Happy Victoria Day to our Canadian readers. For those of Victorian bent, treat yourself to a ghillie and a munshi. Meanwhile...
~Here we go again...
Belgium becomes first country to introduce compulsory monkeypox quarantine
And this time it's for three weeks, not a mere fortnight like that nothing-burger Covid. Buy a gorilla mask, before they're all gone.
~Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the heroic Caliphate's attack on pop-minded youngsters attending Ariana Grande's "Dangerous Woman" show in Manchester. Observances were muted. Here is what I wrote at the time in my column "'Dangerous Woman' Meets Dangerous Man":
All of us have gotten things wrong since 9/11. But few of us have gotten things as disastrously wrong as May and Merkel and Hollande and an entire generation of European political leaders who insist that remorseless incremental Islamization is both unstoppable and manageable. It is neither - and, for the sake of the dead of last night's carnage and for those of the next one, it is necessary to face that honestly. Theresa May's statement in Downing Street is said by my old friends at The Spectator to be "defiant", but what she is defying is not terrorism but reality. So too for all the exhausted accessories of defiance chic: candles, teddy bears, hashtags, the pitiful passive rote gestures that acknowledge atrocity without addressing it - like the Eloi in H G Wells' Time Machine, too evolved to resist the Morlocks.
As I asked around Europe all last year: What's the happy ending here? In a decade it will be worse, and in two decades worse still, and then in three decades people will barely recall how it used to be, when all that warmth and vibrancy of urban life that Owen Jones hymns in today's Guardian is but a memory, and the music has died away, and Manchester is as dull and listless as today's Alexandria. If Mrs May or Frau Merkel has a happier ending, I'd be interested to hear it.
May and Merkel and Hollande are all gone and forgotten, and the Covid has rendered Manchester and most other western cities "as dull and listless as today's Alexandria". The solution to children being blown up at pop concerts is not to have any pop concerts on public-health grounds.
~Our Mark Steyn Club Fifth Birthday observances continue, but I'll be sufficiently sobered up before the first Mark Steyn Show of a brand new week live on GB News. The show airs at 8pm British Summer Time, which is 3pm North American Eastern for any US and Canadian viewers minded to tune in. (You may find the replay more convenient: 9pm Eastern/6pm Pacific.) Once Big Ben strikes eight, you can shoot me your comments on the show at [email protected] or via Twitter, and I'll respond live on air.
On today's show, Andrew Lawton will be checking in from the Spectre board meeting at Davos, and Alexandra Marshall will analyse the downfall of Australia's "conservative" government. You can watch from anywhere on the planet on the GB News home page - or you can click the livestream here (you may have to refresh the page):
~We had a very busy weekend at SteynOnline, starting with Mark revisiting his take on the Arab Spring and the "Facebook Revolution". On Saturday Rick McGinnis' weekly movie date was Alastair Sim in Green for Danger. The third of the new stand-alone weekly editions of The Hundred Years Ago Show covered all the news from toreadors to trapeze artists, and our Sunday song selection was as easy as Anthony Albanese. Our marquee presentation was the latest entry to our anthology of video poetry: Where's the Poker? by Christopher Smart.
If you were too busy cowering in the basement in fear of the approaching monkeypox, we hope you'll want to check out one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
Steyn's Sunday Poem and The Hundred Years Ago Show are special productions for The Mark Steyn Club, as we begin our sixth year. Membership in the Steyn Club comes with some unique benefits, including:
~Our nightly audio adventure Tales for Our Time - this month's begins shortly;
~Exclusive Steyn Store member pricing on over 40 books, mugs, T-shirts, and other products;
~The opportunity to engage in live Clubland Q&A sessions with yours truly, such as this coming Friday's;
~Transcript and audio versions of The Mark Steyn Show and other video content;
~My ongoing series of video poetry and other weekend specials;
~Advance booking for my live appearances around the world, assuming such things are ever again lawful;
~Customized email alerts for new content in your areas of interest;
~and the chance to support our print, audio and video ventures as they wing their way around the planet.
See you on the telly tonight - and then back here for your comments on the show.
