months ago, Saddam Hussein was sitting on his solid gold toilet. He’s now on the run, moving every few hours and unlikely ever again to feel even a standard black plastic seat against his bottom. His sons are dead, so there’s no possibility of dynastic succession. There has been a noticeable decline in the number of suicide bombings against Israel, suggesting the intifada is having some problems without its sugar daddy. Conversely, there’s been an increase in pressure on the Saudi Arabian and Iranian regimes.
The Spectator, December 13th
THE ARCHBISHOP OF EQUIVALENCE
Last month, the Archbishop happened to be in Istanbul and was a guest at the home of the British Consul, Roger Short. Within a few hours of his departure, Mr Short was dead, vapourised in the wreckage of an almighty bombing. Dr Williams sounded momentarily shaken, expressing “shock and grief” at the death of his host, and condemning “these vicious and senseless attacks. These acts of violence achieve nothing.”
In fact, “these acts of violence” achieve quite a bit. Why, only a month earlier similar acts of violence had led the Archbishop to make a speech at the Royal Institute for International Affairs at which he’d argued that terrorism can “have serious moral goals”. “It is possible to use unspeakably wicked means to pursue… an aim that is intelligible or desirable,” he said. By ignoring this, America “loses the power of self-criticism and becomes trapped in a self-referential morality.”
Perhaps Dr Williams would like to explain what precisely is the “serious moral goal” of the men who killed his host.
The Daily Telegraph, December 2nd
NEW ACRONYM, SAME GREAT SERVICE
In the sense that his application was not approved until he was deceased, Mohammed Atta may be a more poignant symbol of legal US immigration than we realize.
National Review, December 8th
THE DEFEATISTS
I’m amazed that we can still win anything given the palpable urge of the western world’s elites to abase themselves in the name of multiculturalism. Their position is basically that of Bernd Brandes, the computer engineer eaten by the German cannibal: go ahead, devour me, but chop my penis off first so I can watch you sauté it.
The Spectator, December 13th
MASSIVE SHORTAGE OF HUMANITARIANS
After some particularly vicious bombings of the UN and others, the NGOs mostly fled Iraq in late summer. “It would be rather sobering,” I wrote in August, “were Iraq to demonstrate it can get along without them.” And what do you know? It’s remarkable how quickly a problem goes away once the people with a vested interest in there being a problem go away.
The Spectator, December 13th
MODERATE POSITION
The snubbed Euro-weasels were not as pithy as Mr Bush. But the new Canadian Prime Minister, Paul Martin, is worth quoting. “This shouldn’t be just about who gets contracts,” he said. “It ought to be about what is the best thing for the people of Iraq.”
Good point. The best thing for the people of Iraq was to get rid of Saddam, and back in the spring Mr Martin didn’t want to be a part of that. The best thing for the people of Iraq, according to Mr Martin and Herr Schroeder and M de Villepin, was that Saddam should be allowed to go on killing and torturing them for another decade or three. Reasonable people are prone to reasonableness, and the reasonable thing to do is invariably nothing.
The Sunday Telegraph, December 14th
THE BIKE-PATH LEFT
On Osama bin Laden, he’s Mister Insouciant. But he gets mad about bike paths. Destroy the World Trade Center and he’s languid and laconic and blasé. Obstruct plans to convert the ravaged site into a memorial bike path and he’ll hunt you down wherever you are.
The Wall Street Journal, December 17th
THE SCORE SO FAR
Taliban gone, Saddam gone, Gaddafi retired, Osama “resting”. “Message: America wins” is as accurate a summation of the last two years as any. Whether or not you think American victory is a good thing is another matter. But a smart anti-American ought to recognize that generally things are going America’s way, and the only argument worth having is about the speed at which they’re doing so.
The Irish Times, December 22nd |
