I've had a busy day or two on the airwaves. Yesterday I was back behind the Golden EIB Microphone guest-hosting America's Number One radio show. You can find a few moments from the broadcast here. Among the subjects discussed was a Trump-traumatized Environmental Protection Agency:
EPA Employees 'Coming to Work in Tears' Because of Trump Win
My throwaway response to this tragic situation got quite a bit of traction:
If you go to the EPA office in tears, they'll declare your face a wetland and you'll never be able to use your face again.
~Later, in a special edition of The Mark Steyn Show, I chewed over waterboarding and more with James E Mitchell, author of the new book Enhanced Interrogation, and the enhanced interrogator himself of many A-list terrorists. You can watch the show here.
~On tonight's weekend edition of The Mark Steyn Show, we lighten up a little: No waterboarding, just dinner and a movie, all in one. That's to say, we'll look at The Founder, the new Michael Keaton film about the man who made McDonald's a global brand. Our pal Patsy Gallant, Canada's peerless disco diva and a great star of Paris musical theatre, joins me to celebrate "La Vie en Rose" and the musical legacy of Édith Piaf. Plus: I'll reveals my ties to MI6 and remember Mary Tyler Moore. More details on the show here.
PS Speaking of Mary, this is pretty darn good. A fun song by Cy Coleman and Carolyn Leigh:
~One radio show and two TV shows in a little over 24 hours is almost like a real day's work. But not quite enough apparently:
Mark,
Has your enthusiasm for writing insightful, erudite, and thoroughly entertaining commentary disappeared? Between quoting yourself, reprising episodes of your failing TV show, and entertainment reviews there is very little reason to click anymore.
Angelo DePalma, PhD
Newton, New Jersey
To be honest, I'm not sure where insightful erudition gets a chap these days. Last month, apropos an Islamic maniac mowing down Christmas shoppers in Germany, I wrote:
The less obviously evasive responses were almost as dispiriting. An English tourist visiting from Birmingham complained that in his native city ugly bollards line the sidewalks to obstruct any similarly homicidal lorries in the vicinity, but that Berlin had none. The Christkindlmarkt is a German tradition dating back to the Middle Ages: Munich's is over 700 years old. A society that can only hold three-quarters-of-a-millennium-old traditions behind an impenetrable security perimeter is a society that will soon lose those traditions. My own preference, as I've stated, is that, if free countries have to have unsightly security controls, why don't they have them around the national borders rather than around every single thing inside those borders?
I then asked:
Why do people like that Birmingham tourist think the answer to more and more Muslims is more and more bollards?
I don't think I type the word "bollard" more than once a decade. So it was what passes, more or less, for an original thought these days, rather than the self-quoting Mr DePalma decries. The column was prominently published in Melbourne's Herald Sun and other influential Australian newspapers. Indeed, The Herald Sun is the highest-circulation newspaper in Australia, with over a million and a half readers in a nation of less than 25 million people. What the paper says is read by almost everyone who matters in Melbourne, throughout Victoria, and in Canberra.
Nevertheless, a few days ago, in Melbourne, another maniac, self-described as a "Greek Islamic Kurdish Angel of Cult" for whatever that's worth, used his vehicle to mow down another bunch of pedestrians, three fatally. Is the Melbourne motorist really an "Islamic Kurd"? Or just a nut riffing on the fashions of the day? Either way, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull immediately called for more bollards:
'A vulnerability we need to address': Malcolm Turnbull calls for more bollards in busy pedestrian areas
We're gonna need a lot more bollards!
The Prime Minister pointed to boosting the number of bollards, which prevented the Bourke Street driver from entering a certain area, as a measure to be seriously considered...
The Premier of Victoria, Daniel Andrews, agrees. More bollards!
While a lot of work had already been done to safeguard the city – including the use of bollards – "if we have to do more, then absolutely we will," he said....
"A lot of bollards have gone in, in recent times, but if we have to do more, then absolutely we will."
I think open societies hunkering down behind ever more bollards is pitiful. But I argued all that last month in Australia's biggest-selling newspaper, and a fat lot of good it did. So much for insightful, erudite commentary, in the most influential press outlets in a comparatively small market.
And yes, Mr DePalma has, I'm sure, noted that I quoted myself yet again. That's because I've said it all before.