The Undocumented Mark Steyn Page 8

  There’s just one thing that bothers me. As I arrived at the office with my boxers round my ankles, I couldn’t help thinking: this new revised feminism is great for guys, but what’s in it for women? I mean, I know Monica Lewinsky was the only White House intern to land a full-time job with the federal government, but, for most other women, Ms. Steinem’s license to grope could mean a lot of unwanted traffic across their brassieres and a lot of executive penises being waved in their faces. What does the sisterhood get in return?

  Well, as Gloria sees it, it’s an acceptable “combat risk.” “For one thing,” she writes, “if the President had behaved with comparable insensitivity toward environmentalists, and at the same time remained their most crucial champion and bulwark against an anti-environmental Congress, would they be expected to desert him?”

  Indeed. If, say, he’d signed the Kyoto treaty, would they overlook his own excessive emissions? Absolutely. “If President Clinton were as vital to preserving freedom of speech as he is to preserving reproductive freedom, would journalists be condemned as ‘inconsistent’ for refusing to suggest he resign? Forget it.”

  By “reproductive freedom” Ms. Steinem means abortion. Indeed, the most sensible interpretation of her strategy is that it’s an excellent way of drumming up business for her favorite industry: if every man is to be allowed one free pass at every female subordinate or job interviewee, the law of averages suggests a lot more women will find themselves exercising their right to “reproductive freedom.” This is what the leadership of the women’s movement has been reduced to: defending a man’s right to trouser-drop in order to protect a woman’s “right to choose.” Of America’s 1.6 million annual abortions, only fifteen thousand are for any kind of fetal abnormality; less than 1 percent of all pregnancies are due to rape. That leaves over one in four healthy fetuses voluntarily terminated as a cumbersome form of belated contraception. Leaving aside the individual consequences—variously traumatizing, dehumanizing, or physically harmful, the real “women’s health issues” that feminists never talk about—what is it exactly that women are choosing?

  Some women have been embarrassed at the apparent contradictions of Ms. Steinem’s thumbs-up to unwanted breast-fondling and fellatio-demanding. But in fact it’s a logical harmonic convergence between the first move—the initial lunge—and the last resort—the abortion: Ms. Steinem has constructed defenses of both sexual harassment and “reproductive freedom” that boil down to. . . party time for guys! There’s a bumper sticker popular with feminists: “I’m Pro-Choice and I Vote!” Now we men can get one of our own: “I’m Pro-Choice and I Grope!”

  IN THE ABSENCE OF GUNS

  The American Spectator, June 2000

  CELEBRITY NEWS FROM the United Kingdom:

  In April, Germaine Greer, the Australian feminist and author of The Female Eunuch, was leaving her house in East Anglia, when a young woman accosted her, forced her back inside, tied her up, smashed her glasses, and then set about demolishing her ornaments with a poker.

  A couple of weeks before that, the eighty-five-year-old mother of Phil Collins, the well-known rock star, was punched in the ribs, the back, and the head on a West London street, before her companion was robbed. “That’s what you have to expect these days,” she said, philosophically.

  Anthea Turner, the host of Britain’s top-rated National Lottery TV show, went to see the West End revival of Grease with a chum. They were spotted at the theatre by a young man who followed them out and, while their car was stuck in traffic, forced his way in and wrenched a diamond-encrusted Rolex off the friend’s wrist.

  A week before that, the ninety-four-year-old mother of Ridley Scott, the director of Alien and other Hollywood confections, was beaten and robbed by two men who broke into her home and threatened to kill her.

  Former Bond girl Britt Ekland had her jewelry torn from her arms outside a shop in Chelsea; Formula One Grand Prix racing tycoon and Tony Blair confidant Bernie Ecclestone was punched and kicked by his assailants as they stole his wife’s ring; network TV chief Michael Green was slashed in the face by thugs outside his Mayfair home; gourmet chef to the stars Anton Mosimann was punched in the head outside his house in Kensington. . . .

  Rita Simmonds isn’t a celebrity but, fortunately, she happened to be living next door to one when a gang broke into her home in upscale Cumberland Terrace, a private road near Regent’s Park. Tom Cruise heard her screams and bounded to the rescue, chasing the attackers for three hundred yards, though failing to prevent them from reaching their getaway car and escaping with two jewelry items worth around $140,000.

  It’s just as well Tom failed to catch up with the gang. Otherwise, the ensuing altercation might have resulted in the diminutive star being prosecuted for assault. In Britain, criminals, police, and magistrates are united in regarding any resistance by the victim as bad form. The most they’ll tolerate is “proportionate response”—and, as these thugs had been beating up a defenseless woman and posed no threat to Tom Cruise, the Metropolitan Police would have regarded Tom’s actions as highly objectionable. “Proportionate response,” from the beleaguered British property owner’s point of view, is a bit like a courtly duel where the rules are set by one side: “Ah,” says the victim of a late-night break-in, “I see you have brought a blunt instrument. Forgive me for unsheathing my bread knife. My mistake, old boy. Would you mind giving me a sporting chance to retrieve my cricket bat from under the bed before clubbing me to a pulp, there’s a good chap?”

  No wonder, even as they’re being pounded senseless, many British crime victims are worrying about potential liability. A few months ago, Shirley Best, owner of the Rolander Fashion boutique whose clients include the daughter of the Princess Royal, was ironing some garments when two youths broke in. They pressed the hot iron into her side and stole her watch, leaving her badly burned. “I was frightened to defend myself,” said Miss Best. “I thought if I did anything I would be arrested.”

  And who can blame her? Shortly before the attack, she’d been reading about Tony Martin, a Norfolk farmer whose home had been broken into and who had responded by shooting and killing the teenage burglar. He was charged with murder. In April, he was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment—for defending himself against a career criminal in an area where the police are far away and reluctant to have their sleep disturbed. In the British Commonwealth, the approach to policing is summed up by the motto of Her Majesty’s most glamorous constabulary: The Mounties always get their man—i.e., leave it to us. But these days in the British police, when they can’t get their man, they’ll get you instead: Frankly, that’s a lot easier, as poor Mr. Martin discovered.

  Norfolk is a remote rural corner of England. It ought to be as peaceful and crime-free as my remote rural corner of New England. But it isn’t. Old impressions die hard: Americans still think of Britain as a low-crime country. Conversely, the British think of America as a high-crime country. But neither impression is true. The overall crime rate in England and Wales is 60 percent higher than that in the United States. True, in America you’re more likely to be shot to death. On the other hand, in England you’re more likely to be strangled to death. But in both cases, the statistical likelihood of being murdered at all is remote, especially if you steer clear of the drug trade. When it comes to anything else, though—burglary, auto theft, armed robbery, violent assault, rape—the crime rate reaches deep into British society in ways most Americans would find virtually inconceivable.

  I cite those celebrity assaults not because celebrities are more prone to wind up as crime victims than anyone else, but only because the measure of a civilized society is how easily you can insulate yourself from its snarling underclass. In America, if you can make it out of some of the loonier cities, it’s a piece of cake, relatively speaking. In Britain, if even a rock star or TV supremo can’t insulate himself, nobody can. In any society, criminals prey on the weak and vulnerable. It’s the peculiar genius of government policy to have ensured
that in British society everyone is weak and vulnerable—from Norfolk farmers to Tom Cruise’s neighbor.

  And that’s where America is headed if “gun control” makes any headway in Washington: Less guns = more crime. And more vulnerability. And more Americans being burgled, and assaulted, and raped. I like hunting, but if that were the only thing at stake with guns, I guess I could learn to live without it. But I’m opposed to gun control because I don’t see why my neighbors in New Hampshire should have to live the way a friend of mine does in old Hampshire—in a comfortable manor house in an extremely prosperous part of rural England, lying awake at night listening to yobbo gangs drive up, park their vans, and test her doors and windows before figuring out that the little old lady down the lane’s a softer touch.

  Between the introduction of pistol permits in 1903 and the banning of handguns after the Dunblane massacre in 1996, Britain has had a century of incremental gun control—“sensible measures that all reasonable people can agree on.” And what’s the result? Even when you factor in America’s nutcake jurisdictions with the crackhead mayors, the overall crime rate in England and Wales is higher than in all fifty states, even though over there they have more policemen per capita than in the U.S. on vastly higher rates of pay installing more video surveillance cameras than anywhere else in the western world. Robbery, sex crimes, and violence against the person are higher in England and Wales; property crime is twice as high; vehicle theft is higher still; the British are 2.3 times more likely than Americans to be assaulted, and three times more likely to be violently assaulted. Between 1973 and 1992, burglary rates in the U.S. fell by half. In Britain, not even the Home Office’s disreputable reporting methods (if a burglar steals from fifteen different apartments in one building, it counts as a single crime) can conceal the remorseless rise: Britons are now more than twice as likely as Americans to be mugged; two-thirds will have their property broken into at some time in their lives. Even more revealing is the divergent character between UK and U.S. property crime: In America, just over 10 percent of all burglaries are “hot burglaries”—committed while the owners are present; in Britain, it’s over half. Because of insurance-mandated alarm systems, the average thief increasingly concludes that it’s easier to wait till you’re home, knock on the door, and punch your face in. Your home-security system may conceivably make your home more secure, but it makes you less so.

  Conversely, up here in the New Hampshire second Congressional district, there are few laser security systems and lots of guns. Our murder rate is much lower than Britain’s and our property crime is virtually insignificant. Villains are expert calculators of risk, and the likelihood of walking away uninjured with an eighty-dollar TV is too remote. In New Hampshire, a citizen’s right to defend himself deters crime; in Britain, the state-inflicted impotence of the homeowner actively encourages it. Just as becoming a drug baron is a rational career move in Colombia, so too is becoming a violent burglar in the United Kingdom. The chances that the state will seriously impede your progress are insignificant.

  To a North Country Yankee it’s self-evident that, when a burglar breaks into your home, you should have the right to shoot him—indeed, not just the right, but the responsibility, as a free-born citizen, to uphold the integrity of your property. But in Britain and most other parts of the western world, the state reserves that right unto itself, even though at the time the ne’er-do-well shows up in your bedroom you’re on the scene and Constable Plod isn’t: He’s some miles distant, asleep in his bed, and with his answering machine on referring you to central dispatch God knows where.

  These days it’s standard to bemoan the “dependency culture” of state welfare, but Britain’s law-and-order “dependency culture” is even more enfeebling. The Conservatives’ big mistake between 1979 and 1997 was an almost willfully obtuse failure to understand that giving citizens more personal responsibility isn’t something that extends just to their income and consumer choices; it also applies to their communities and their policing arrangements. If you have one without the other, you end up with modern Britain: a materially prosperous society in which the sense of frustration and impotence is palpable, and you’re forced to live with a level of endless property crime most Americans would regard as unacceptable.

  We know Bill Clinton’s latest favorite statistic—that twelve “kids” a day die from gun violence. In reality, five-sixths of those 11.569 grade-school moppets are aged between fifteen and nineteen, and many of them have had the misfortune to become involved in gangs, convenience-store hold-ups, and drug deals, which, regrettably, have a tendency to go awry. If more crack deals passed off peacefully, that “child” death rate could be reduced by three-quarters. But away from those dark fringes of society, Americans live lives blessedly untouched by most forms of crime—at least when compared with supposedly more civilized countries like Britain. That’s something emotionally inclined gun-banners might consider, if only because in a gun-free America women and the elderly and gays and all manner of other fashionable victim groups will be bearing the brunt of a much higher proportion of violent crime than they do today. Ask Phil Collins or Ridley Scott or Germaine Greer.

  ARMS ARE FOR DINING

  The National Post, May 25, 2000

  GIVE THE NATIONAL RIFLE ASSOCIATION credit for audacity. At its annual convention last weekend it announced plans to build a theme restaurant in Times Square,” reported The New York Times yesterday. The NRA Sports Grille will feature “a wild game menu and fresh mineral waters from around the world.”

  The news that the NRA’s getting into the theme-restaurant business came as no surprise to my old friend Armand Croissant, New York’s top theme-restaurant consultant. “I’ve been working on it for months, darling!” he told me excitedly. “It was my idea to put the ‘e’ on the end of the ‘Grill.’ Like spelling caliber ‘calibre.’ Makes it more sophisticated. More European. Gourmet dining. Cordon bleu.”

  “Gordon blew what?” said his NRA liaison man Bud, skimming Guns & Ammo as he waited for Armand to finish ordering the flower arrangements. “Gordon blew away a couple of punks who wanted to shake him down for drug money?”

  “Cordon bleu,” sighed Armand. “Or, as I like to think of it, Carbine Bleu. It’s a whole new concept: Fine dining for gun nuts.”

  “A gun restaurant, Armand?” I said, frankly unpersuaded. “Planet Hollywood, the Hard Rock Cafe, that’s one thing. But surely this is a bit controversial at a time when politicians are calling for mandatory trigger locks.”

  “We have trigger lox,” he beamed. “Served on a poppyseed bagel with an avocado dip. But it’s not mandatory. It’s just one of many exciting menu options.” He suggested we wander over and take a look at the restaurant itself.

  But Bud raised his hand. “Hold it right there, boys. You know they won’t let you in if you’re not wearing an ammo belt.”

  “This is my favorite bit,” giggled Armand, as Bud fitted us out with a couple of stylish bandoliers from his couturier. As we strolled over, my old pal, one of New York’s shrewdest trend-spotters, explained his thinking. “The celebrity restaurants are all played out. The big growth area in theme eateries now is political lobby groups. I’ve just been pitching the idea of a restaurant to the National Organization of Women.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “Well, to be honest, they said, ‘Spend all day and night slaving over a hot stove? Typical bloody men. Try cooking it yourself, you sexist bastard.’ Then they hung up.”

  We were in Times Square now, and, as we entered the NRA Grille, a grisly sight confronted us. At the very first table, two couples lay sprawled in their chairs, their faces spattered with red, their shirts turning a dark, remorseless crimson. The men were screaming, the women wailing in agony.

  “Oh, my God!” I cried. “This is exactly what the gun-control groups are talking about!”

  “It’s their own fault,” said the waiter. “I warned them: Never shake a full ketchup bottle.” As the stricken diner
s were helped to the bathroom—or, as the NRA calls it, the powder room—Armand and I were shown to our banquette.

  “Hi, I’m Earl and I’ll be your shooter today. I mean, your server. Can I interest you in a beverage option?”

  Armand was in a generous mood, so he ordered a .22 magnum of champagne.

  “What’s your special today?” I asked.

  “It’s the Saturday Night Special.”

  “But it’s Wednesday lunchtime.”

  “Sorry, but that’s the special every day,” said Earl. “Oh, and just so you won’t be embarrassed, it’s our policy to have one standard tip.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “‘Always sleep with a firearm under your bed.’”

  “But we’re in a restaurant,” I pointed out.

  “In that case, always sleep with a firearm under your bed of lettuce.”

  As we waited for our beverages, Armand kept a close eye on his latest venture, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms’ new federal theme restaurant across the street. “It’s a sidewalk café called the Steakout!” he said. I looked out the window and, sure enough, behind a screen of protective shrubbery, the pavement was lined with attractive wrought-iron tables, underneath which several federal agents were lying on the ground staring directly at us while enjoying a rib eye with mashed potato.

  Armand had the gun rack of lamb. I ordered the sea bass in a red pepper sauce served on arugula. But apparently I’d misheard: it turned out to be sea bass in a red pepper sauce served on a Ruger. “You know this is rather good,” I told Armand, thinking I might review the place for The National Post. “Has the chef been recommended by any magazines?”

  “No, but several magazines have been recommended by the chef.” He snapped his fingers and Earl reappeared with a tray of assorted ammunition clips.