Sleepless in New Hampshire
Steyn, Mark
Sleepless in New Hampshire Mark Steyn From Head to Theo An Anatomical Anthology by Mark Steyn (Stockade Books, 346 pages, $19.95) Reviewed by Colby Cosh THERE IS A BRITISH IMAM NAMED YUSUF...
...The Phoenix piece adduces a few other nitpicky charges, which only serve to show how well Steyn's enormous output survives a cavity search...
...It only got worse when he left the Post last year to protest the sacking of its founding editor, Ken Whyte...
...Dan Kennedy's article promised a dissection of "the most toxic right-wing pundit you've never heard of," which suggests that the paper may have particularly strong market pull amongst cave-dwellers...
...In his own fashion, that affable Canadian dogsledding fanatic, Mark Steyn, has blown up quite delightfully in the space of ten years or so...
...And then, suddenly, one day, Jackie Chan was everywhere: dubbed, remastered versions of his movies were appearing on your mom's shelf, and you could go catch his latest flick alongside the rowdy teens at your local Film-o- GargantuPlex...
...Speaking for myself as a journalist, it was a bit distressing to suddenly get more cachet from acquaintances just for knowing Steyn very slightly than I ever had from my own years of obscure regional work...
...I was brought in to fill part of the vacated space, and for 12 solid months every well-meaning fan has told me I'm "the new Mark Steyn," while every detractor has called me "a cheap Mark Steyn imitator...
...But it was not strictly clear just which side of the 64 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2004 Atlantic he belonged to until he happened to mention, somewhere or other, his Canadian origins and justover-the-border home base...
...Last month, al- Qaradawi was invited to be the "guest of honor" (sic...
...at a debate held by the Greater London Authority A certain columnist for the Daily Telegraph printed al- Qaradawi's quote and followed it with one of the all-time great volleys of black humor: "Thank heaven for little girls, they blow up in the most delightful way...
...If he's not the most visible columnist in the English-speaking world, it's not for lack of trying, as his new anthology reminds us...
...September 11, with its dreadful rearranging of verities, only seemed to provide a further fillip to Steyn's international renown...
...I mean, I agree with a lot of what he writes...
...Joe Conason calls him unacquainted with "decency" (hah...
...He appears regularly throughout the fragmenting Hollinger newspaper chain, from Chicago to Jerusalem...
...Or, perhaps, by the way he eviscerates a wildebeest while humming show tunes...
...He knows viscerally—as most Americans can know only theoretically—just how far and how fast an individualistic, prosperous, culturally unified country can sink into the weeds of soft socialism and diversity-obsession...
...and Canadian columns during the day...
...Combine these with a British education, and you get a writer who delivers the best of three worlds...
...BELIEVE ME, the man casts a long shadow...
...Thus the principle is proved: no one recognizes a lion quite as clearly as the hyenas...
...The nation just doesn't know it yet...
...For years, if you wanted to see a Jackie Chan movie, you had to go to your local Chinatown, brave some obscure Cantonese filing system, and use hand gestures to arrange a rental with the clerk...
...Even ideological opponents conceded, by and large, that he had become the alpha male on the Canadian scene...
...Most TAS readers will recognize the lion by his claw...
...6: "I'LL MAKE YOU FEEL ADEQUATE, EVEN IF YOU'RE NOT" ALSO IN THIS ISSUE: THE FORGOTTEN PRO-LIFE DEMOCRAT THE U.S...
...Sigh...
...Never mind the care and exercise of a dog team...
...Sleepless in New Hampshire Mark Steyn From Head to Theo An Anatomical Anthology by Mark Steyn (Stockade Books, 346 pages, $19.95) Reviewed by Colby Cosh THERE IS A BRITISH IMAM NAMED YUSUF alQaradawi who enjoys a curious reputation for being "moderate" despite having once ranted, in public, that "Israelis might have nuclear bombs, but Colby Cosh is a columnist for the National Post of Canada...
...I tend to write Telegraph and Spectator stuff in the evening and file overnight for the following morning London time, and I write U.S...
...SEPTEMBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 63 BOOKS IN REVIEW we [Muslims] have the children bomb, and these human bombs must continue until liberation...
...Like a Brit, Steyn uses highly acidic ink and is not afraid of flirting with cruelty...
...Weirdly, Steyn remained virtually unknown in Canada until 1998, when his friend and patron Conrad Black founded the National Post as a rival to the gray, liberal paper of record, the Globe and Mail...
...Visit our website for programs, events, and more information...
...www.americasfuture.org www.affdoublethink.com SEPTEMBER 2004 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 65...
...What the article actually contains is a nebulous allegation of "toxicity" and not much else...
...It was...
...There has never been a Canadian newspaper columnist embraced so wholeheartedly or so quickly by the Canadian public, or at least by the 40 percent of it that BOOKS IN REVIEW had been waiting all their lives for a witty, worldly, cultured anti-Liberal messiah to appear...
...it was just like being a white fan of Jackie Chan, the balletic stunt genius of the Hong Kong cinema...
...I was amused to read this line from a recent online interview with Steyn: "Because I write for different time zones, I keep different hours...
...AMERICAS FUTURE FOUNDATION DOUBLETHINK is a publication of the America's Future Foundation...
...America's Future Foundation educates and mobilizes today's young Americans and tomorrow's leaders in support of limited government, free markets, personal responsibility, moral virtue, world leadership, and technological progress...
...Your standard-issue Canadian conservative columnist working in the United States tends to be a somewhat humorless movementarian—a convert to 100 percent Americanism who must prove his credentials by being far more shrill for the cause than one born into it...
...He does a certain amount of recycling to make this global reach possible, but not as much as you'd think...
...Kennedy's forensic attempt to show up Steyn as fact-challenged never quite lifts off the runway...
...Tucker Carlson, once described by Steyn as a "conservative cutie" for hire, calls him repetitive but has to concede that "He's obviously smart, he can be quite witty...
...In the Internet world of right-wing weblogs, he wins "favorite columnist" polls by Secretariat-style margins...
...LEFT-WING COME-ON NO...
...a typical American would have paused for an awfully long time on the edge of that Lerner & Loewe gag...
...Max Cleland in 2003, pointing out that Cleland had professed embarrassment about his wartime medals, had called himself "no hero," and had lost his missing legs and arm in a non-combat incident...
...Similarly, after about six months in the Post, people who had certainly never gone to the newsstand with you to hunt for awater-damaged copy of TASwere suddenly telling you, without prompting, about how they adored this amazing writer Mark Steyn...
...DOUBLETHINK It's a national magazine...
...He has an abiding respect for the taciturn town-hall virtues of the New England...
...after reading some cinema review tucked away in a corner of the Spectator of London now stand in awe of his meticulous construction of a multinational media empire run out of the backwoods of New Hampshire...
...There is much indignation summoned up about an incident in which he and Ann Coulter tag-teamed Sen...
...The exchange had already been reheated endlessly before Kennedy got to it, and every time, Steyn's attackers have had to admit he (and Coulter) had gotten the facts straight...
...Indeed, "Steyn's Way" itself had to be corrected in print on a point at least as important as any in its own mewling litany of outrages...
...I felt an immediate affinity for Steyn when I first noticed his byline beginning to spread throughout my favorite conservative organs, including TAS, where he occupied the "Culture Vultures" space from 1996 to 2000...
...Steyn remains a sympathetic outsider who has continued to keep one eye on the march of the liberal tendency at its double-quick Canadian pace...
...MILITARY'S NO-SEX, NO-BOOZE, NO-FUN RULE JONATHAN LEAF, CONSERVATIVE, PLAYWRIGHT, NEXT BIG THING IN AMERICAN THEATER...
...Most telling of all are the "criticisms" leveled at Steyn by other columnists...
...I wish I could convey the surreal quality of what followed...
...But Steyn is no starchy High Tory, either...
...So when, exactly, does sleep come into it...
...but is forced to admit through gritted teeth that "Steyn is a better writer than most of them...
...Perhaps someday I'll receive the ne plus ultra of tributes, as Steyn did in June when a Boston alterna-weekly, the Phoenix, ran a flailing hit piece called "Steyn's Way...
...just for yuks, he also has regular rotation spots in—deep breath—the Atlantic, Spectator, National Review, New York Sun, Irish Times, Washington Times, Canada's Western Standard, and the New Criterion, with occasional stopovers in the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere...
...Those of us who once asked "How come I've never heard of this guy...
Vol. 37 • September 2004 • No. 7
