Monday, October 27, 2014

Catching Up On SteynLinks...

Although I generally am of the mind that there can never be too much of a good thing, I can't keep up with the volume of STEYNLINKS. The SteynStuff, it just keeps coming!!

There is video, audio, there are blog posts...it's a veritable Steynian Symphony-so cheers to the conductor of all this Undocumented Mayhem and, of course-the maestro himself.

In case you missed it:

Mark Steyn on the Dennis Miller Show-REALLY GOOD. I really, really like Dennis Miller and this is a fantastic conversation. Ballsy and candid, forthright and emotionally and intellectually honest. Do listen to the whole thing.

Here's Steyn on Townhall's Weekend Journal.

Lastly, please have a read of Steyn's two conversations with radio host Hugh Hewitt.

This one is the preliminary conversation about the new book, The [Un]Documented Mark Steyn, and it is really a very good read. 

The first transcript has the bit of business about the Saudi Wahabi that Steyn had a very hysterically funny and unusual bromance with-yeah, I went there-I called it a bromance. I actually think that the "relationship" with the late Saudi is possibly one of the funniest things to do with Mark Steyn, ever-EVER EVER EVAH EVAH (and, as you may suspect, I am familiar with much of his writing...). The dedication in the books alone makes me laugh every single time I read it, think about it or hear about it. 

Also, this candid bit about loyalty is really lovely:

"Well, I’ve always been grateful. I worked in Fleet Street, and if you know anything about those slimy, duplicitous Englishmen, particularly the ones who infest the media, you will know that after you spend a couple of years among them, you’re grateful for loyalty. Conrad Black was loyal to me when I needed it, and I’m loyal to him not for any, I’m a sort of semi-reclusive guy, so when Conrad fell afoul of the U.S. Department of Justice and wound up going to jail for three and a half years or whatever it was in some terrible federal prison in Miami, where I went to visit him, because under some bizarre quirk of American law, Canadians are not eligible for minimum security prisons."

"So the guy wound up going to a prison full of, although he’d committed a sort of so-called white collar crime largely invented by the government, he wound up going to jail with a bunch of murderers and rapists and drug dealers. And it was very odd-like sitting in the visiting room surrounded by all these menacing people you’d normally cross the street to avoid. But Conrad, you know, he was loyal to me. I’m always grateful to you. I wasn’t really known in the United States when you asked me to appear on your show, and there’s certainly no reason why you should have some obscure foreigner telling your listeners everything that’s wrong with the world every week, but you were kind enough to me at a time when hardly anybody knew who I was in this country. And that’s always the most important thing, that the first break you get in a certain market, whether it’s America, Australia or whatever, I don’t forget that. And I’m very grateful for it."

The second one is here, and also, well worth your time. 

"I don’t want us to change to deal with the fact that we have lunatics who have got this kind of ideological Ebola in their bloodstream, and who want to pump bullets into a corporal from the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, because he’s standing in front of the Canadian War Memorial, and they want to destroy all that that represents. The price we’re being asked to pay is too high. I want to kill that ideology. It is an ideological Ebola, and we have got to eradicate it. And I’m not interested in more detectors and more rules and taking my shoes off and taking my underwear off and taking everything off and shuffling like a zombie through ever-longer security lines because we don’t have the guts to deal with it."

And this absolute gem, I mean, seriously SHUT UP!!! 

(And when I say "shut up" I really mean NEVER EVER STOP WRITING, NOT EVER, PLEASE PRETTY PLEASE...)

"...you know, I love writing about songs, but you have to earn small pleasures…even the smallest pleasure, even a 32 bar song. The right to sing that requires a certain amount of vigilance. That small pleasure is not universal. The Taliban banned music. They criminalized music."

And this:

"You win by destroying the enemy’s will." 

Ummm HELLO!?!??!?!?  You know what??!?!

This Steyn fellow should write a book or something... 

(They also talk about the Barbie in A Burqa essay from Maclean's, which is where yours truly is mentioned...)

I do enjoy listening to Steyn, but I find that I can just as easily 'hear' his voice through his writing and that often the act of reading, as opposed to listening, makes me think of the subjects in a different way, and I like that I can go back and read the conversation a couple of times to make sure I haven't missed any really choice nuggets.

I've highlighted a few bits that should stiffen your resolve and spine, but do read each of them and listen to the interview with Dennis Miller and the Townhall piece for yourselves.