I was told Mark Steyn wrote better than me ...

1) Triviū, Quadriviū, 7 cætera : I was told Mark Steyn wrote better than me ..., 2) HGL's F.B. writings : Sean O'Neal lacks the basic skills for journalism. [OK, for the kind of journalism he is doing.]

"It pains me to have to say that the versatile Vlad makes a much better columnist than I’d be a KGB torturer."

Maybe even a better columnist than you, Mark?

"It’s not just that he can stitch him up at the G-8, G-20, Gee-don’t-tell-me-you’re-coming-back-for-more, and turn the leader of the free world into the planet’s designated decline-and-fall-guy, but he can slough off crappy third-rate telepromptered mush better than you community-organizer schmucks, too."

Maybe this is what people used to Jiddysz accept as a good style?

"Let’s take it as read that Putin didn’t write this himself any more than Obama wrote that bilge he was drowning in on Tuesday night, when he took to the airwaves to argue in favor of the fierce urgency of doing something about gassed Syrian moppets but not just yet. Both guys are using writers, but Putin’s are way better than Obama’s — and English isn’t even their first language."

And fortunately, neither is Jiddysz.

That does not mean Mark Steyn does not have a point.

I have not read the 400 pages of After America, but I have heard that he promotes making babies rather than relying on the pension system and wasting public money for the pension system by spending money on contraception. If that is what the 400 pages say or an important part of it, well, I am all for that point.

Problem is that putting it in 400 pages rather than the kind of snappy articles he does in unfailable New York English cum Jiddysz (the Oxford dialect of the marvellous Inklings, the London dialect with an h of the Chesterbelloc - not quite identic to Cockney - and the Texas drool being all beyond him no doubt) or the articles I write though English and French are neither of them my first language is not quite getting the message through to those who on my view need it - people. You know, the guys who are supposed to do the babies instead of relying on pension systems and especially, if already dependent on them should not waste pension system money on contraception or abortion or give away their children for adoption.

Even a novel in fantasy setting might get some points through more effectively - witness the originally quite sane ecologism until the CO₂ scare polluted the question. And its debt to - without CO₂ scare - LotR.

Bah, if I ever meet Mark Steyn I suppose his wife makes better latkes than he writes English!

Oh, wait ... did he put it in a book 400 pages thick so that the readers would be not ordinary people but ... Jews? Upper class? The kind of guys who do not want ordinary people to do the right thing that would kick them out of their wellearning but not well earned incomes? The kind of guys who like Trin80ty look down on Hovind for mentioning he has something to say about the income and not just the Politically or Academically Correct attitudes they think a good teacher should bring through to his audience? If that is the case, I might not accept an invitation for latkes (from them) - even though they remind me of a Swedish dish ...

But, if you think I am unfair to his literary style, and that out of envy, which is an easy suspicion if the writer is homeless and some guys (and some of them reading great authors like Mark Steyn) think he should get on with his life by givng up writing (and leaving it, obviously, to Steyn ...) you look yourselves at his masterpiece, if such you deem it:

National Review Online : American Ineffectualism
by Mark Steyn
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/358480/american-ineffectualism-mark-steyn

*And I suppose some guy is calling me "Mister Big Mouth" and thinking that is a Biblical description of the Antichrist or a common sense description of a madman in relevant sense, just because I think I am worth as much readers as Mark Steyn*

Frankly, I might perhaps give him some of my readers, they seem to be Jewish enough, since when I write something critical to Jews, suddenly it becomes less easy to get money for coffee. But of course that sounds a bit like the buying and selling of souls, and I would not want to be part of that. Let every reader reads what he likes and be neither bought or sold!

Hans-Georg Lundahl
BpI, Georges Pompidou (Paris)
St Edith
16-IX-2013