Always fun to start the day with Fox & Friends. This morning I was up bright and early for interviews re my new book, The [Un]documented Mark Steyn. Brian Kilmeade wanted to talk about the excerpt that appeared in The New York Post, arguing that politics trumps culture. Here's what I said to Brian:
"Effective conservative leaders, [Ronald] Reagan and [Margaret] Thatcher, take the two most obvious examples, move the center towards them," he said. "Mrs. Thatcher had a great line. Before you can win the election, you have to win the argument."
"Unless you are in there playing for the big culture stakes like the left does, you're going to lose, whoever is elected."
"The left is brilliant at framing the debate," Steyn told Kilmeade, noting specific buzz words for being "anti-women," "racist," and "homophobic," according to the left.
"When you let the left win the language wars…when you make it impossible even to bring up those subjects, you basically ensure that you're going to lose no matter who wins in November," he concluded.
~Oddly enough, while I was in the green room at Fox waiting to go on, all the small stories of the day underlined some of the themes of The [Un]documented Mark Steyn. For example, Toys R Us are selling a "Breaking Bad" doll that comes with his own miniature meth lab - presumably so he can invite Ken and Barbie and GI Joe round to share his bag of meth. As far as I can recall, there's nothing about "Breaking Bad" in the book, but GI Joe and Barbie and even Ken all make an appearance some 300 pages or so in.
~I'll be launching the book on the radio with Sean Hannity during his afternoon show today. Later, I'll be checking in with Hugh Hewitt nationwide for a two-hour special. Hugh's show starts at 6pm Eastern, and he's graciously allocated the latter two-thirds to my book, starting at 7pm Eastern/4pm Pacific.
~Tomorrow, Tuesday, I'll be launching the book in Canada with my old comrade from the free-speech wars, Ezra Levant, on the Sun News network. And in the rest of the week I'll swing by Dennis Miller, Mark Levin, Bill Bennett, Mike Gallagher, Neil Cavuto, Janet Mefferd, Michael Medved and many more. You can find full details of my TV and radio appearances every day in our "On The Air" box on the right-hand side of this page.
~The [Un]documented Mark Steyn is available in hardcover from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million in America, or Indigo-Chapters, Amazon and McNally-Robinson in Canada. It's also available in e-format via Kindle, Kobo, Nook - and, for your iPhone et al, via iBooks. North of the border, we're already in the Politics Top Ten.
