Mark Steyn

Obama goes to school

On Friday, I had the rare honor of appearing in the pages of the New York Times, apropos President Obama's plans to beam himself into every schoolhouse in the land in the peculiar belief that Generation iPod will find this an enthralling technical novelty. As Times reporters James C. McKinley Jr. and Sam Dillon wrote:

September 7, 2009

The forgotten woman

We are enjoined not to speak ill of the dead. But, when an entire nation -- or, at any rate, its "mainstream" media culture -- declines to speak the truth about the dead, we certainly are entitled to speak ill of such false eulogists. In their coverage of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy's passing, America's TV networks are creepily reminiscent of those plays Sam Shepard used to write about some dysfunctional inbred hardscrabble Appalachian household where there's a baby buried in the backyard but everyone agreed years ago never to mention it.

August 31, 2009

He’s spending your future

The other day, wending my way from Woodsville, N.H., 40 miles south to Plymouth, I came across several "stimulus" projects -- every few miles, and heralded by a two-tone sign, a hitherto rare sight on Granite State highways.

August 24, 2009

What’s up with that?

Some years ago, when I was a slip of a lad, I found myself commiserating with a distinguished American songwriter about the death of one of his colleagues. My 23-year-old girlfriend found all the condolence talk a bit of a bummer and was anxious to cut to the chase and get outta there. "Well," she said breezily. "He had a good innings. He was 85."

August 17, 2009

Don’t cry for me in Argentina

"I've spent the last five days crying in Argentina," he revealed, in presumably unconscious hommage to "Evita."

June 30, 2009

STEYN: Being taken care of weakens us

Willie Whitelaw, a genial old buffer who served as former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's deputy for many years, once accused the Labor Party of going around Britain stirring up apathy.

June 15, 2009

STEYN: The hollow superpower

As recently as last summer, General Motors Corp.'s filing for bankruptcy would have been the biggest news story of the week. But it's not such a very great step from the unthinkable to the inevitable, and by the time it actually happened, the market barely noticed and the media were focused on the president's "address to the Muslim world."

June 8, 2009