No, he doesn’t improvise in rhyming couplets but one feels he could if it might provoke a laugh at the foolish world’s expense. One doesn’t want to be at the end of his verbal rapier. He’s already skewered the Obama Nation with such style that one’s first encounter with him always feels like the opening scene of Cyrano de Bergerac! The only, overly large protuberance out of his head is wit!!

I first began reading Mark Steyn when he seemed to be writing mostly for Canadians. That, of course, was my mistake. He’d already captured the interest and admiration of the entire English-speaking “Lost”, which is most of us.

Despite his unmistakably British diction, Mark was born in Toronto. Despite his Anglican affiliations, his family is rife with Catholicism. As a Moriarty, I attribute most of his genius to his disinherited Catholicism.

His most formative education was in the United Kingdom at the King Edward’s School, Birmingham, England and according to his Wikipedia biography his professions seem to have gone from disc-jockey to musical theater critic for The Independent of London. That accounts for his impressive knowledge of the entire American Songbook, not to mention the theatrical panache he can summon up in an entertaining instant.

Despite the indelibly British cadences, he has a Damon Runyon, Guys and Dolls bite to his television appearances.

Broadway off of Piccadilly Square!

After entertaining the folks at The Independent, he then moved to the UK’s magazine, The Spectator.

Now, of course, Mark Steyn is all over the English-speaking world and I assume his eternally provocative books have been translated into every European language there is. If not, it is their loss, despite the inevitably great losses in translation.

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You know the problem with the arts these days? In case you didn’t know, Philip Kennicott will be happy to tell you. The problem with the arts, he says, is that they’re homophobic.

Quit laughing.

In a recent Washington Post column, Kennicott takes issue with “a litany of shameful events and grievances” committed against homosexuals in the arts, from “the ‘super-macho’ ethos of the American abstract expressionists” to the recent removal of an explicit exhibit from the Smithsonian Museum. Basically, he believes that despite the disproportionate contributions of homosexuals to the arts world, the arts world has failed to honor them appropriately. And he believes that the only way to do this is to make sure that museums are upfront about (1) the sexual proclivities of artists and their subjects, and (2) the subjects’ role, if any, “the iconography of same-sex eroticism.”

For instance, since Saint Sebastian has been appropriated as a homosexual icon, museums are supposed to mention this wherever they display paintings of him. Never mind that he was not himself homosexual.

And if all this openness makes museums seem a little less “family friendly” to some, well, they just need to get with the times. “‘Family’ is now understood to include gay parents, married gay couples and people with gay children, and the absence of basic information about the role of same-sex desire in art history has become an overt sin of omission,” Kennicott explains. Because society is now more accepting of various forms of sexuality, clearly, kids need more sexual information shoved in their faces! (Since, you know, they’re not getting enough of it already from the culture around them.) (more…)

Please, before you even read this article, gaze at and ponder Mark’s classically Steynian “Weiner’s Twitter Tweak”.

Laughter, for myself at any rate, does not become, as they say, “side-splitting” unless there’s some metaphorical and breathtakingly abrupt fall from heaven to hell or in this case, from The Halls of Legend to the basements of the Bowery Boys.

Equally familiar with both Palace and Punditry, Mark Steyn pulls off a comic free-throw contest, sinking three-pointers not merely from center court but from mid-Atlantic regions that combine much of English history, the American Third Millennium and Li’l Abner.

This masterpiece begins with Churchillian, World War I gravitas and descends within three, far-reaching and ominous paragraphs to the phrase, “Twitpic crotch shot”.

The double alliteration alone could shatter a minor monument or two.

Lessons in standard English, taught by the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts or LAMDA are evoked in my 70 year-old memory and … well … only a Brit, transplanted genius in North America, wallowing in the transatlantic absurdities of the English-speaking world can pull off a “Weiner Twitter Tweak”.

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“We sent a clear message to the West regarding the red lines that should not be crossed.”

That was the arrogant declaration of victory from the Organization of the Islamic Conference nearly two years ago, regarding the shrewdly orchestrated Muslim mayhem around the world protesting such infidel abominations as the Danish Muhammad cartoons and Geert Wilders’ short film Fitna.

“Red lines” indeed – a phrase chillingly reminiscent of Samuel Huntington’s famous observation that “Islam has bloody borders.” Except that the red lines the OIC is referring to aren’t geographical – they are the ever-tightening limits that Muslim fundamentalists are imposing to choke off our freedoms.

The influential OIC is the world’s largest Muslim assembly, consisting of 57 member states (you know, the same number of U.S. states candidate Obama campaigned in). Its primary aim is “conducting a large-scale worldwide effort to confront Islamophobia.” (As I’ve written here before, Islamophobia is a mythical beast that the OIC and collusive groups like CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, use to intimidate us into craven appeasement.) Their goal is to abridge our free speech by making criticism of Islam an international crime; their strategy works because the West has been so emasculated by multiculturalism that we’d rather embrace cultural suicide than offend the tender sensibilities of such violent barbarians as the Danish cartoon rioters. (more…)

As President Obama takes his victory lap abroad, the cheerleading media line up to shake their pompoms. The Huffington Post says “this is what real diplomacy looks like.” Slate calls it “the return of statecraft.” Here’s another way to describe it: dhimmitude, the demeaned and subordinate status of non-Muslims under Muslim rule. 

Did you miss our President’s servile bow before the Saudi King in London? If you blinked you did, because the mainstream media have virtually ignored this significant gesture. The left, of course, on the rare occasion that they even acknowledge the incident, dismiss the bow as a stumble, a search for a dropped contact lens, a sudden bout of abdominal pain, anything but what it unmistakably was … a full-on deferential dip to the ruler of another country. And not just any country, but the home of the most active disseminators of the fundamentalist ideology that seeks our destruction. The left always got a big, derisive (as Obama might say) laugh out of George W. Bush’s hand-holding with the Saudi sheikhs, but while that may have been a distasteful gesture, at least it was not a subservient one. (more…)

I have been accused of promoting hate speech more than once as a talk radio programmer.  In fact, I’ve been accused of it for over 25 years.  Who defines hate speech?  Many who accuse talk radio of promoting hate want the FCC to regulate it.  To suggest regulation suggests censorship.  As Voltaire said:  “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” 

In researching my book “Censorship: The Threat to Silence Talk Radio,” to be published May 5th by Simon & Schuster, I used excerpts of what some groups claim is hate speech.  So, I throw this out for discussion.  Is the following excerpt taken from the “Michael Savage Show” hateful?  In the general context of on-going terrorism, beheadings, car-bombings, and other atrocities by radical Islamists, Savage exploded on October 29, 2007.  In challenging Muslims to demonstrate their religion is one of peace, Savage issued these words: (more…)