To round out our Antipodean weekend, I joined Chris Kenny on Sky Australia for the first edition of his new Monday show."Trump Derangement Syndrome" occupied much of the conversation, and I made a point (exemplified by the Covington schoolboy outrage) about the difference between this latest strain and its predecessor, Bush Derangement Syndrome.You can see some of that here. We also talked about the discredited Buzzfeed report, and the media's failure in 2016 to examine why they got the election wrong. I'll link to any more clips from the interview as Sky posts them:
.@MarkSteynOnline: Before 'Trump Derangement Syndrome' there was 'Bush Derangement Syndrome'.
What's different now is that not only do they hate Trump, they also hate the 50 per cent of Americans who voted for him.
MORE: https://t.co/ykweMevBOK #kennyonmedia pic.twitter.com/Xy47IMrfqG
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) January 28, 2019
Tonight I'll be checking in with Tucker Carlson, live across America at 8pm Eastern/5pm Pacific, with a rerun at midnight Eastern for you west-coast types. And tomorrow morning, Tuesday, I'll be on the radio at 8am Eastern with Webster & Nancy at 103.1FM WILK Newsradio in the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre area - where I'll be appearing with Dennis Miller in a few weeks' time. If you're in the presence of the receiving apparatus for the Tucker and/or Webster & Nancy extravaganzas, I hope you'll dial us up.
~Over the weekend Paris was rocked by demonstrations from a new protest group that has sprung up in oppositions to les gilets jaunes - the Yellow Vests. The new movement is called les foulards rouges - the Red Scarves. For some reason, this passage from The Code of the Woosters (1938) sprang to mind:
'Don't you ever read the papers? Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain, a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts ...'
'By the way, when you say 'shorts', you mean 'shirts', of course.'
'No. By the time Spode formed his association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black shorts.'
'Footer bags, you mean?'
Alas, all the hues of shirts, shorts and vests have been taken, and we now have protest movements named after accessories - which seems not inappropriate in this case:
The [Red Scarves] bore the accoutrements of the affluent: ski jackets, cashmere scarves and bags from Louis Vuitton and Roberta Pieri.
Perhaps they should have called themselves the Fuchsia Clutches or the Taupe Vanities.
I may have to form a mass protest movement called the Periwinkle Spats. Meanwhile, away from the Red Scarves, Europe's ultimate fashion statement - the black burqas - await their moment.
~For huge numbers of citizens of free societies under the age of, say, fifty (sixty? seventy?) it is axiomatic that "free speech" is now subordinate to "correct attitudes". Hence the shrug that greets Fleet Street headlines such as this:
Man interrogated by police for liking a 'transphobic' tweet
The interrogated man is, as it happens, a former copper himself, Harry Miller. But he's presumably one of those old-school peelers, before Her Majesty's constabulary transitioned - almost overnight - into what the highly prescient John O'Sullivan many years ago called "the paramilitary wing of The Guardian". Thus:
A man said he was questioned by police for over 30 minutes after he liked a tweet that appears to mock the transgender community.
Harry Miller, who believes 'trans women are not women', says the formal probe by Humberside Police was into his 'thinking' and his reasons for liking the limerick on Twitter...
'Cop said he was in possession of 30 tweets by me,' he recalled on Twitter. 'I asked if any contained criminal material. He said "No."
'I asked if any came close to being criminal and he read me a limerick. Honestly. A limerick. A cop read me a limerick over the phone.'
But don't worry. The copper assured Harry that "it's not a crime, but it will be recorded as a hate incident". Liking a Tweet doesn't seem much of an "incident", yet in the new Orwellian England it suffices. So, for the record, here's the offending poem, which is not in fact a limerick even if it is a "hate incident":
Your breasts are made of silicone
Your vagina goes nowhere
And we can tell the difference
Even when you are not there
Your hormones are synthetic
And let's just cross this bridge
What you have, you stupid man
Is male privilege.
A land in which the police can lawfully investigate you merely for checking the heart icon underneath such a tweeted verse is no longer free. And the fact that neither the constable nor his superiors are ashamed of their "investigation" speaks volumes about what the English police are transitioning into.
~We had a busy weekend at SteynOnline, albeit one preoccupied with Australia Day observances. We started with the usual societal self-loathing from Vogue honcho Dame Anna Wintour (whose loud bangs have been known to prompt shell shock in Great War veterans) but we leavened in with Melbourne music and universal free-speechery. Our Saturday movie date found us in the Queensland municipality of Porpoise Spit for Muriel's Wedding, and my Sunday song selection was a somewhat obvious choice. If you were too busy apologizing for Captain Cook all weekend long, I hope you'll want to catch up with one or three of the foregoing as a new week begins.
Catch you on the telly tonight with Tucker - and with Webster & Nancy on the radio at 8am Eastern Tuesday. Aside from Wilkes-Barre, Dennis Miller and I will also be hitting Reading, Pennsylvania as well as Syracuse and Rochester in New York. We'll be starting the tour next month And do remember that with VIP tickets you not only enjoy the best seats in the house but you also get to meet Dennis and me after the show. (A back rub and two choruses of "Marshmallow World" is extra.) More information here.
