In case you missed it, here's how the last year looked to Mark:
JANUARY
Wednesday January 7th was the first day of the Jihadist New Year in Europe. They slaughtered virtually the entire senior editorial staff of Charlie Hebdo, and launched what would prove a very rough year for free speech. Steyn reflected on the words of Charlie's late editor - "I'd rather die standing than live on my knees" - and then, on Megyn Kelly's show that evening, regretted that so few others in the media felt the same:
By the time he got to Hugh Hewitt's show, he was in a worse mood: "Screw Your Hashtag Solidarity!" And, as four murdered Jews joined the toll of the dead, the President of France uttered what Steyn regarded as the most contemptible statement on a grim week in Paris. The US preferred to say it with music: John Kerry flew in James Taylor to sing "You've Got A Friend" at France, and Steyn hailed the dawn of clapped-out boomer-pop diplomacy. As the first post-bloodbath Charlie Hebdo hit French newsstands, Mark looked at all the supporters and marchers, and wondered: "Where's the lead in the pencil?"
~As Bernie Sanders and the Pentagon would later assure us, the root cause of terrorism is climate change. With that in mind, Steyn was honored to be part of a brand new book Climate Change: The Facts, a Number One bestseller on Amazon's Climatology Hit Parade. On the very first day of 2015, he was delighted to be able to start the New Year with a review of his other new book by Julie Burchill in The Spectator, who pronounced Mark's writing "rompily gorgeous". Two days later, he was equally delighted by a review from Robert Fulford in Canada's National Post, who declared Mark "a writer unlike any other" and the only one today who "brings the best of Mencken to mind".
~Also in January SteynOnline launched its observances of Frank Sinatra's centennial: "It Was A Very Good Year."
~The month ended with the death of a man who played a big part in Mark's radio career behind the Golden EIB Microphone, Rush's right-hand man Kit Carson.
FEBRUARY
The month began with with yet another bloody attack on free speech - this time in Denmark and this time targeting a man with whom Mark was honored to have shared a stage in Copenhagen, the Swedish artist Lars Vilks. There was also was another shooting at yet another European synagogue, but President Obama breezily dismissed these highly specific targets as just a random "bunch of folks" and his apparatchiks insisted there are "no Jews to see here".
The murderous assault in Copenhagen was followed by the mass beheading of 21 Christians in Derna. The Government of the United Sates attributed both to a lack of job opportunities - or as Steyn put it: "Who Ya Gonna Believe? Us Or Your Own Severed Head?" In a much-quoted line, Mark wondered: If the President were working for the other side, what exactly would he be doing differently?
~There was an unexpected development on the global-warming front: IPCC honcho and warmographic novelist Rajendra Pachauri found himself facing sex charges for his wandering hockey stick, and forced to resign. As a result, fake Nobel Laureate and serial litigant Michael E Mann is likely to wind up with the only "Nobel Prize" certificate signed by a sex offender. Steyn did his best to resist gloating, but, alas, succumbed in a much-read column, "Nobel Pants Prize".
The other big story on the climate front was the decision by Democrat Congressman Raúl Grijalva, Ranking Member of the House UnEnvironmental Activities Committee, to sic the Warmish Inquisition on seven climate scientists who have the temerity to disagree with the Big Climate enforcers. As Steyn put it, "Shut up, he explained" is now the First Law of Climate Science.
On a related note, the big movie of the month, Kingsman: The Secret Service, had as its megalomaniac super-villain a climate-change activist bent on world domination.
~On February 25th, Lance-Corporal Joshua Leakey of the 1st Battalion the Parachute Regiment became the first living British recipient of the Victoria Cross for service in the Afghan war.
MARCH
The new month brought the admission that, for her entire tenure as US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton had used a "personal" email account - ie, a secret, non-government email account. Within a day or two, Mark had broken the news that Secretary Clinton had fired an ambassador for doing the exact same thing - conducting government business on non-government email.
But, as he discussed with Hugh Hewitt, the Clintons always operate on the basis that rules are for the little people. Within a few days, Hillary gave a press conference about her non-compliance with government record-keeping requirements that boiled down to: Yeah, and what are you gonna do about it? Steyn's discussion of the presser with Hannity on Fox News attracted a lot of comment.
~On March 11th, the United States Government Tweeted one of the most idiotic Tweets in the history of Tweets, as befits "the most lavishly funded and entirely moronic foreign ministry on the planet".
~On March 25th, the US Army announced it was charging Bowe Bergdahl with desertion. To Steyn, the more important question was why the President chose to honor the deserter and his Taliban-sympathizing father at the Rose Garden.
~The big story from the end of the month was the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 with the loss of all 150 lives. On Thursday it emerged that the co-pilot, Andreas Lubitz, had locked the captain out of the cockpit and deliberately flown the jet straight into a mountain. Mark discussed the crash, as well as Obama's Mad Libs foreign policy in the Middle East, on The Hugh Hewitt Show.
~Keeping an eye on the big picture, Steyn pondered a glimpse of the demographic future: "an Hispanic United States, an Islamized Europe and an African China." Keeping an eye on the small picture, he noted the retirement of Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and saddled up for one last chorus of "Cow Poets On The Dole".
~Also in March, Mark returned to BBC Radio for the first time in 18 years. The reason was "Same Tune, Different Song", in which the composer Debbie Wiseman composed a new tune and gave it to two different lyricists to put words to. You can hear the full show here.
APRIL
The coming of spring saw America focused on the greatest threat to the world since the Cuban missile crisis: no, not ISIS, not Iran, but homophobic bakeries in Indiana. Steyn expanded on the theme in a much-read piece: "If I Knew You Were Coming For Me, I'd've Baked A Cake." A few days later came a fascinating legal decision from the rapidly expanding school of jurisprudence on which Americans are and aren't obliged to make baked goods for other Americans.
~Musing on the curious priorities of our time, Mark observed that "we'll be talking about transgendered bathrooms when the mullahs nuke us". He also responded to the contemptible Garry Trudeau's appalling remarks about the victims of the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and the Danish Mohammed cartoons. In contrast to the ghastly Trudeau, Australia's foreign minister, Julie Bishop, chose to visit the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris, bearing a far better message than #JeSuisCharlie: "Love your work."
~April 7th would have been the hundredth birthday of Billie Holiday. Many readers enjoyed Mark's centennial appreciation. A few days later came the centenary of the ever vital Anthony Quinn.
~April 24th saw the one hundredth anniversary of the Gallipoli landings, and, as dignitaries gathered for the special Commonwealth service in Turkey, Mark pondered the words of A P Herbert: "To man a trench and live among the lice..."
MAY
The big news in early May was the attempted mass murder at a free speech event in Texas by two Islamic fanatics - and the terrible reaction to it by the American media. Steyn's essay on that and other setbacks for free speech in Canada and Britain was one of our most-read pieces of the year.
~May 20th was the sixth annual Everybody Draw Mohammed day. Mark reflected on the fast shrinking ranks of cartoonists in a much-read piece called "There Is No More Molly. Or Luz."
~Notwithstanding the advance of Isis and the nuclearization of Iran, President Obama explained to the graduating class of the Coast Guard Academy that America's biggest national security threat is "climate change". As Steyn told Hugh Hewitt on the radio, "This guy is bonkers!" Up north, Mark joined Toronto's Number One morning man John Oakley to advance his theory that without climate change there would be no Canada.
~President Obama celebrated Memorial Day by announcing that the war in Afghanistan is over. This was news to most of us, and indeed to the enemy. Any word yet on who won?
~Following the British elections, Mark offered some historical perspective on a very disunited kingdom.
~May 6th was Orson Welles' somewhat under-observed centenary. Steyn marked the occasion with some thoughts on Citizen Kane.
~May also saw the passing of the record company exec who wrote the all-time grooviest LP liner notes, the great Stan Cornyn, the man who made sleeve notes into an art form.
JUNE
The month began with the unveiling of Queen Caitlyn. Mark considered transJenner fever in a piece called "The Birth of the New". The strangest story of June was a similar tale of transition: the outing of a white woman who blacks herself up every morning to serve as president of the local African-American grievance-mongering society, which Steyn mulled in a column on "The New Minstrelsy". He also tied it together with another strange story - the Muslim who woke up to find Mossad had stolen just one of his shoes.
~On the 11th, the Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change opened in Washington, DC - and Michael Mann's lawyer tried to sneak in without paying. Steyn was the keynote speaker for the start of the ICCC's second day. Click below to watch. Mark starts about 25 minutes in. The capacity crowd certainly enjoyed it, and we think you will, too:
~The 15th marked the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta, a landmark event in the march of liberty which Steyn celebrated in a brand new book.
~After Jerry Seinfeld complained that political correctness is killing comedy, Mark contemplated a world with no jokes but only self-imposed gags.
~In a lively appearance with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Steyn argued re the current Confederate Flag frenzy that the Democratic Party was the largest and most powerful slavery-supporting institution on the planet, and the only one to survive to the 21st century.
~In the first of two major US court decisions, the Chief Justice saved RobertsCare - whoops, ObamaCare - for the second time, and Mark told Hugh Hewitt on the radio that he didn't really care for Supreme Courts that are as supreme as this one. The following morning Supreme Intergalactic Arbiter Anthony Kennedy discovered a constitutional right to gay marriage. Abroad, in a day of extraordinary bloodshed, dozens of western tourists were shot dead on their sunbeds on a Tunisian beach. Steyn found it an unsettling juxtaposition.
~June saw the passing of a legendary Dracula, Dooku and dentist - Sir Christopher Lee. Also that month Mark bid ave atque vale to the great Patrick Macnee, squire to a trio of top totty on TV's "The Avengers".
JULY
The Glorious Forth did not go well across the river from Steyn's New Hampshire HQ: Vermonters are apparently insufficiently independent to be permitted to host an Independence Day parade.
~In July the latest attack by a card-carrying member of the Amalgamated Union of Lone Wolves claimed the lives of five US military personnel. Shortly after, Mark and Hugh Hewitt offered some instant analysis, which we hope was more insightful than that of Tom Fuentes of CNN, who cautioned that we don't know whether Muhammad is a Muslim name. As the hours went by and the usual predictable profile of the killer emerged, Steyn was disturbed by the lack of righteous anger.
~The grimmest news on the US front was the revelation that Planned Parenthood is harvesting babies' body parts, and the mainstream media won't even cover it.
~The month ended with an eminent climatologist claiming that global-warming deniers are bumping off the world's scentists one by one.
AUGUST
Late summer saw the release of a brand new book prompted by climate fraudster's ongoing defamation suit against Steyn. Mark had all this trial material sitting around clogging up the rec room, and he figured he couldn't wait forever for Doctor Fraudpants to stop delaying the start of his deposition. So he put together a book: "A Disgrace To The Profession": The world's scientists on Michael E Mann, his hockey stick, and their damage to science - Volume One. Anthony Watts called it "Steyn's scathing new book", and Instapundit hailed it as a fine example of "Punching back twice as hard." Dr Judith Curry said it had "much wit and plenty of zingers". Among the other early reactions: "I think this is going to be a game-changer in the Climate Wars."
~Also in August Mark considered one of the more repulsive aspects of the "climate wars": "The Ugly Misogyny of Big Climate." Meanwhile, Barack Obama traveling to Alaska to strip William McKinley of his mountain. Having helped preserve the name of North America's second-highest peak from a similar act of Trudeaupian appropriation, Steyn was not impressed.
~Starting the day with Toronto's Number One morning man John Oakley, Mark pondered the rise of Donald Trump and Washington's two-party one-party state. He further considered the phenomenon in "The Trumping of Party". August also brought the news that Hillary Clinton had kept the confidential communications of American foreign policy on a private server in some bloke's toilet in Colorado: "On Her Majesty's Secret Server."
~Mark ended the month in Montreal on CJAD's Tommy Schnurmacher Show, musing on elections north and south, sewers and servers ...and gazebos.
SEPTEMBER
As the summer ended Her Majesty The Queen pipped her great-great-grandmother Victoria to become the longest-reigning sovereign in the history of her various realms. Steyn saluted a great survivor and suggested that the trick to monarchy is not queening it.
~The new month brough the first celebrity pan of Mark's book on "hockey stick" cartoon climatology - from no less than Population Bomb huckster Paul Ehrlich. In conjunction with his new tome, Steyn appeared on The Glenn Beck Show. If you haven't heard it, this was a really terrific, extended interview covering climate alarmism, Iran and Isis, the death of Europe, and a little bit of Donald Trump, too. Click below to listen - Mark turns up about 40 minutes in:
~The new month brought political shake-ups around the world, from a Trotskyite takeover of the British Labour Party to the latest constitutional coup in Canberra, and a more uncertain trumpet from Canadian election-campaign mid-point polls. Steyn surveyed the scene across the Anglosphere in "Following the Leaders". He was too sanguine on the loss of Tony Abbott, whose sure civilizational trumpet he would miss in the weeks ahead.
~September saw the latest outburst of fake outrage from the court eunuchs of the Obama media, taking umbrage on behalf of King Barack's amour propre re a questioner at a Donald Trump event. Mark offered Trump and other candidates some possible responses - and then joined Sean Hannity on Fox News to discuss the kerfuffle over whether a Muslim could - or should - be President of the United States. Click below to watch:
~The biggest story of the year was the tide of so-called "refugees" swamping Europe, and Chancellor Merkel's bizarre decision to sign Germany up for societal suicide in order to welcome them: "The Emperor's Moral Narcissism." Mark took a ride on the Refugee Express to Sweden, and, in a poignant reflection on a transformed world, recounted his visit to the graves of two Commonwealth airmen in Malmö's Jewish cemetery.
~Thanks to a Los Angeles court verdict, 2015 saw the arrival of a brand new out-of-copyright song: "Happy Birthday To You". Steyn told its musically simple but legally tortuous story since 1893.
~The month closed with Mark in Copenhagen for the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons. Both the US State Department and the UK Foreign Office advised their citizens to steer clear of Steyn. But the Danes felt differently. Here's his speech at the Danish Parliament:
OCTOBER
The month began with another grim week for free speech, what with Irish university students cheering the murder of Charlie Hebdo's cartoonists and international jurists contemplating the criminalization of climate change. Steyn joined John Stossel, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Bosch Fawstin and Kirsten Powers for a free speech special on Fox News. Here's a brief excerpt:
~Europe marked Columbus Day by belatedly and tentatively noticing that the Old World is being re-made into a New World. Mark preferred to salute Mrs Thatcher on what would have been her 90th birthday.
~On the warm front, Steyn considered the scandal of George Mason University's Big Climate racketeers, and the alarmists' ever more open contempt for democracy.
~October 19th saw the climax of the longest Canadian election campaign in a century: all eleven weeks of it. And by the end of the night Trudeaupia's brief Tory interregnum had come to an end, as Steyn discussed on the radio in Toronto with John Oakley. Click below to listen:
~Mark also surveyed the big picture, featuring Clock Boy, Niqab Girl, the Interpol Schoolyard Extremism Unit, and the need for way more strudel in Austria. The Slovenian Prime Minister warned that Europe was about to "fall apart". It didn't, but it did show a stunning rise in the number of seventeen-year-olds.
~The most significant news of the month came from Beijing. Nine years after he wrote about the issue in his bestselling book America Alone, the Chinese Politburo caught up with Steyn and finally ended their disastrous and murderous "one-child policy".
~Among the departed in October, Mark mourned the passing of the man who gave Roger Moore's 007 all his best lines.
~On the eve of Halloween, Mark made the mistake of taking a flight on United, and discovered that SteynOnline is "blacklisted" by the airline. Hilarity (as well as some hasty re-scheduling of his return flight with a less censorious airline) ensued, as reported here. On Halloween itself, a black cat crossed Mark's path - as he released, somewhat belatedly, his first ever Eighties rock video, with a tip of the hat to Tweety, Sylvester ...and Sting:
NOVEMBER
In Europe's eleventh hour, Mark dusted off his America Alone demographic arithmetic and concluded that, thanks to Angela Merkel, in two generations Germany will have twice as many Muslims as ethnic Germans.
Not all Muslims are willing to wait that long. Friday November 13th saw the second and far bloodier bloodbath of the year in Paris. Late that night Mak gave his first reaction in a much-read column: "The Barbarians Are Inside, And There Are No Gates." On Saturday morning he shared his thoughts in a TV appearance on "Fox & Friends", and later, after President Hollande declared that he would wage a war that would be "pitiless", Steyn looked at some of the all too pitiful reactions.
On the eve of a multi-target Islamic assault on one of the world's great cities, the young safe-space fascists of America's universities were agitated about racist sombreros, while the planet's political leaders were worrying about climate change. After the attack, a pianist played John Lennon's "Imagine", which revealed only a total lack of imagination, and an "edgy" HBO comedian decided that swearing a lot is the safest way to avoid saying anything that might cause offense.
For an Australian perspective on Paris, Steyn joined the great Alan Jones Down Under. Click below to listen:
The most contemptible reaction to the carnage in France came from the US Secretary of State. Mark dissected John Kerry's views on the "legitimacy" of the Charlie Hebdo attacks with John Oakley on the radio in Toronto.
~November saw the death of Fred Thompson, senator and actor, with whom Mark shared the stage for a memorable election discussion a few years ago.
~November also marked the first anniversary of the last time the lethargic "jurists" of the District of Columbia courts heard arguments re climate mullah Michael E Mann's case against Steyn and others. A year on, we're still waiting for these "judges" to issue their ruling. Could be another 12 months or more. Mark had time to write an entire book while this dysfunctional dump of a court was sitting on its hands.
~Steyn had been looking forward to the new Bond film, but concluded that Daniel Craig et al had revived SPECTRE and then wrecked her.
DECEMBER
As the last month of the year began, President Obama asserted that going ahead with the Paris climate conference would be the most "powerful rebuke" to the terrorists. A day later they rebuked him right back, murdering 14 Americans at a San Bernardino Christmas party. The reaction of the politico-media class was not impressive. As the details of the killers emerged, Mark told Hugh Hewitt that "all the stories are different, and yet they're all the same".
~On December 8th Steyn was at the US Senate to testify to Ted Cruz's sub-committee on the ugly climate of intimidation in climate science. The hearing itself was a fine example thereof, beginning as it did with attempted witness-tampering by Greenpeace and proceeding to high-handed senators attempting to shut off disagreement with a snotty "I didn't ask you a question!" You can read Mark's testimony here, and click below to see his opening remarks:
Boston radio colossus Howie Carr devoted his newspaper column to an exchange between Mark, Dr Judith Curry and Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey - and how Markey "let two hostile witnesses take over a Senate subcommittee hearing on global warming and begin questioning him". Click below to watch:
No member of the Senate staff could recall a time when witnesses had turned the tables and begun peppering the blowhard senator with questions - questions he was unable to answer. More citizens should try it.
~December 12th marked the centenary of the birth of Frank Sinatra. Mark celebrated with a weekend of words and music and a century of songs.
~ December also saw the fifth anniversary of the Arab "Spring", and Mark revisited his original judgment that it marked the dawn of the post-western Middle East.
~Mark spent Christmas week in New York guest-hosting Rush and "Hannity", which included an appearance by Rudy Giuliani, discussing among other things Donald Trump's remarks about American Muslims celebrating 9/11. What the former New York mayor had to say may surprise you. Click below to watch:
It was a sobering moment and a time to ponder, in George Jonas' words, "the fabric's fading dye".
~In lieu of his usual Christmas album, Mark this year released a cat album, dedicated to his own beloved cat Marvin: Feline Groovy: Songs for Swingin' Cats. As WMAL's Heather Smith Hunter said:
Favorite interview this week on @WMALDC: @MarkSteynOnline: If you don't buy my cat album, the terrorists have won.
Indeed. All of us at SteynOnline wish you and yours the best in the year ahead, and we look forward to ringing in the new all through 2016.
