The things Mark Steyn finds really interesting

A correspondent wrote:

By the by, I thought you would be amused by Mark Steyn’s column subtitle for this week’s NR:

“Fly Me a River:
If you want to see America’s worst-dressed gay men, take a plane.”

You know. If.

Warm regards,

LA to correspondent:

Your commentary on the “if” is really funny. It brings out how ridiculous his premise is—that there is a reader out there thinking, “Hmm, what I feel like doing this week is seeing America’s worst-dressed gay men.”

Correspondent to LA:

It is not, I’m guessing, near the top of VFR’s journalism agenda for this year. Oh, well. There’s always the indefatigable Mr. Steyn to give us the goods on the issues that matter most.

Viva la South Park!

LA to Correspondent:

Also, among NR’s readers, who is there who, not to mention being interested in how gay men dress, would be interested in how the worst-dressed gay men dress, or, for that matter, would even have been aware of such a subject? “Yeah, well, certain gay men dress really neat, but there are those other gay men, they are slobs.”

As an offshot of this and another recent discussion about Steyn, I saw some of his February 2005 C-SPAN interview, available online, and it was revealing. For example, unlike the Frequently Asked Questions section at his website, on C-SPAN he explained his complicated religious and ethnic background in a way that made at least some sense. His father’s side of the family was Jewish, his mother’s was Belgian Catholic, which explains why he was baptized Catholic. Then he became interested in Anglicanism and was confirmed in the Anglican church. But he has problems with Anglicanism, so he attends a Baptist church though he remains formally an Anglican. What was interesting about this account was that it was reasonably informative, while the answer he gives in the FAQs at his website provides no explanation for his multiple religious identities and sounds like a goof.

So what I’m realizing about Steyn is that, even when there is a legitimate truth to the man, he deliberately presents himself as this unreal, post-modern, post-moral creation. While he can be a sparkling satirist of leftist madness, and I continue to read him from time to time, I would never trust him. He’s way too much into game playing.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at June 09, 2005 08:01 AM | Send