The Undocumented Mark Steyn Read online

  So only one thing can be said with certainty: the ensuing kidney and brain damage caused by this is going to make one hell of a class action lawsuit circa 2030.

  This is Big Government at work. It solved a problem that didn’t exist. There’s nothing wrong with Edison’s light bulb: it’s the great iconic American invention, the embodiment of American dynamism of the nineteenth century. And what did we do in the twenty-first century? We banned it! If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But we fixed it anyway. And as a result, every time you break it, you now need to have a mason jar, you need to have a set of playing cards, you need to have rubber gloves, you need to have throw mats, you need to empty out your persimmon jelly onto the contaminated carpet, and you’re going to be at risk from a polluted sewage system. . . .

  Oh, and the list on the State of Michigan light-bulb disposal site is even longer than Maine’s. It’s not just a convenient fourteen-step disposal plan for your Curly Fry Lightbulb, they’ve got an eighteen-step disposal plan. You don’t just need the drop cloth and the baby wipes and the pack of playing cards and the two mason jars and the new carpet, you also need additional items—like an eye dropper. You know—an eye dropper, for putting drops in your eyes?

  You need an eye dropper just to throw out a light bulb—the new light bulb they’re making us all install because they banned the old light bulb that doesn’t require you to have a pack of playing cards, two mason jars, a new carpet, and an eye dropper handy when you happen to break them.

  For a century, Edison’s light bulb was regarded as a beacon of American genius; then it became a “climate criminal.” That transformation is American decline in a nutshell.

  Mark Steyn in for Rush. More to come. . . .

  II

  SPIRITS OF THE AGE

  LIFE CLASS

  This column was an attempt to convey to British readers something of the flavor of high-school graduation, a ritual largely unknown across the Atlantic and one at odds with the basic organizing principle of English education: The continual assurances by commencement speakers that yours is the most awesome generation ever to walk the earth ring a little odd if you’re a survivor of some grim Dotheboys Hall where the prevailing educational philosophy was to lower your “self-esteem” to undetectable levels by the end of the first week.

  The Daily Telegraph, June 20, 1998

  THERE IS A reassuring tedium to “commencement,” the annual high school graduation ceremonies, at least in my corner of northern New England, where nothing much changes about these occasions: The students all wear gowns and mortarboards and conclude with a mass display of synchronized tasseltwirling. The school band always plays “Pomp and Circumstance”—and not in the nerds’-night-out sense of “Land of Hope and Glory” at the Proms, either.1 These guys mean it.

  Then come the zillions of student awards, some time-honored, like Randolph High’s Daughters of the American Revolution Award, which went to Charlotte Phillips; some of more recent vintage, like Rochester High’s Go For It Award, which went to Rachel Stringer; and some, usually with names like The Steadfast Award, are frankly just to ensure that even the class thicko wins something. At Rochester, the Roxanne Curtis-Bowen Award went to Bobbi-Jo Bowen, presumably for being the Best Bowen of the Year. As for the speeches, the approved metaphors involve doors, thresholds, crossroads, and bridges, although exceptions are permitted: at Vermont’s Chelsea High, the Class of ’98 were “caterpillars emerging as butterflies,” according to valedictorian Kelly MacCarthy, winner of the L. B. Bowen and Bertha Bowen Award, an award apparently open to non-Bowens.

  Someone always says that life is not a rehearsal. This year it was Mary Burnham of Waits River Valley School. “Life’s not a rehearsal,” she said. “This is it.” If life were a rehearsal, Mary’s speech would be cut before the first out-of-town preview. The starrier the guest speakers, the more pitiful their attempts to ingratiate themselves with pupils: over the border in New Hampshire, former Governor Steve Merrill cited Madonna as a fine role model because she’s in the gym every day at 5 a.m. “Madonna understands commitment,” he told Woodsville High Graduates.

  Of course, in these non-elitist times, the very idea of a star speaker is suspect. For the commencement address at Whitcomb High in Bethel, the graduating class, instead of choosing a state senator or some other local worthy, invited John Hubble, a “member of the high school maintenance staff”—i.e., the janitor. With all those metaphors about thresholds and new doors opening, it makes sense to ask the guy with a full set of keys. “Always try your best,” Mr. Hubble told them, “but don’t take things too seriously.”

  Naturally, a little controversy is to be expected. For example, class valedictorian Kate Skidmore declared that it was time “to tell the truth” about Woodsville. “Look around you!” she cried. “There are gay people everywhere in Woodsville.” This seems unlikely: Woodsville is named for a man called Woods, who went into the woods business and started a sawmill. It’s populated by scrawny, leathery, stump-toothed guys in plaid and their somewhat more expansive wives. I’ve spent hours looking for a decent gay disco and no one’s ever said: “Oh, sure. Second left after the lumber yard and the woodchipper rentals. I was just heading over there myself.”

  Alas, such genial provocations have now been swept aside by Kate Logan, late of the Long Trail School in Dorset, Vermont. Hitherto, Dorset has principally been known as the site of America’s first marble quarry, in 1785. Today it’s famous for young Kate, who seems to have lost her marbles completely. At last week’s commencement, the eighteen-year-old stepped to the podium, warmed up with some traditional guff about her “journey on a road less traveled,” moved on to thank the school for challenging and inspiring her, and then threw off her cap, let her white graduation robe slip to the floor, and finished her speech completely naked.

  “Without expectations, feeling the limitless directions, to open myself completely,” continued Kate, as students, teachers, friends, and family took in every dimple of her five-foot, six-inch, 140-pound form, “for it is only then, when I am open and free, that truth and wisdom will reveal themselves.” As you’ll have gathered, Miss Logan’s public speaking style can use all the visual aids it can get.

  Afterwards, Kate said she’d given the last half of her speech nude to celebrate her graduation on a “spiritual level.” “When you’re moving through a place of truth and being yourself,” she said, “it’s always going to work out right.”

  The school, meanwhile, has released a statement saying “the incident was overwhelmingly inappropriate and is not reflective of our student body.”

  As The Burlington Free Press noted, it was certainly reflective of one student body.

  Heigh-ho. Life, as someone said, is not a rehearsal. Or, anyway, not a dress rehearsal.

  1“Land of Hope and Glory” is A. C. Benson’s lyric (largely unknown in the United States) to Elgar’s “Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1.” A hymn to England (“mother of the free”), it is sung in gusto by an audience in patriotic dress at the last night of the annual Sir Henry Wood Promenade Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall. It is also used as England’s national anthem at the Commonwealth Games.

  E PLURIBUS COMPOSITE

  Syndicated column, May 5, 2012

  HAVE YOU DATED a composite woman? They’re America’s hottest new demographic. As with all the really cool stuff, Barack Obama was doing it years before the rest of us. In Dreams from My Father, the world’s all-time most unread bestseller, he spills the inside dope on his composite white girlfriend, after an off-Broadway play prompts an agonizing post-show exchange about race:

  When we got back to the car she started crying. She couldn’t be black, she said. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. She could only be herself, and wasn’t that enough. . . .

  Not for Barack’s literary imagination, it wasn’t: His humdrum real white girlfriend never saw the play, and no such conversation ever took place. But, even if she could be herself, that’s never going to be
enough in the new composite America. Last week, in an election campaign ad, Barack revealed his latest composite girlfriend—“Julia.”1 She’s even more useless than the old New York girlfriend. Not only can’t she be herself, she can’t be anything without massive assistance from King Barack’s beneficent government every step of the way, from his “Head Start” program at the age of three through to his Social Security benefits at the age of sixty-seven. Everything good in her life she owes to him. When she writes her memoir, it will be thanks to a subvention from the Federal Publishing Assistance Program for Chronically Dependent Women but you’ll love it: Sweet Dreams from My Sugar Daddy. She’s what the lawyers would call “non composite mentis.” She’s not competent to do a single thing for herself—and, from Barack’s point of view, that’s exactly what he’s looking for in a woman, if only for a one-night stand on a Tuesday in early November.

  Then there’s “Elizabeth,” a sixty-two-year-old Democratic Senate candidate from Massachusetts. Like Barack’s white girlfriend, she couldn’t be black. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. But she could be a composite—a white woman and an Indian woman, all mixed up in one! Not Indian in the sense of Ashton Kutcher putting on brownface make-up and a fake-Indian accent in his amusing new commercial for the hip lo-fat snack Popchips. But Indian in the sense of checking the “Are you Native American?” box on the Association of American Law Schools form, which Elizabeth Warren did for much of her adult life. According to her, she’s part Cherokee and part Delaware. Not in the Joe Biden sense, I hasten to add, but Delaware in the sense of the Indian tribe named in honor of the home state of Big F**kin’ Chief Dances with Plugs.

  How does she know she’s a Cherokee maiden? Well, she cites her grandfather’s “high cheekbones,” and says the Indian stuff is part of her family “lore.” Which was evidently good enough for Harvard Lore School when they were looking to rack up a few affirmative-action credits. The former Obama special adviser to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and chairperson of the Congressional Oversight Panel now says that “I listed myself in the directory in the hopes that it might mean that I would be invited to a luncheon, a group, something that might happen with people who are like I am,” and certainly not for personal career advancement or anything like that. Like everyone else, she was shocked, shocked to discover that, as The Boston Herald reported, “Harvard Law School officials listed Warren as Native American in the ’90s, when the school was under fierce fire for their faculty’s lack of diversity.”

  And so the same institution at which young Barack was “the first African-American president of The Harvard Law Review” notched up another famous first: As The Fordham Law Review reported, “Harvard Law School hired its first woman of color, Elizabeth Warren, in 1995.” To the casual observer, Mrs. Warren, now the Democrats’ Senate candidate, might seem a 100 percent woman of non-color. She walks like a white, quacks like a white, looks whiter than white. She’s the whitest white since Frosty the Snowman fell in a vat of Wite-Out. But she “self-identified” as Cherokee, so that makes her a “woman of color.” Why, back in 1984 she submitted some of her favorite dishes to the Pow Wow Chow cookbook, a “compilation of recipes passed down through the Five Tribes families.”

  The recipes sent in by “Elizabeth Warren—Cherokee” include a crab dish with tomato mayonnaise. Mrs. Warren’s fictional Cherokee ancestors in Oklahoma were renowned for their ability to spear the fast-moving Oklahoma crab. It’s in the state song:

  Ooooooklahoma!

  Where the crabs come sweepin’ down the plain. . . .

  But then the white man came and now the Oklahoma crab is extinct, and at the Cherokee clambakes they have to make do with Mrs. Warren’s traditional Five Tribes recipe for Cherokee Lime Pie.

  A delegation of college students visited the White House last week, and Vice President Biden told them: “You’re an incredible generation. And that’s not hyperbole either. Your generation and the 9/11 generation before you are the most incredible group of Americans we have ever, ever, ever produced.” Ever ever ever ever! Even in a world where everyone’s incredible, some things ought to be truly incredible. Yet Harvard Law School touted Elizabeth “Dances with Crabs” Warren as their “first woman of color”—and nobody laughed.

  Because, if you laugh, chances are you’ll be tied up in sensitivity-training hell for the next six weeks.

  Because in an ever more incredible America being an all-white “woman of color” is entirely credible.

  But, with the impertinent jackanapes of the press querying the bona fides of Harvard Lore School’s first Native American female professor, the Warren campaign got to work and eventually turned up a great-great-great-grandmother designated as Cherokee in the online transcription of a marriage application of 1894.

  Hallelujah! In the old racist America, we had quadroons and octoroons. But in the new post-racial America, we have—give me a minute to fish out my calculator—duoettrigintaroons! Martin Luther King dreamed of a day when men would be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their great-great-great-grandmother’s wedding-license application. And now it’s here! You can read all about it in Elizabeth Warren’s memoir of her struggles to come to terms with her racial identity, Dreams from My Great-Great-Great-Grandmother.

  Unfortunately, the actual original marriage license does not list Great-Great-Great-Gran’ma as Cherokee, but let’s cut Elizabeth Fauxcahontas Crockagawea Warren some slack here. She couldn’t be black. She would if she could, but she couldn’t. But she could be 1/32nd Cherokee, and maybe get invited to a luncheon with others of her kind—“people who are like I am,” 31/32nds white, and they can all sit around celebrating their diversity together. She is a testament to America’s melting pot, composite pot, composting pot, whatever.

  Just in case you’re having difficulty keeping up with all these Composite-Americans, George Zimmerman,2 the son of a Peruvian mestiza, is the embodiment of endemic white racism and the reincarnation of Bull Connor, but Elizabeth Warren, the great-great-great-granddaughter of someone who might possibly have been listed as Cherokee on an application for a marriage license, is a heartwarming testimony to how minorities are shattering the glass ceiling in Harvard Yard. George Zimmerman, redneck; Elizabeth Warren, redskin. Under the Third Reich’s Nuremberg Laws, Mrs. Warren would have been classified as Aryan and Mr. Zimmerman as non-Aryan. Now it’s the other way round. Progress!

  Coincidentally, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission last week issued an “Enforcement Guidance” limiting the rights of employers to take into account the criminal convictions and arrest records of job applicants because of the “disparate impact” the consideration of such matters might have on minorities. That’s great news, isn’t it? So Harvard Law School can’t ask Elizabeth Warren if she’s ever held up a liquor store because, if they did, the faculty might be even less Cherokee than it is.

  My colleague Jonah Goldberg wrote the other day about Chris Mooney, author of The Republican Brain, and other scientific chaps who argue that conservatives suffer from a genetic cognitive impairment that causes us to favor small government. In other words, we’re born stupid. In that case, shouldn’t we be covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission?

  Aw, don’t waste your time. Elizabeth Warren will be ahead of you checking the “Are you a right-wing madman?” box on the grounds that she had a great-great-great-grandfather who voted for Benjamin Harrison. And “Julia” will be saying she was born conservative but thanks to Obama’s new Headcase Start program was able to get ideological reassignment surgery. And Barack’s imaginary girlfriend will be telling him that she’d be left if she could, but she’s right so she can’t, but she’d love to be left. So he left her.

  In the new Composite America, you can celebrate diversity all by yourself.

  Regarding Elizabeth Warren’s contributions to that cookbook Pow Wow Chow (a “compilation of recipes passed down through the Five Tri
bes families”), a few days after my column appeared, it was reported that Mrs. Warren’s crab dish passed down from her Cherokee ancestors actually came from an upscale Manhattan restaurant on Fifty-fifth Street across from the St. Regis Hotel. Noah Glyn of National Review:

  Two of the possibly plagiarized recipes, said in the Pow Wow Chow cookbook to have been passed down through generations of Oklahoma Native American members of the Cherokee tribe, are described in a New York Times News Service story as originating at Le Pavilion, a fabulously expensive French restaurant in Manhattan. The dishes were said to be particular favorites of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor and Cole Porter.

  As the blogger Pundette wondered: “Were they Cherokee, too?”

  Why not? As Broadway’s first Native American composer, Cole Porter wrote about his Indian blood in his famous song, “I’ve Got Sioux under My Skin.”

  Actually, that last line quoted above briefly made me wonder if writing about American liberalism isn’t a threat to one’s sanity. Some societies are racist, some societies work hard to be non-racist, but only in America does the nation’s most prestigious law school hire a 100 percent white female as its first “woman of color” on the basis that she once mailed in the Duke of Windsor’s favorite crab dish to a tribal cookbook. If the House of Windsor is now one of the five tribes, all America has to do is restore the monarchy, and the Queen will be your first “woman of color” in the Oval Office.

  Before he ascended to the throne, the Duke inspired a hit song of reflected celebrity: “I Danced with a Man Who Danced with a Girl Who Danced with the Prince of Wales.” That seems to be how Harvard Law’s identity-group quotafilling works. I’m confident that, if this issue re-emerges during Elizabeth Warren’s campaign to be the first Native-American president, she’ll be able to prove she danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with someone who once changed planes at a municipal airport accidentally built on a Cherokee burial ground.