I probably disagree with journalist Mark Steyn more than I agree with him, which is a reason he's a favorite of Country Bumpkin, my New Zealand cousin and frequent Kiko's House guest blogger.
For one thing, Steyn can be insufferably arrogant. But he's smart as hell, has acute powers of observation and is a damned good writer. So no matter how much he puts me off and no matter how much Country Bumpkin twigs me about Steyn's contrarianism, I invariably come back for more of his musings and amusings on politics, arts and culture, which appear in a dizzying number of UK and US newspapers and magazines.
Like most journos, myself included, Steyn can't resist the big sum-up, in this case a two-art compendium that he calls "Hail and Farewell to 2005."
Here are links to his take on the first half of the year and the second half.
2 comments:
So, my dear cousin Shaun thinks Mark Steyn is a contrarian, does he?
Rather the reverse, I would have thought. Once you strip out the very funny gags embedded in Steyn's text, you start to realise that he's an acute analyst. Seek out his work on the decline of Europe, and you'll see what I mean.
If he's a "contrarian", then he is so because he won't hew to a given orthodoxy, notably the left-wing orthodoxy which paints the world in terms of desired ends, rather than pragmatically observing what is actually happening. It's one of those paradoxes of which the contemporary left-right divide is made, and as we watch left orthodoxy about Iraq, NSA spying, "Bush lied" and all the others, unravelling, then we should read Mr Steyn with some care.
Ah, but I come to (mostly) praise Steyn, not to bury him. My "contrarian" label is very much a compliment. I myself lean to the left, except when I don't. Which is a lot.
Labels aside, we shall see how quickly the Iraq, NSA spying and "Bush lied" stories unravel. Insofar as Iraq and presidential pevaricating are concerned, the unraveling is occuring at a glacial pace, if at all, considering that both have been going on for years now. No amount of so-called left orthodoxy is going to change that reality.
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