Out and about promoting my new book The [Un]documented Mark Steyn, I had a jolly time on "Louder With Crowder" - hosted by Steven Crowder, with whom I appeared on stage in Chicago recently. Mr Crowder was born in Michigan, but grew up in Montreal, so part of our conversation dwelt on the psychologically complicated relationship between Canadians and the United States. We also discussed the chapter in my book on coffee-house culture, and I said a few words about tea as well.
You can hear the full show, including an appearance by the fine novelist Andrew Klavan, here. It's a laugh. I show up an hour in, but the whole thing is a fun listen. As Steven puts it:
Mark Steyn & Andrew Klavan!! 'Nuff said!
~I was in somewhat more somber mode for my interview at The Blaze with Benjamin Weingarten:
It's interesting to me how even the most obvious provocations…for example a woman being beheaded in Moore, Oklahoma, a policeman having a hatchet stuck in his skull on the streets of New York, a guy being shot at the War Memorial in Ottawa, somebody ...hacked to pieces on the streets of London in broad daylight…even the most obvious provocations, we…duck into the multicultural cringe.
And Obama, and David Cameron and Justin Trudeau (who God help us may well be the next Prime Minister of Canada), all these people…keep saying "No Islam to see here."
The interview was recorded before the latest beheading of a US citizen - Peter Kassig - but it's pretty much on the money: Obama was at pains to ensure us that chopping a guy's head off "represents no faith, least of all the Muslim faith".
"Least of all"?
Bonus insult: The President takes poor Mr Kassig's enforced submission to Islam as a genuine conversion.
But, as with Steven Crowder, I took one of the ostensibly minor subjects of my book, and explained why I thought it was of broader significance:
I write in the book a lot about some of the smaller things, which I think are even more worrying in a way than the beheadings - because you can't ignore a beheading. Even if you talk rubbish about it, as Obama and Cameron do, you have to address it. When they're chopping the heads off of your citizens on YouTube, Obama and Cameron have to say something about it. The stuff they don't have to say anything about is in some ways more disturbing...
I talk about a German lingerie ad where you see this sexy woman…she's got no clothes on, she's getting ready to go on a date, and she's putting on all this sexy German lingerie and she's sliding up the panties up her legs and hooking up the bra ...and then just at the final moment, you see her pull a burqa over her head and step out into the street…
And the message is that…these Islamo-babes are just as hot under the burqa as German women, and you can be sexy wearing a burqa and…Muslim woman like hot sexy lingerie [just as much as everyone else]…
The reality is, if a Muslim woman — a Muslim actress — had played that role, she'd have been dead. She'd have been honor-killed. Her father would have thrown her off the balcony, as happens in Sweden; or run over her in the car as happened in Peoria, Arizona; or chopped her head off as happened in upstate New York. No Muslim woman can say when her father says, or husband says, "Where were you today, honey?" she says, "Oh, I did this great German lingerie ad. We spent eight hours filming me walking around the apartment in my underwear." She'd be dead!
…The entire premise of the ad…it's [aesthetically] fantastic, it's great, it should win tons of awards. But it's a lie.
It's a wide-ranging interview. Benjamin summarizes it thus:
- The dangers of multi-generational dependency
- How American taxpayers help indirectly subsidize European healthcare systems, and creates "Defense Welfare Queens"
- Why civilizations rise and fall
- Why Mark considers himself a genuine multiculturalist
- Why the fall of the Berlin Wall is the biggest prison breakout in history
- Steyn's take on GruberGate and America's technocratic elite
- Why a Memorial Day parade is far more foreign to the president than Mark Steyn
- Barack Obama's contempt for the American people, and his Latin American dictator-like tendencies
- The solace Steyn takes in the idea that "the facts of life are conservative"
Phew. You can listen to the whole thing here.
~As for the book itself, The [Un]documented Mark Steyn is currently jostling with Tina Fey on the New York Times bestseller charts. It's available in America from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Books-A-Million, not to mention Costco, and from Indigo-Chapters, Amazon and McNally-Robinson in Canada. Or you can be reading it within seconds - via Kindle, Kobo, Nook and iBooks. And, wherever you are on the planet, we're happy to ship you a personally autographed copy of this year's perfect Christmas gift direct from the SteynOnline bookstore.