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STEYN SURVIVES AUSTRALIA

Mark Steyn—now returned to the US, where he recently stood in for a little-known radio identity—posts reactions to his successful Australian visit. Some of our more timid media representatives are still recovering.

We hosted Mark for one night of his trip, introducing him to a small bunch of journalistic/legal/musical/restaurant types. I think the evening ended around 3am, after six hours of Steyn charm (he’s a brilliant speaker); two days later, another Steyn outing continued until 2am. The dude can endure.

One story from that first night: Mark has a team of sled-pulling dogs in New Hampshire. Naming rights were handed to his young daughters. As a result, these mighty hounds are condemned to names like “Blossom”, “Fairypetal”, and “Justin Timberlake”.

Well, that’s how I recall it. I may be confused about this, and they could be the names of his actual daughters (much Expensive Wine was involved). In any case, he didn’t hit anybody, which qualifies Mark for a return feast on his next visit. He passed the test.

UPDATE. Speaking of timid media:

ABC radio announcer Jon Faine and I stared at each other with incredulity after interviewing Mark Steyn.

That’s from jittery Jill Singer, she of the double standards. Scared lady ought to take a look at her own views once in a while.

Posted by Tim B. on 08/26/2006 at 11:58 AM
  1. Steyn was great as the first fur’ner host of that show.  His angle there was “outsourcing jobs Americans won’t do.  Hilarious. 

    I knew I had meetings all day he subbed so I recorded it to mp3 and listened to all three hours Thursday night. 

    He had a little stumble, using the “G” word referring to Vietnamese.  Other than that, flawless.

    Posted by reese on 2006 08 26 at 12:11 PM • permalink

  2. I am absolutely delighted to see Mark Steyn get this kind of exposure. There are few people who possess such a rich combination of skills: rigorous logic, a wonderful prose style and a tremendous sense of humor (and irony). And how hilarious are the feeble efforts of fifth-raters like Lowenstein in trying to take him down! It’s like watching an arrogant butterfly get sucked into the engine of a jet airplane.

    Posted by paco on 2006 08 26 at 12:38 PM • permalink

  3. He didn’t hit anybody?  Why didn’t you invite Bob “and Weave” Fisk?

    Posted by Carl H on 2006 08 26 at 12:47 PM • permalink

  4. I think the evening ended around 3am, after six hours of Steyn charm (he’s a brilliant speaker); two days later, another Steyn outing continued until 2am. The dude can endure.

    And since

    (much Expensive Wine was involved)

    it’s great to know that STEYN SURVIVES AUSTRALIA and AUSTRALIA SURVIVED STEYN…lol.

    What makes Mark Steyn even more “brilliant” is….The facts of Steyn’s life are difficult to check. He has not published biographical details, such as his date of birth or employment history
    and
    He is unusual amongst political writers because of his sideways move from arts criticism into punditry, as well as his lack of college education.

    By chance I found Steyn being interviewed by Brian P. Lamb,  co-founder, chairman & CEO of C-SPAN (Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network).

    Lamb not a shy questioner by any means, asked Steyn, “I understand you never attended A Journalism College or University, is that correct?”, to which Steyn replied, “Brian, I never attended ANY College or University”...air time went dead for a few seconds, while the the split camera view, viewed each, Brian Lamb and Mark Steyn.

    Lamb seemed to have had all the air beaten out of him, Steyn was smiling an evil grin…LOL. Gotta’ love a guy like that.

    Mark Steyn

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 12:54 PM • permalink

  5. Why is it that every time there’s one of these funtime outings involving copious amounts of bitter and beer and lively conversation, it’s never held in Ohio?

    Never. 

    Despite the fact that Ohio elected George Bush twice.

    I blame Bush Tim Blair.

    Posted by wronwright on 2006 08 26 at 01:16 PM • permalink

  6. The last time I went out with Steyn he took a swing at Wheatcroft, after Geoff has a dig at West Ham. I had to separate them. He’s a really nice guy, if no one winds him up, but when he gets a couple of fine wines inside him he’s an animal. Since he left the Telegraph he’s made a determined effort to go straight.

    He’s actually quite sensitive about being a Belgian-Canadian, and tends to overcompensate for this. That’s why he’s always punching people, and making with the puns.

    Posted by harry hutton on 2006 08 26 at 01:35 PM • permalink

  7. Steyn was terrific sub-hosting for Rush. Stuck pretty much to one general subject and took far more callers than Limbaugh does (sparring with callers is not Rush’s long suit although I’m sure he’d be loath to admit it) and handling them pretty well (the undisputed champs of the radio debate are Hewitt and Medved). I’m sure if Mark wanted to tie himself down to a radio gig, which I doubt, he could pick and choose.

    I saw the Lamb interview, too, El Cid. Not only did Steyn not go to college, but, IIRC, he’s a high school drop-out. Completely self-taught. When you consider how he moves effortlessly from Great Britain to Canada to the US to Australia, and beyond, adapting the vernaculars of each, so well versed in each of our histories and politics and mores—well, it’s just a tour de force.

    The story about the dogs’ names is wonderful (Fairypetal—LOL). I named my first dog Casey (after Yankees manager Casey Stengal). Even at three years old I wasn’t properly “feminized”.

    Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 26 at 03:35 PM • permalink

  8. In the ‘reactions’ link above, I liked Mark’s reaction to Malcolm Wallace.
    Mark’s heading, ‘ANOTHER ARTICULATE CONTRIBUTION TO THE DEBATE’, was all that was needed in response to the moonbat.

    Posted by Skeeter on 2006 08 26 at 03:54 PM • permalink

  9. #8, Skeeter,
    Didn’t we just have a whole post devoted to you?

    Posted by saltydog on 2006 08 26 at 04:37 PM • permalink

  10. 7 Kyda Sylvester

    Wouldn’t it be grand to be round forum, (OK semi circular, so we could see them all) consisting of;

    Lileks
    Steyn
    Hanson
    Horowitz (David)
    Hewitt

    And for added spark

    Hitchens

    The paid speakers above and pay to get in attendees, with the perk of Brandy, for all.

    Oh hey OZ. You have bananas

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 04:38 PM • permalink

  11. I don’t know what Mr. Wallace’s problem is. I, for one, would be very impressed with the man who get his own cock in his own mouth.

    Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 26 at 04:40 PM • permalink

  12. Oh me, I left out in a; to read… Wouldn’t it be grand to be in a round forum, in my post…must have been the Brandy, I was thinking of…:).

    But hey, I did have the bananas, in a....lol.

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 04:47 PM • permalink

  13. I’m not so sure about Horowitz. His conversion from the dark side has turned him into a bit of a zealot. He’d keep things lively though. And I’d like to add Thomas Sowell to the group. (Speaking of the dark side, I saw the final chapter of Star Wars for the first time last night. Pea Ewe.)

    Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 26 at 04:49 PM • permalink

  14. I don’t know what Mr. Wallace’s problem is. I, for one, would be very impressed with the man who get his own cock in his own mouth.

    Ummmm, of course the lady meant…a rooster….ROTFLMAO…KS.

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 04:49 PM • permalink

  15. He’d keep things lively though

    After a brandy or six, Horowitz would dancing around the stage, with his rooster, out….LOL.

    Well, for that matter, all of ‘em would.

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 04:53 PM • permalink

  16. Maybe Mark’s daughters could do their tagging thing on Australian journalists too. I like the sound of Margo ‘Blossom’ Kingston, and Bob ‘Fairypetal’ Ellis is even better.

    Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 08 26 at 05:08 PM • permalink

  17. #16 Bob ‘Fairypetal’ Ellis

    Haw!

    Posted by paco on 2006 08 26 at 05:12 PM • permalink

  18. Philip “Justin Timberlake” Adams.

    GAHHHHH!

    Posted by ushie on 2006 08 26 at 05:20 PM • permalink

  19. #9 Salty,
    Indeed. And if it hadn’t been for some welcome support from Swinish near the end of that post, it would have been the last you heard from me on these pages.

    Posted by Skeeter on 2006 08 26 at 05:25 PM • permalink

  20. The normal adult male doesn’t fear cholesterol, trans-fat, jumping out of airplanes, going to Pampaloma, etc.  But when faced by one or two little girls in princess outfits then he is as doomed as Superman with a Kryptonite necklace.

    Posted by Pat Patterson on 2006 08 26 at 06:00 PM • permalink

  21. Kyda Sylvester

    Hitchens Gives the Finger to Maher’s Audience for ‘Frivolous’ Jeering of Bush.

    Here is a bit of that added spark Hitchens could offer…

    NewsBusters

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 06:22 PM • permalink

  22. Skeeter, #19 - it was my pleasure. How could I abandon someone who shares a moniker with the afternoon show host of my childhood?

    ushie #18 - Disgusting, all right, but you’d have much more chance of getting Justin inside Phatty than Phatty inside Justin…

    Posted by SwinishCapitalist on 2006 08 26 at 07:03 PM • permalink

  23. HBO is a great venue for Hitch. We’d have to have a similar venue so that he’d be free to cut loose. Hitchens is all over the map. While he’s a gung ho supporter of the war, any war against fascists and dictatorial despots, he’s also one of the plaintiffs in the suit against the NAS data mining program. While he’s a champion of individual liberty, he’s also a confirmed Socialist (I, on the other hand, just can’t get those two things to come together). And he’s one mean SOB (ever read any of his stuff on Mother Teresa or his Bob Hope obit? ouch). Guess that’s what makes him interesting.

    Can’t understand Maher’s continuing appeal. He’s a tired cliche.

    Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 26 at 07:12 PM • permalink

  24. Can’t understand Maher’s continuing appeal

    Maher should be hanging in a closet. Anatomy 101 pre Med.

    Hitchens can be the worst bastard in the world, but as someone said of another, “he’s our bastard”, at least for now.

    Some may call him contrarian, I prefer brilliant bi polarist…lol.

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 07:51 PM • permalink

  25. Or maybe brilliant bi-polemist? It’s interesting how the Most Pressing Issue Of Our Time makes for strange bedfellows. I find myself in step with people to whom I normally would be waving, and none too cordially, across the great cultural divide (like Alan Dershowitz for instance). I’m not sure that all of us here would get on so readily absent this issue.

    Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 26 at 08:13 PM • permalink

  26. The strange bedfellows must have sense that God gave a duck, but yes, strange.

    Damn, our round table will be a living masterpiece…do I hear more names?

    Hey People! listen up…:)

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 09:13 PM • permalink

  27. Slightly O/T, but on the subject of naming dogs, I have a friend, retired Marine Colonel, two German shorthairs.  Marx and Engels. 

    His explanation:  They’re German, they’re hairy and they have no respect for private property.

    Posted by Vanguard of the Commentariat on 2006 08 26 at 09:13 PM • permalink

  28. I hate to have to say it, but we need a female. Perhaps an Ann Althouse or Clarice Feldman type? Can always call on Claudia Rosett when it’s time to rag on the UN.

    Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 26 at 09:28 PM • permalink

  29. What, no Ann Coulter?...:) What fireworks with Hitchens…lol

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 09:33 PM • permalink

  30. Condoleezza Rice

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 26 at 09:46 PM • permalink

  31. #2 the Lowenstein mantra: float like a brick, sting like a butterfly

    Posted by hooligan on 2006 08 26 at 09:50 PM • permalink

  32. Michelle Malkin should be the female I would vote for to be in that panel.  I for one would love to see what Hitchens would throw in (although I do have the same trouble as Kyda in trying to wrap my own brain around Hitchens assertion that he can be FOR individuality while FOR the State making everyone the same.

    There is another lady I would suggest, but she died in the plane that hit the Pentagon on September 11.  She had folks like Alan Colmes wearing s**t-eating grins even after she scooped out their small Leftist hearts with a spoon and fed it to them, and they loved her for it.  Barbara Olson, may she rest in peace.

    Posted by Sharon_Ferguson on 2006 08 26 at 10:31 PM • permalink

  33. Females invited for discussion should include Ali Hirsi and Oriana Fallaci.

    Posted by 68W40 on 2006 08 26 at 10:32 PM • permalink

  34. #33 and Wafa Sultan

    Posted by MentalFloss on 2006 08 26 at 11:54 PM • permalink

  35. S Ferguson

    Barbara Olson

    Elegant, brainy and another 9/11 hero. If only.

    Hitch, would start the discussions, by digging into the theocratic thugs he despises and wants dead.

    91B30

    Ali Hirsi (The Caged Virgin, per Hitchens in Slate) and Oriana Fallaci.

    Wonderful additions. I can just imagine Fallaci…between her and Hitchens, there would be the necessity of both police and fire departments on hand.

    MentalFloss

    #33 and Wafa Sultan

    Words from Sultan: It IS a clash between civilization and backwardness.

    Excellent…We must get a larger table, for the forum.

    Hitchens friend Salman Rushdie, would be a natural with Hirsi and Sultan. Who knows Rushdie, may even want in…:). I could just hear Hitchens, Salman old boy, you must be there, it is a must and I won’t take NO for an answer.

    I would suggest Kissinger as well, but for sure with Hitchens there, Hitchens would have to be taped to his seat and police and fire would have to have their truncheons and hoses at the ready…...lol.

    The truncheons and hoses would probably have to be at the ready, with just Fallaci added.

    A quote from Fallaci: Listening to someone talk isn’t at all like listening to their words played over on a machine. What you hear when you have a face before you is never what you hear when you have before you a winding tape.

    Truly an world star class, hell with all the powerful people in attendance, WE would have trouble getting in, save for the fact WE would have been the ones to gather and produce, this forum for the century.

    A dream come true. Let’s see invitations to each would start….Ummmmm, you don’t know us, BUT there is a gathering of the mighty for a forum and ummmmm…LOL.

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 27 at 05:30 AM • permalink

  36. #5. What the **** are you cdomplaining about? I live in Perth!

    Posted by Susan Norton on 2006 08 27 at 05:56 AM • permalink

  37. Mark Steyn? Who wrote this article in 2003 proclaiming that the war in Iraq was over and that:

    Rumsfeld’s view that one shouldn’t do it with once-a-decade force, but with a lighter, faster touch has been vindicated, with interesting implications for other members of the axis of evil and its reserve league.

    Fool.

    Posted by bongoman on 2006 08 27 at 07:55 AM • permalink

  38. It would have been over long ago, bonghole, if you lot would have kept your fool mouths shut and let us get the job done. Wars now are won and lost in the media, and you aid-and-comforting fucks do nothing but give a contemptible enemy hope to continue. Rot in hell.

    Posted by Dave S. on 2006 08 27 at 09:43 AM • permalink

  39. bongoman, you need to take remedial English.  Again.

    Saddam was on the run, his two hellspawn were soon to splatter like a couple of melons dropped from the top of a skyscraper, the Iraqi army was a case of WHAT Iraqi army.

    You and your fellow asstards then managed to fuck around and dick around and ass around and totally shit the whole thing up with your never-ending squeals of “Quagmire!  Quagmire!” like so many fuckbrained cockatiels.

    I remember our guys were to be totally crushed by the awesome Afghan winter and the awesome Afghan fighting force that had defeated the USSR, Britain, and who the hell knows what else.  Didn’t happen.  That dimfuck, Fisk, was yapping like a peeing chihuahua about the awesome Iraqi army and how it would totally crush the Allied forces.  Didn’t happen.  Hell, you were probably hanging on every toadlike hysterical syllable that dropped from Bahgdad Bob’s mouth—the US army wasn’t there!  It wasn’t there!  It Wasn’t There!

    Oh, yes, it was.

    And after, you probably whinnied like a circus pony about the Terrible Theft of all of Iraq’s History from the museum!  But that didn’t happen.  And about the 100,000 or oh, hell, even ONE MILLION innocent Iraqis who died because the Allied forces can’t aim their DEPLETED URANIUM EVIL MISSILE BOMB GRENADES right.  But that didn’t happen, either.

    And you totally ignored the mass graves.

    Go fuck yourself, you useless skinbag.  Nobody wants to hear your stupid flapping opinion except those other wastes of sperm and ovum other there at Starbucks.

    Posted by ushie on 2006 08 27 at 11:49 AM • permalink

  40. LOL, ushie; I see your aspect hasn’t much mellowed overnight.

    One last suggestion for the panel. We need a court jester, a village idiot if you will. I nominate Jimmy Carter.

    Posted by Kyda Sylvester on 2006 08 27 at 03:38 PM • permalink

  41. Kyda Sylvester

    We need a court jester, a village idiot if you will. I nominate Jimmy Carter.

    Well,OK. I was going to suggest bongoman, but I understand he’s sucking his rooster those days.

    That’s after the Brandy shooters contest.

    Oh well, Mr. Peanut it is. Wait until he finds out he’s in the knife throwing act.

    Posted by El Cid on 2006 08 27 at 03:59 PM • permalink

  42. You and your fellow asstards then managed to fuck around and dick around and ass around and totally shit the whole thing up with your never-ending squeals of “Quagmire!  Quagmire!” like so many fuckbrained cockatiels.

    Yeah, I emboldened the insurgency, created the vacuum for Iran and handed Iraq to Al Qaeda.

    Probably best not to start a war that needs us fuckbrained cockatiels behind it then to succeed.

    Posted by bongoman on 2006 08 27 at 08:06 PM • permalink

  43. #36

    Someone told me that Perth is a great place - full of sex-mad female lawyers.

    Posted by BS on 2006 08 28 at 12:48 AM • permalink

  44. “The essence of it was still there though, that Islam has nothing to offer the world but destruction ... In Steyn’s world, Muslims are the legitimate target of jokes and calls for obliteration.”

    Standard operating procedure whenever leftoids are confronted with a voice or publication from outside the country which they can’t ignore or dismiss. Old Mr Straw Man gets dusted off.

    In the meantime, in the name of ‘multicultural sensitivity’, they are strengthening the hand of extremists in Muslim communities and rationalising murder.

    Posted by Inurbanus on 2006 08 28 at 03:12 AM • permalink

  45. Stifle y’self Mongoban..

    Posted by crash on 2006 08 28 at 09:35 AM • permalink

  46. Probably best not to start a war that needs us fuckbrained cockatiels behind it then to succeed.

    You don’t have to get behind it. Just shut the fuck up and let the grownups win it.

    Posted by Dave S. on 2006 08 28 at 09:03 PM • permalink

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