STEYN'S YEAR
Another 12 months of fishwrap are about to be consigned to the archives. But, before we shove them all in the birdcage, here's the first part of my annual stroll down memory lane. And let's get the big el-stinko-floppo prediction out of the way right upfront:
JANUARY
On the left, new media have only yoked the Dems ever more tightly to old weaknesses – not least on national security and foreign policy. This November will be another bust.
The Chicago Sun-Times, January 14th
Here’s a Reuters headline from New Year’s Day:
CIA May Need Decade To Rebuild Clandestine Service.
A decade, huh? Circa 2016, you mean? The last time I checked the job-completion estimates was back in spring 2004, when the Agency’s then director, George Tenet, told the 9/11 Commission that it would take another half-decade to rebuild the clandestine service. In other words, three years after 9/11, he was saying he needed another five years. As I wrote at the time, “Imagine if, after Pearl Harbor, Franklin Roosevelt had turned to Tenet to start up the OSS, the CIA’s Second World War predecessor. In 1942, he’d have told the President not to worry, he’d have it up and running by 1950.”
But CIA reform is like the budget for Boston’s Big Dig or the 2012 London Olympics. Think of a number, triple it and update your excuses. Four years after 9/11, it may take ten years to rebuild the clandestine service. So George Tenet would be telling FDR not to worry, we’ll have the Second World War intelligence operation up and running in time for the 1956 Soviet invasion of Hungary. Okay, make that the Cuban missile crisis. But definitely by the fall of the Berlin Wall.
The Chicago Sun-Times, January 7th
President Chirac warned on Tuesday that it would be a “grave error” for Iran and North Korea to ignore the international community. But, honestly, would it? They know, even if Chirac doesn’t, that there is no “international community”. It would be a “grave error” to ignore America and (in the case of Iran) Israel, but the rest you can pretty much ignore with impunity. Unless Chirac’s threatening to call in US-led military action, they’ve got nothing to worry about.
The Spectator, January 14th
Every challenge to the west begins as a contest of wills – and for the Iranians recent history, from the Shah and the embassy siege to the Iraqi “insurgency” and Jack Straw’s soundbites, tells them the west can’t muster the strength of will needed to force them to back down.
The Daily Telegraph, January 17th
In the old days Osama was a smarter than average nutter. He created a terror organization whose diffused structure made it hard for its enemies to tell whether they’re winning against it. But, by the same token, that structure also makes it hard for him to tell whether he’s winning against us. And right now, as that whiney loser cassette tape suggests, they’re the ones who could use a victory. Osama bin Laden is, in that sense, just another symptom rather than the cause of our recent troubles. The spread of Wahhabism, which Prince Turki and others persuaded the CIA to use as a strategic asset of convenience, is a bigger problem. And the Saudi-funded radicalization of Muslim populations around the world is a bigger one still, and may yet prove terminal for parts of Europe.
But a man inWaziristan or Overtheristan watching Cindy Sheehan on CNN? He’s not what it’s about anymore.
The Spectator, January 28th
Multiculturalism obliges us to be non-judgmental: don’t blame anyone – but, if you have to, blame the Americans. “The USis causing violence to be exported to my city,” Toronto’s mayor David Miller said. It’s estimated that half the guns used in Torontomurders are American. On the other hand, over 80 per cent of the fellows using those guns are Jamaican gang members. And, while it’s hard to seal thousands of miles of mostly rural unmanned land border, it shouldn’t be impossible to insulate yourself from the pathologies of a small distant island. Except that, just as Muslims kneel toward Mecca, Canadians only point fingers toward Washington.
The Western Standard, January 14th
For its urban audiences, Brokeback Mountain is a new wrinkle on one of the oldest gay fantasies: the masculine man who likes sex with men. So it’s a gay love story with ungaylike protagonists – Straight Eye For The Queer Guy. In the distaff answer to lezzie porn for het men, for the gals it’s a gabby chick flick with uncommunicative tough guys.
The Spectator, January 14th
It’s a good rule of life not to get stuck in the role of the guy saying “That’s not funny, okay?” I picked up a copy of The Globe And Mail in Montreal a week ago, and found a big story headlined “Why Are Liberals Laughing? BrokebackMountain has unleashed another round of lame - and homophobic - jokes, writes Liam Lacey.”
And he does, exhaustively. He doesn’t like Jay Leno joking about Sir Elton and his new groom honeymooning on Brokeback Mountain, or Craig Ferguson in cowboy get-up describing one gun as “great” and the other as “fabulous”, or the “Saturday Night Live” synopsis of the film (“for once, the good guys get it in the end”), or Letterman’s Top Ten Signs You’re A Gay Cowboy (“Instead of a saloon, you prefer a salon…”), or Nathan Lane’s musical version (Oklahomo!).
Read ‘em and weep along with poor Liam Lacey. “A tragic love story about the consequences of bigotry, Brokeback Mountain is a liberal cause célèbre… Here is the movie that affirms the entertainment industry’s reputation for tolerance and social progress. But it’s followed all-too-quickly by the side-of-the-mouth wisecracks.”
And we can’t have that, can we..? A few years ago, the idea that the left could make homosexuality as plonkingly earnest and solemn as feminism would have seemed incredible. If Cole Porter came back today, he’d be straight.
National Review, January 14th
The famous “hockey stick” graph purports to show climate change over the last thousand years, as a continuous flat millennium-long bungalow with a skyscraper tacked on for the 20th century. This graph was almost laughably fraudulent, not least in the sense that it used a formula which would generate a “hockey stick” shape no matter what data you input – even completely random trendless arbitrary computer-generated data. Yet such is the power of the eco-lobby that this fraud became the centerpiece of UN reports on global warming. If it’s happening, why is it necessary to lie about it?
The Australian, January 11th
Insofar as Mr Cameron has a (dread word) ideology, it’s this: “I am an instinctive libertarian who abhors state prohibitions and tends to be skeptical of most government action, whether targeted against drug use or anything else.” But how are we to square his “instinctive libertarianism” with his attack on chocolate oranges? “As Britainfaces an obesity crisis,” fulminated Mister Libertarian, “why does WH Smith promote half-price chocolate oranges at its checkouts instead of real oranges?”
Gee, I dunno. There oughtta be a law or somethin’. Did they focus-group this one? “The Conservative Party, where the Campaign for Real Fruits isn’t just about gay outreach.” So, if I understand correctly, in Cameron’s Britainit’s okay to light up a post-coital spliff with your civil partner but not to unpeel a post-coital chocolate orange.
On Saturday, my colleague Charles Moore, reflecting on Mr Cameron’s public performance, wrote that “I do recognise that I am not the target market here.” As I recall, a couple of leadership elections back, Charles was said to favour David Trimble. From the Orangeman to the Chocolate Orangeman is not what he would regard, in ideal circumstances, as progress. But he’s going along with the shtick because he thinks it’s a winner. This is dangerously close to the rationale of Democratic primary voters in 2004, when they told pollsters that what they liked most about John Kerry was his “electability”. Sadly, electability isn’t enough to get you elected.
The Daily Telegraph, January 10th
In yesterday’s Sunday Telegraph, the gay Conservative former MP Michael Brown raised the stakes: “They take risks – and how! – which is why we need our gay MPs and their scandals.” In the course of this thesis, Mr Brown observed:
The press were generally indulgent towards me: maybe that was partly thanks, once, to my having oral sex in Douglas Hogg’s Commons ministerial office (I was his parliamentary private secretary) with a lobby journalist…
I hasten to add Mr Brown wasn’t just rubbing it in for those of us who’ve led more sheltered lives. He was making a big political point, to whit:
It was such recklessness that made me willing to go on holiday with an under-age man in 1994 - the flip side, I suppose, of the political recklessness that made me willing to threaten to resign my seat and cause an embarrassing by-election if nuclear waste was disposed of in my constituency. Thank God for the risk-taking by reckless politicians.
Got that? The gay sex and the maverick iconoclastic political courage go hand in hand. Mr Brown is channeling Frank Sinatra:
The record shows
I took the blows
And did it My Way.
It’s an ingenious response to the vapidity of the modern Tory Party that, in the absence of any other ideology, Conservatives should be elevating their sex lives into an entire political philosophy. But honestly: I grant you an affair with an under-age “man” is pretty reckless but an objection to the disposal of nuclear waste in one’s own constituency is just the umpteenth predictable example of “Not in my back yard” – which is scarcely the cry one would associate with Mr Brown’s private life.
The Daily Telegraph, January 31st
Been following the Canadian election campaign?
Whoa, come back, no need to stampede for the exits screaming in terror. The Canuck angle’s just an opening paragraph: if I’m still yakking on about swing voters in Yellowknife and turnout in Moose Jaw at the foot of the page, feel free to turn over to our exclusive excerpt from The Boris Johnson Illustrated Guide To Lesbian Movies.
But here’s my point: right now the polls in Her Majesty’s snowbound Dominion show the Conservatives are ahead and poised to topple the incumbent Liberals on January 23rd. And what’s the name of the glamorous metrosexual matinee idol who’s brought the Canadian Tories to the brink of electoral triumph? Well, he’s a guy called Stephen Harper and he’s widely agreed by all the experts to have “negative charisma”. Think how you felt about my opening sentence and then multiply it a thousandfold. Mr Harper is unexciting even by Canadian standards! He’s unflashy, unflamboyant, unshowy, unspectacular, unmodish, uncool – except in the sense that the Yukon in January is cool.
The Daily Telegraph, January 10th
Remember the conventional wisdom of 2004? Back then, you’ll recall, it was the many members of Bush’s “unilateral” coalition who were supposed to be in trouble, not least the three doughty warriors of the Anglosphere - the President, Tony Blair and John Howard – who would all be paying a terrible electoral price for lying their way into war in Iraq. The Democrats’ position was that Bush’s rinky-dink nickel-&-dime allies didn’t count: The President has “alienated almost everyone,” said Jimmy Carter, “and now we have just a handful of little tiny countries supposedly helping us in Iraq.” (That would be Britain, Australia, Poland, Japan…) Instead of those nobodies, John Kerry pledged that, under his leadership, “America will rejoin the community of nations” – by which he meant Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schroder, the Belgian guy…
Two years on, Bush, Blair, Howard and Koizumi are all re-elected, while Chirac is the lamest of lame ducks, and his ingrate citizenry have tossed out his big legacy, the European Constitution; Gerhard Schroder’s government was defeated… and the latest member of the coalition of the unwilling to hit the skids is Canada’s ruling Liberal Party, which fell from office on Monday. John Kerry may have wanted to “rejoin the community of nations”. Instead, “the community of nations” has joined John Kerry, windsurfing off Nantucket in electric-yellow buttock-hugging Lycra, or whatever he’s doing these days.
The Wall Street Journal, January 26th
I can’t claim to know Stephen Harper well. But a couple of years ago, at some international confab, I introduced him to a British cabinet minister as “Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition”, neglecting to specify the realm. From the momentarily startled look on his face, the Blairite bigwig seemed to think I was introducing him to that week’s UK Tory leader. British Conservatives should be so lucky. A month before all those American radio hosts started badgering me about Stephen Harper, they were badgering me about this new guy in Britain – I forget his name, but he’s very cool and glamorous, full of charisma. Ginger Spice, I think. No, hang on, Austin Powers. Well, anyway, whatever the Brit guy’s name is, the UK Tories have done what a lot of parties do: pick a great personality and then see if they can order him up a political philosophy from room service. John Howard in Australia proves that’s the wrong way round to do it, and so I think will Stephen Harper.
And, if over the next few years Canada upgrades its presence on the international scene from “All But Invisible” to a functioning member of the Anglosphere, that will be all to the good, too.
The Australian, January 25th
FEBRUARY
I long ago lost count of the number of times I’ve switched on the TV and seen crazy guys jumping up and down in the street torching the Stars and Stripes and yelling “Death to the Great Satan!” But I never thought I’d switch on the TV and see the excitable young lads jumping up and down in Jakarta, Lahore, Aden, Hebron, etc, etc, torching the flag of Denmark.
Denmark! Even if you were overcome with a sudden urge to burn the Danish flag, where do you get one in a hurry in Gaza..? Say what you like about the Islamic world but they show tremendous initiative and energy and inventiveness, at least when it comes to threatening death to the infidels every 48 hours for one perceived offence or another. If only it could be channeled into, say, a small software company, what an economy they’d have.
The Chicago Sun-Times, February 5th
From Europe’s biggest-selling newspaper, The Sun:
Furious Muslims have blasted adult shop [ie, sex shop] Ann Summers for selling a blow-up male doll called Mustafa Shag.
Not literally “blasted” in the Danish Embassy sense, or at least not yet. Quite how Britain’s Muslim Association found out about Mustafa Shag in order to be offended by him is not clear. It may be that there was some confusion: given that “blow-up males” are one of Islam’s leading exports, perhaps some believers went along expecting to find Ahmed and Walid modeling the new line of Semtex belts. Instead, they were confronted by just another filthy infidel sex gag. The Muslim Association’s complaint, needless to say, is that the sex toy “insults the Prophet Muhammad – who also has the title al-Mustapha”.
In a world in which Danish cartoons insult the Prophet and Disney Piglet mugs insult the Prophet and Burger King chocolate ice-cream swirl designs insult the Prophet, maybe it would just be easier to make a list of things that don’t insult him… If I were a Muslim, I’d be “hurt” and “humiliated” that the revered Prophet’s name is given not to latex blow-up males but to so many real blow-up males. But apparently that’s not as big a deal as Mustafa Shag. When Samuel Huntington formulated his famous “clash of civilizations” thesis, he might have expected it would play out as something nobler than shaggers vs nutters.
The Chicago Sun-Times, February 12th
Hollywood prefers to make “controversial” films about controversies that are settled, rousing itself to fight battles long won. Go back to USA Today’s approving list of Hollywood’s willingness to “broach tough issues”: “Brokeback and Capote for their portrayal of gay characters; Crash for its examination of racial tension…” That might have been “bold” “courageous” movie-making half-a-century ago. Ever seen the Dirk Bogarde film Victim? He plays a respectable married barrister whose latest case threatens to expose his own homosexuality. That was 1961, when homosexuality was illegal in the United Kingdom and Bogarde was the British movie industry’s matinee idol and every schoolgirl’s pin-up: That’s brave. Doing it at a time when your typical conservative politician gets denounced as “homophobic” because he’s only in favor of civil unions is just an exercise in moral self-congratulation. And, unlike the media, most of the American people are savvy enough to conclude that by definition that doesn’t require their participation.
National Review, February 13th
It’s easy to be tough about nothing. The press corps that noisily champions “the public’s right to know” about a minor hunting accident simultaneously assures the public that they’ve no need to see these Danish cartoons that have caused riots, arson and death around the world. On CNN, out of “sensitivity” to Islam, they show the cartoons but with the Prophet’s face pixilated so that he looks as if Cheney’s ventilated him with birdshot and it turned puffy and gangrenous. C’mon, guys, these are interesting times. Anyone can unload the umpteenth round of blanks into the bulletproof Chimpy Hallibushitler, but why not take a shot at something that matters?
The Chicago Sun-Times, February 19th
The Danish cartoons story was a test, and the civilized world failed it … It seems it’s one thing to “speak truth to power” when the power’s George Bush or John Ashcroft, quite another when it’s an Islamist mob coming to burn your building down. Needless to say, reflex blowhardism is so ingrained in the media class they couldn’t resist passing off their prioritizing of self-preservation as a bold principled stand. Or as Philip Lee, professor of journalism at St Thomas University in New Brunswick, put it: “Freedom of the press means you can publish, or not. Not publishing is also an expression of freedom.”
Up to a point, Lord Jello. That’s a valid position if you’re the editor of, say, The Ottawa Citizen and some fellow mails you some cartoons about Mohammed and you say, “Interesting idea, old boy. Unfortunately, not quite our bag.” But that’s no longer tenable when the cartoons themselves are the story. Then it’s not even simple news judgment; it’s the headline and you’ve no choice in the matter. In Nigeria the other day, 15 Christians were killed by Muslims over these cartoons, because they’re “offensive”. Exercising Professor Lee’s “right to not publish” becomes, in effect, a way of supporting that proposition. It’s summed up by the CNN technique: whenever the story comes up, they show the cartoons but with the Prophet’s image pixilated. If you weren’t paying attention, you’d assume Mohammed must have entered the witness protection program.
But, of course, its meaning is the exact opposite: it’s CNN that’s entered the witness protection program, or hopes it has.
The Western Standard, February 25th
James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces, a “heartbreaking memoir” of “poetic honesty” (Bret Easton Ellis), was recently revealed to be somewhat heavier on the “poetic” than on the “honesty”. Instead of being a tough drug-addicted punk who brawled with cops while high on crack, took up with a doomed narco-hooker, got tossed in the slammer and was wanted in three jurisdictions, Mr Frey turns out to be some suburban Pat Boone-type with a couple of outstanding parking tickets (I exaggerate, but not as much as he does).
Maclean’s, February 13th
In five years’ time, how many Jews will be living in France? …Ilan Halimi, also 23, also Jewish, was found by a railway track outside Paris with burns and knife wounds all over his body. He died en route to hospital, having been held prisoner, hooded and naked, and brutally tortured for almost three weeks by a gang that had demanded half a million dollars from his family. Can you take a wild guess at the particular identity of the gang? During the ransom phone calls, his uncle reported that they were made to listen to Ilan’s screams as he was being burned while his torturers read out verses from the Koran.
The ChicagoSun-Times, February 26th
MARCH
I don’t have a problem with the Patriot Act per se, so much as the awesome powers claimed on its behalf by everybody from car salesmen to the Agriculture official who demanded proof from my maple-sugaring neighbor that his sap lines were secure against terrorism. Which is a hard thing to prove. You may think you’ve secured them against terrorism, and one morning you wake up to a loud explosion and the TV’s showing breaking news of people howling in agony as boiling syrup rains down from the skies. Apparently, there’s a clear and present danger of al-Qa’eda putting anthrax in the maple supply. You don’t notice it on your pancake because it blends in with the confectioners’ sugar.
My worry is that on the home front the war is falling prey to lack-of-mission creep – that, in the absence of any real urgency and direction, the “long war” (to use the Administration’s new and unsatisfactory term) is degenerating into nothing but bureaucratic tedium, media doom-mongering and erratic ad hoc oppositionism.
The Chicago Sun-Times, March 5th
A couple of years back, I began some generalization or other by saying, “The difference between America and Canada is…” And the American I was imparting this insight to interrupted me with: “The difference between America and Canada is that Americans don’t care what the difference between America and Canada is.”
Maclean’s, March 6th
Under the Liberals, Canada was the quintessential post-nationalist nation, and, indeed, so aggressively so that our post-nationalism became more jingoistic than conventional nationalism: “The world needs more Canada”, etc. We were too busy promoting ourselves as the great peacekeeping nation to actually do any. We’re currently at No 32 on the Hit Parade of UN peacekeeping deployments, below not just the Great Satan (31) but also Benin (30), which I, with my typical dead-white-male Eurocentric arrogance, had assumed was the kind of Afro-Marxist basket-case to which you deploy UN peacekeepers. Well, good for Benin for shouldering its share of the globocop burden. And, unlike Canada, it doesn’t brag about it on five-dollar bills and in beer commercials.
Maclean’s, March 27th
There was a photograph from one of the early Muslim demonstrations in London that I cut out and kept: a masked protester promising to behead the enemies of Islam, and standing shoulder to shoulder with him two Metropolitan Police officers, dispatched by the state to protect him and enable him to incite the murder of others. When those Muslim men return to that Danish school, I only hope that little girl is as well protected by the forces of authority.
I realised the other day, talking to a novelist of my acquaintance, that I’d had the conversation before – the one where some writer of repute tells me that he had a great idea for a story involving certain, um, aspects of the, er, geopolitical scene and the publisher (or sometimes even the agent) hemmed and hawed and eventually said well, it sounds like a good idea but in the, ah, current climate maybe we should put that on hold for a year or two, and how about that plot you mentioned a couple of years back about the redneck Baptist serial killer in Alabama? Pitch certain proposals and even the cockiest New York editor at the back of her mind has the vague feeling that her swank Manhattan office could wind up as vulnerable as that Danish grade school. One consequence of the fainthearted defence of free speech this time round is that more and more publishers and editors will take the path of least resistance next time.
The free world is shuffling into a psychological bondage whose chains are mostly of our own making… On the vital question of the age, we’re retreating into darkness – one intimidated cartoonist, one browbeaten editor, one beleaguered publisher, one terrified Danish schoolgirl at a time.
The Western Standard, March 11th
Three years on, unlike Francis Fukuyama and the other moulting hawks, my only regret is that America didn’t invade earlier. Yeah yeah, you sneer, what about the WMD? Sorry. Don’t care. Never did. My argument for whacking Saddam was always that the price of leaving him unwhacked was too high. He was the preeminent symbol of the September 10th world; his continuation in office testified to America’s lack of will, and was seen as such by, among others, Osama bin Laden: in Donald Rumsfeld’s words, weakness is a provocation. So the immediate objective was to show neighboring thugs that the price of catching America’s eye was too high. The long-term strategic goal was to begin the difficult but necessary transformation of the region that the British funked when they invented the modern Middle East in 1922.
The Globe & Mail, March 21st
Consider Dr Wafa Sultan, the Syrian-American psychiatrist from Los Angeles who, at great personal risk, took on some A-list Sunni scholar live on al-Jazeera the other week. Dr Sultan was on splendid form, booting every one of Professor Jihad’s points into touch, scoffing at the rationale behind the many Muslim “grievances”, pointing out the backwardness and misery and oppression that attend the advance of Islam. But political debate isn’t Wimbledon: it’s possible to win every point and still lose the match… Anyone hoping that Dr Sultan’s innumerable aces against Dr al-Khouli will persuade large numbers of fair-minded viewers is deluding themselves. Her very effectiveness, indeed, makes his point – that “modernity” (in the western sense) is incompatible with Islam. She is a sharp intelligent informed rational woman – and she is no longer Muslim. And, invited to choose between a blustering old fraud like al-Khouli and an apostate, almost all al-Jazeera’s viewers will stick with the former. It’s the same with Irshad Manji: Her arguments would trump everything except her lesbianism. Dr Sultan, Miss Manji, Salman Rushdie and many others are hobbled in the broader struggle because they confirm what many Muslims suspect – that a “moderate” Muslim is by definition an ex-Muslim. To choose western values is to lose your God.
The Western Standard, March 25th
I can understand why the President and the Secretary of State would rather deal with this through back-channels, private assurances from their Afghan counterparts, etc. But the public rhetoric is critical, too. At some point we have to face down a culture in which not only the mob in the street but the highest judges and academics talk like crazies. Abdul Rahman embodies the question at the heart of this struggle: if Islam is a religion one can only convert to not from, then in the long run it is a threat to every free person on the planet.
The Chicago Sun-Times, March 26th
For part two, click here. For part three, click here. For part four, click here.
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