Oh, look. There was a tragedy, so that means some wanker at the NRO needs to pen a column about the demise of civilization and calling all the survivors wimps. Not quite up to the Derbyshire standard, but after calling professional soldiers wimps, you’ll remember he went all in and blamed the Va. Tech shooting victims.
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Egg Berry
Did he just diss 9/11?
Villago Delenda Est
NRO: A wretched hive of scum and stupidity.
Sly
Ah, conservatism. Where civilization means your social betters have the ability to lock you in steerage while they take all the life boats.
Suffern ACE
I blame Dr. Spock’s baby book. No one who was spanked would panic when ships sink.
Roger Moore
@efgoldman:
Or an attempt at a violent dictatorship. I still don’t think any of the NRO guys are as bad as Cheney, Addington, Yoo, and the rest of the Deserting Coward’s administration.
b-psycho
Shouldn’t people who think everyone else is a bunch of wimps, I dunno, provide proof of how tough they actually are?
Spaghetti Lee
If Derbyshit was on that ship he’d shove old ladies out of wheelchairs and toss babies into the ocean just to get to the lifeboat first. I can’t believe the lack of human decency that’s required to write a column like that.
Mike in NC
@Villago Delenda Est:
or “NRO: We make RedState look smart!”
Mart
Surprised he did not go the exceptional American route, Brave Captain Scully, or as Egg Berry mentioned the bravery of 911 vs. the impolite knuckle dragging furiners that sacrifice woman and child so man and officer live.
Oh well, lush breasts.
Roger Moore
@b-psycho:
That’s what they’re trying to do. They think that bragging about all the terrible things they’d do if they were in charge is how they think they can prove their manliness. It’s the same thing as them talking a lot about torture; they want to show what a bunch of badasses they are by talking a good game.
TBogg
Mark Steyn is the kind of person who would immediately start screaming like a little girl and cannibalizing whomever was in his boat with him if he was in It’s A Small World and the ride stalled out
Villago Delenda Est
@Spaghetti Lee:
That is precisely what these self absorbed sacks of shit would do.
They talk about this from their well heated/air conditioned offices, but not one of these maggots has ever frozen their ass off in a German snowstorm in December, or pulled sentry duty in the DMZ in January.
Or, to be a bit more contemporary, patrolled in the streets of some Iraqi town that is chock full of explosives looted from a depot that was bypassed in a huge hurry to secure the Iraqi oil ministry.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
There was a post on NRO the other day where the writer trashed Michelle Obama for going on iCarly. His argument was that she shouldn’t have been honoring a fake character on the show, ignoring Mrs. Obama’s traveling with the main characters to premiere the episode at schools where a large number of the children’s parents were in the military.
One of the stories I read about the episode talked about a grandmother who was watching it with her grandson who told her that it made him feel better knowing that other people cared.
Villago Delenda Est
@TBogg:
Nailed it.
cmorenc
This guy Mark Steyn likely is indeed a general douche, from examination of his bio (NRO, frequent appearances on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and author of books like “Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech and the Twilight of the West”.
Nevertheless, IMHO you’re way over-selling the import of the particular linked article by him, which confines itself to contrasting the boorishly panicked, ignoble behavior of men attempting to evacuate the Costa Concordia by pushing right over and past women and children, with the allegedly noble behavior of men in earlier times (i.e. before the decline of Western Civilization) who purportedly calmly watched their women and children get aboard lifeboats as they stayed on the ship to go down with it beneath the waves. Perhaps if the author had instead been the same as the author of the second two links (John Derbyshire), the point would have been lots better made.
Had I not read the Mark Steyn article pointed to, I would have of course assumed from your BJ blog post that he’d indeed spewed some world-class douchebag accusations or scumbag revisionism in the article he wrote. Even though from his pedigree it’s likely that elsewhere he’s egregiously guilty of this sin, it’s nowhere to be seen in the article in question, beyond perhaps an over-rosy view of how nobly e.g. the men on the Titanic really behaved. Instead, I found a completely unobjectionable article that I agreed with, except to wonder whether his view of behavior in past maritime disasters was really as noble as he says it was.
Citizen_X
@TBogg:
Hoo-whee. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why Tbogg gets paid the big bucks.
Schlemizel
@TBogg:
Actually, Disney shares would be down 15% because quarterly profits would be off the tremendous amount spent on bleach and air freshener to get the urine smell out of the ride.
venice
“Today it’s every man for himself…”
Ah, the Libertarian paradise!
Warren Terra
He’s really going to cite the orderly evacuation of the Titanic? I haven’t read up on that tragedy since around the time the film came out, but – even leaving aside the awful fate imposed by design on those in steerage – I can remember reading about lifeboats that launched carrying bare handfuls of people, or carrying none at all, and that many men did not wait for women and children to take precedence. Not saying I’d have done anything any more noble – but then I’m not Mr. Steyn.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@cmorenc:
Steyn did exactly that. As pointed out above, his entire argument that, unlike what happens today, the Titanic evacuation was orderly and nonviolent if one considers that there is no violence inherent in a bunch of locked doors preventing the third-class passengers from reaching the lifeboats. He is correct in calling the movie mendacious only in that no one deliberately locked the doors to keep them from getting to the lifeboats; in fact, they’d been like that the whole voyage.
Further, he omits a critical reason for the lack of chaos during the evacuation of the Titanic, namely that the Captain didn’t bother to inform most people that the ship was sinking and that most of those people didn’t pass it along to the majority of the passengers until almost the very end. Given this, his piece is completely irrelevant. It says nothing about people behaving better in previous eras, unless you consider preventing the lower classes from disturbing their betters and not telling people that they are in mortal danger to be good things.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
This guy really is a turd. He’s too sad and pitiful to even rise to the level of douchebag or asshole. He’s just a smeary little turd.
And I really liked this part:
Funny; I kind of thought that this was what conservatives were working towards: Your company loots your pension fund and lays you off? And you want to suckle at the teat of the government when your old and withered? Gorging yourself on Social Security payments? That hard dividend-earning rich people have to pay for? Fuck off and die, loser. If you didn’t want to live in the street when you’re 80, you should have been born rich.
patroclus
I’m not going to read page 185 of his book, but did he really just say that wealthy people walking into their life boats in an orderly fashion whilst thousands in steerage were locked into their drowning doom was indicative of a better culture?
blueintheface
@venice: Exactly, venice. Who the hell are these guys to talk about reserving lifeboats for women and children when they push for cutting every social welfare safety net in the name of austerity and fiscal conservatism? Apparently it’s ok to starve kids and put their mothers out on the street, but pushing them into the sea is just too much.
If anything, the “every man for himself” reaction by the passengers is modern day Conservatism in a nutshell. If Newt Gingrich was on that ship, he’d say that those kids needed to earn that spot on the life raft. And then the chuckleheads on TV would spend hour after hour discussing how the liberal nanny-state has left the younger generation unable to take care of itself.
blueintheface
@venice: Exactly, venice. Who the hell are these guys to talk about reserving lifeboats for women and children when they push for cutting every social welfare safety net in the name of austerity and fiscal conservatism? Apparently it’s ok to starve kids and put their mothers out on the street, but pushing them into the sea is just too much.
If anything, the “every man for himself” reaction by the passengers is modern day Conservatism in a nutshell. If Newt Gingrich was on that ship, he’d say that those kids needed to earn that spot on the life raft. And then the chuckleheads on TV would spend hour after hour discussing how the liberal nanny-state has left the younger generation unable to take care of itself.
RSA
Okay, I have no idea who Mark Steyn is, but this seems to represent his point of view:
Apparently we’re all hedonists, and instead of enjoying life we should be… what? Constantly at war?
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
Well, clearly he does. I think that’s his whole point. These little weasels really do see themselves as some kind of Nietschean supermen, and they prove it by telling us what amazing, bold, noble, fearless towers of strength and manhood they are. Since, you know, telling us how awesome they are is so much more persuasive than keeping their heads down and being awesome in some way, even if it’s only something small, like volunteering in a soup kitchen or any one of the thousands of other ways that people who really do try to make the world a little better do.
Roger Moore
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
He also ignores that part of the problem in this case was that the accident happened before the lifeboat drills. A lot of the passengers had no clue about where to go and what to do, which naturally tends to produce panic and chaos. It’s a good bet that the evacuation would have been a lot better behaved and more orderly had it come after the lifeboat drills.
wonkie
Re: noble behavior on thew Titantic.
Whatsisface claims that men of all classes stood aside and let women and children of all classes get on the Titantic lifeboats.
If he really that illiterate of history? The steerage passengers were locked belowships so they couldn’t compete with the wealtheir ones for boats space. Most of the steerage women and children died. The wealthier women paddled away in life boats tht were half full.
I gues the modern Rethug party might see that as noble. They are, after all, social Darwinists.
Gust Avrakotos
Haven’t see a “da drones are comin to take mah dogzzz” post for Wrong Way Cole a few days now. That has got to be some kind of record from the clueless Not Republican.
cbear
Every one of these repuke pricks like Steyn and Derbyshire would have you believe that they’re Audie Murphy, when in reality they would hit their knees and beg to suck the dick of the nearest Muslim after hearing “Allah…” and before “…Akbar”.
Villago Delenda Est
@RSA:
Well, guys like Steyn of course won’t be doing any of the actual fighting in the wars because they’re far too important to the war effort to provide direction from well in the rear, and by that I mean the serious rear behind oceans and gates and goons.
No, the job of fighting and dying is best left to the proles, it’s what they’re good at, and will further strengthen their morale fiber, unless they get taken prisoner, in which case they’ll be branded as traitors for failing to die in place for the likes of Steyn.
jefft452
@Spaghetti Lee: “If Derbyshit was on that ship he’d shove old ladies out of wheelchairs and toss babies into the ocean…”
nah, he’d have the servants do it, like Ismay
kc
I love you, TBogg!
mdblanche
Oh to be living back in the good old days, when men who obsessed over the brown hordes that threaten civilization knew better than to associate with self-confessed bearers of Semitic blood such as Mark Steyn.
andyferris
Steyn can be counted on to write the same shite for every disaster. It’s always the case that modern disasters demonstrate just how bad things are now compared to the glorious past. Feminists, foreigners, and the gays are consistently in rotation as the scapegoats du jour. His 9/11 reaction found a way to blame the Americans with Disabilities Act! He’s been a hack for a loong time.
nota bene
Fucker would probably turn around and decry federal regulations mandating the presence of lifeboats on passenger ships as unjustified intervention in the free market.
MaryRC
I’d like to see how Steyn explains the Millionaires’ Special, Lifeboat #1, which contained Sir Cosmo Duff Gordon, Lady Duff Gordon, her secretary and 9 Titanic crew members: 10 men and 2 women in a lifeboat that could seat 40. They did not go back to pick up more survivors.
Of course I’m sure the Duff Gordons boarded the lifeboat in an orderly and dignified manner, dontcha know.
rea
The Titanic’s stats speak for themselvews and are rather shocking . . .
http://www.ithaca.edu/staff/jhenderson/titanic.html
Kilkee
@rea: Thanks for that — enlightening.
Jay C
Gee, Mark Steyn used a tragedy as a peg for a sniffy douchebag column about How Things Are So F*ck*d Up Nowadays As Compared To Some Golden Age In The Past? This is NEWS?
At least he left off his usual straw boogeyman: he didn’t blame Muslims for sinking the Costa Concordia (or the Titanic….)
However, Steyn seems (as he usually does) to overlook a couple of basic facts: however “orderly, dignified and moving” the evacuation of Titanic may have been, it was pretty inefficient: 1,517 out of 2,223 persons on board died, a loss rate of about 68%. Even sadly assuming the worst-case scenario about Costa Concordia means 34 dead out of 4,252: a loss rate under 1%: we must be doing something right nowadays…
PS: @Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN): Steyn’s charge of “mendaciousness” re James Cameron’s movie seems to rest on the director’s unsavory depiction of a real-life crewman on the Titanic, for which Cameron felt compelled to make a apology to the guy’s hometown in (?)Scotland, where he is revered as a hero.
g
Today the wealthiest nations in human history build cruise ships rather than battleships, vast floating palaces dedicated to the good life — to the proposition that, in the plump and complacent West, life itself is a cruise, sailing (as the Concordia’s name suggests) on a placid lake of peace and harmony.
Yes, I mourn the days when battleships such as the Titanic and the Lusitania nobly fought the enemy on the high seas before losing the fight and sinking beneath the violent waves…..oh, wait, what? The Titanic, the Lusitania and all those other ships were what?
First Class dining room on the vast floating palace, the Lusitania.