Mark Steyn Club members can enjoy content from The Mark Steyn Show in whatever form they wish - video, audio or text. For the audio version of SteynPost #29 simply click above. If you prefer the print version, the transcript follows below. And don't forget you can find a full set of SteynPosts, starting with #1, here.
Hey welcome along.
Do you like the Cultural Revolution? Do you like the cultural purges? Ah love it; it's just pop culture totalitarianism at the moment. It's a good way of softening us up for broader societal totalitarianism.
At the Melbourne Comedy Festival in Australia they just ditched the name of the most prestigious award at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, which was named for Barry Humphries, who gave us said Dame Edna Everage and Sir Les Patterson, two great comic creations and the kind of groundbreaking comedian that you should name a comedy festival award after. But they've decided to nix that because unfortunately he made some transphobic remarks, he said in an interview that he thought Caitlyn Jenner was a publicity seeking ratbag. A ratbag is an Australianism, a rather common one, I've been called one myself, it brushes off me like water off a duck's back, I don't take it too seriously but evidently to suggest...to call Caitlyn Jenner publicity seeking...to suggest that a member of the Kardashian family could be publicity seeking is totally unacceptable, totally transphobic, so he's got to go, he's toast, he's history.
In America, Kate Smith, Kate Smith big voice, definitive recording, she's the one who helped make "God Bless America" the alternative national anthem. Written by Irving Berlin in 1918 and it didn't go anywhere until Kate Smith sang it 20 years later. [Mark sings] "God Bless America, land that I love."
You can't have land that I love that's totally unacceptable. Not quite yet, not quite yet, so they had to find another reason to dump Kate Smith. As you know the New York Yankees player...is it the Yankees or is it the other one? I know nothing about American sports; I'm just bluffing this bit. The Yankees, they used to play her somewhere in the seventh inning stretch, Kate Smith playing "God Bless America."
The Philadelphia Flyers, NHL. Did you know--for Canadians watching--do you know they have Americans in the National Hockey League? I don't even understand how that's allowed. Roll over Lord Stanley. But the NHL, the Philadelphia Flyers, they used to also play Kate Smith, "God Bless America." In fact she sang it at the time they won the Stanley Cup in 1974, she sang it live at the Flyers' stadium and outside the stadium they have a statue of Kate Smith with arms outstretched, or they did. This is the way it looked. [Picture of statue] This is the way it looked then a few days ago [Picture of statue covered] when they discovered that Kate Smith had made a supposedly racist record in the 1930s, "That's why Darkies were Born," which is in fact a satirical and antiracist song but we live in a totally moronic age in which people are too stupid to appreciate that, so then they covered up her statue so she looks like Mullah Omar's third child bride about to be tossed off a rooftop because she's been making goo goo eyes at some infidel.
That's how she was for a couple of days and then they decided in nothing flat, this is all between Thursday and Sunday. Thursday Kate Smith, Friday Mullah Omar's child bride, Sunday the statue's gone, erased. Over half a century of association with the Philadelphia Flyers wiped because they've decided that she sang a supposedly racist song in the 1930s. And one can have no redemption, so the fact that Kate Smith sings "God Bless America," it doesn't matter because she also sang other songs and if one of those songs is unacceptable then her entire catalog has to be erased and her statue has to be removed.
Incidentally if you like these holiday channels they have every December all over the country, where radio stations switch to the nonstop holiday hit format and Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" is the big underpinning of that. In the very film in which he introduced "White Christmas," Holiday Inn, Bing also appeared in blackface for a number called Abraham, so I don't even know whether we should be allowed to listen to Bing Crosby singing "White Christmas" anymore. Here's a picture if you don't believe me, here's a picture of Bing in blackface. Oh no wait my mistake that's the Democrat governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam.
So we've totally erased in the space of 72 hours a great American cultural icon, Kate Smith, and her record of "God Bless America." It's gone, it's toast, it's gone. Lots of other people sang that song, "That's Why Darkies Were Born" by the way, including Paul Robeson. Paul Robeson is a notorious white supremacist, here he is. [Picture of Pal Robeson] That's the kind of guy who sings "That's Why Darkies Were Born."
What I find odd about this. I've mentioned this before. There's no possibility...in the new religion, in the cult of the woke and the religion of identity politics, it has all the facets of a religion, including its saints, like Saint Caitlyn Jenner but it has the vital ingredient of a religion that it lacks is the possibility of redemption. The possibility that one can be flawed and one can be a sinner and that one can change. We're not like that in the new religion. When we worship the new gods of identity politics you can have made 1,000 records and if one of them somewhere along the way in 1931--1931. You make "That's Why Darkies Were Born," you're over. All the 999 other records you made have to be destroyed.
And as I said it's 1931, it's nine decades ago, but the possibility of conceiving that that might have been heard as a satirical song in 1931 to Broadway audiences is totally lost today. Everybody in the past has to think just like we do now in 2019. And if you don't think like we do now in 2019 you gotta go. Everything you do has got to go.
I mentioned Bing appearing in blackface in Holiday Inn. We don't know...we don't know Caruso's position on transgender bathrooms and until we can establish that I think we shouldn't actually...Caruso should be gone too. Actually Beethoven, what's his position on trangender bathrooms? I don't even--you know we shouldn't we shouldn't even be dealing, listening to this stuff, it's not safe.
What I find odd about this...what I find odd about this is that the idea of personal redemption, that people's individuals views can change in that if someone did do or say something racist in 1928, we should in the fullness of time we should accept that people change, that people evolve. But we don't now. We don't with people, with people. And what I find interesting is the difference between that and what we call institutional racism, because institutional racism is what screws over people generally. The fact that Kate Smith made a record of "That's Why Darkies Were Born" doesn't impact anybody listening to "God Bless America" in Yankee Stadium or at a Flyers game.
But institutional racism does and it's fascinating to me to watch sports, professional sports, react in the way the Flyers did. She's a beloved figure at Flyers games until Thursday. On Friday she's sheathed in a burkha and on Sunday she's gone forever.
And it occurs to me that professional sports is perhaps the most pansified area of American life these days. Steve Sailer makes the point that identity politics is all about not noticing things, political correctness is all about not noticing things. Kids from a very early age grasp these things, they understand why if you watch an Olympic sprinting event the Kenyans seem to be rather more heavily represented than the Belgians. They understand when they go to school and they start competing in things like Mathletes, the math competition, that you're screwed if you don't have a Chinese person on your team. It's best if you if you happen to live in an all-white neighborhood you're best to find somebody who...kids kid...somebody to adopt them, get one of your friends' parents to adopt one.
Kids understand that, they get that at a certain level but when you actually start running things in American life, political correctness is all about not noticing things and eventually, which is what the sports guys do, if you...what's fascinating to me is at the same time we got the Kate Smith controversy The New York Times' Maggie Haberman was attacking President Trump for playing the song Edelweiss at the White House because that's an obvious Nazi dog whistle. Edelweiss comes from the musical, The Sound of Music, by Rodgers and Hammerstein and they wrote it as an anti-Nazi musical and it's sung by the von Trapp family who at the end of the movie flee Nazi Austria and climb up the Alps and if you know the rest of the story you'll know that they actually came...they went up the Alps and they came down the Green Mountains of Vermont where they've been running a ski lodge ever since. That's the rest of the story.
They're the anti-Nazis but someone decided to put Edelweiss in this new show called The Man in the High Castle, which is about life in an America in which the Germans had won the war. And so Maggie Haberman, who writes for The New York Times, seems to think this is an actual fascist song, perhaps because of the line, "Small and bright, clean and white," which is supposedly referring to Edelweiss the flower but could as well be referring to a racially exclusive gated community when you think about it, could it not? This is the stupidity of the times. Kate Smith is retrospectively racialized and Rodgers and Hammerstein are retrospectively Nazified but as I said it's the institutional racism that I find interesting and these sports guys now, who are so politically correct, preside over some of the most institutionally racist bodies on the planet.
We all know...you know the New York Yankees, for example, why are they upset about Kate Smith having made a record in 1931? Major League Baseball in America was utterly institutionally racist until Jackie Robinson came along in 1946-47. In fact the least racist part of baseball until then was when he played for a Canadian team, the Montreal Royals, so why is it that you cannot forgive Kate Smith from making "That's why Darkies Were Born," but we're supposed to forgive the New York Yankees and their history of institutional racism. Not just baseball, everyone picks on baseball, what about golf the PGA? A commenter at the Mark Steyn Club pointed out that the PGA in fact was officially racist until 1961, which is actually leaving it a bit late don't you think? So the PGA and Major League Baseball have both been officially racist, even if you accept that Kate Smith made a racist record, Major League Baseball and the PGA have both been officially racist far more recently than Kate Smith has, yet we're supposed to forgive them. I find that odd.
And since we're doing institutional racism, the thing that fascinates me is this: the most...the longest lasting, most institutionally racist institution on the planet is the Democrat Party. In the nineteenth century they were the most influential, slave owning institution on earth and we have had other racist parties hither and yon. The National Party in South Africa which instituted apartheid after the Second World War in 1948. What happened after Nelson Mandela was released from prison in the nineties and they reformed the constitution and what have you. The National Party changed its name and eventually went out of business because the taint of the past was too much for it.
I mentioned Ralph Northam, the Democrat governor of Virginia. The racism in the Democrat party extends well into our time with fellas like Robert C. Byrd, who was a big Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Klan. But you don't have to be a big Grand Kleagle...I believe that's him standing next to Ralph Northam. The present day governor of Virginia is the one in blackface but maybe that's Robert C. Byrd in the Klan hood standing next to him.
But the point is this: if we cannot forgive Kate Smith for making one record in 1931, where do we get off forgiving Major League Baseball? Or the PGA? Is it just about money? Is it just because it's easier to purge and screw over individuals, human beings, than it is to actually put down these racist institutions like the PGA and Major League Baseball?
You know something I'll make a bet here. At some point they will come for Major League Baseball and the PGA. Because the point about this hyper present tense totalitarianism is that everything has to be destroyed, everything. We are in Pol Pot's year zero and we start off consuming Jefferson Davis and Stephen Foster and then we move up a little closer to our own time with Kate Smith and Doctor Seuss but in the end everything before say 2009 has to go. And in the end they will come for...these craven wimp sports owners who took down of the statue of Kate Smith, in the end they will come for you and your businesses too.
Everything has to be purged, everything has to be destroyed. And the only thing that they will leave standing will be that great nineteenth century slaving institution, that great twentieth century Jim Crow blackface institution, the Democrat Party, cruising on into the 21st and 22nd century even as the entirety of American popular culture is erased.
That's it; we'll see you next time.
