Mark is a little under the weather this weekend, so today's Hundred Years Ago Show will be postponed a little. If you enjoy this weekly presentation, please note that Steyn will be doing The Hundred Years Ago Show live during the 2023 Mark Steyn Cruise - along with many other favorite features from SteynOnline and The Mark Steyn Show. More details here.
December 1922 begins with a new Caliph in Constantinople, an old Pharoah in Luxor, an absent Emperor in the bridal suite, and a lot of dead prime ministers in Greece.
Listeners will be relieved to hear that last week's Twenty Years Ago Show was strictly a one-off for our twentieth birthday. Wayne Lanham, a First Fortnight Founding Member of The Mark Steyn Club, quite enjoyed the break from Al Jolson and Billy Murray:
Hearing Ludacris being blasted at me during a Mark Steyn show was joltingly funny.
But most listeners found it far less congenial. Veronica writes from Auckland, New Zealand:
The music in this show made me long for 'The Sheikh of Araby', 'Wait 'Til You Get Them Up In The Air, Boys' and that one about taking the cork out of Ireland (sorry, but I can never understand all the lyrics in that song). I confess that 1920s music is not really my thing but, compared to Ludacris and Eminem, those guys 100 years ago were geniuses!
Wanda Sherratt, a First Week Founding Member from Ottawa, agrees:
That music of 20 years ago really stinks... It's good to remind ourselves that today's decrepitude didn't just come out of the blue: things were already pretty bad 20 years ago, in the arts as well as in medicine, politics and bedroom antics. That British cabinet minister who couldn't be bothered getting to the office early in order to prevent a strike - we wonder today how such mediocre morons are in charge of our countries, but they've been deeply embedded in the system for decades. We just had more design margin in the past, and now we can hear the bare metal grinding against metal as the rickety contraption judders itself to pieces...
And as we're all aware by now, 100 years ago they were just 4 years out from the worst war the world had ever seen. Not to mention an epidemic that was the real deal and produced corpses in every street. And yet, as Mark pointed out in yesterday's show, *we're* the ones in an exhausted culture, not them..
Likewise her fellow First Week Founding Member from Massachusetts, Joe Cressotti:
I too am not the biggest fan of "Wait Till You Get Them Up in the Air, Boys," nor "Love Her by Radio." But they at least have a kind of innocence and charm that makes it possible for them to grow on you, like a slightly annoying jingle. I cannot fathom the changes I would have to undergo to enjoy, or even to tolerate, the songs played in the Twenty Years Ago show.
More broadly, the contrast between the 100 Years Ago Show and the 20 Years Ago Show is stunning. It reminded me of Luke Wilson's character waking up five hundred years later in Idiocracy.
Well, we'll put the Ludacris and Eminem away for another twenty years, Joe.
Mark went to town on our twentieth birthday, including twenty per cent off everything at the Steyn Store. But, if you've missed any of his specials, do check them out below:
The twentieth birthday edition of
THE MARK STEYN SHOW
The twentieth birthday edition of
STEYN'S SUNDAY POEM
The twentieth birthday edition of
STEYN'S SONG OF THE WEEK
The twentieth birthday edition of
CLUBLAND Q&A
and our twentieth-birthday
Stroll through the Archives
As with our audio adventures, video poetry and musical specials, we've created a special Hundred Years Ago home page in handy Netflix-style tile format to enable you to set your time machine for the precise week or month you're in the mood for.
The Hundred Years Ago Show is a special production of The Mark Steyn Club. As we always say, Club membership isn't for everyone, but, if you're interested, you can find more information here.
