Current Reading

Right now, I'm reading a book called The Face of the Tiger by Mark Steyn. Steyn's my favorite current columnist, the George Orwell of our times. His insight is amazing, and he can pick up on significant trends and details from any news item, and use them to highlight his brilliant opinions (as you can tell, I'm a fan!). Here's what he has to say about the "massacre" in Jenin (from May 2002):

"The Isreali govermnet's latest figures for Jenin put the death toll of Palestinians at 52. The Palestinians themselves put the death toll at - wait for it - 56.

That's right. 56. There are no missing zeroes on the end. The only missing zeroes are those gullible British hacks who swallowed that line about hundreds of dead civilians but have fallen mysteriously silent as the figures have been revised downward... Unlike those leathery flak-jacketed foreign correspondents, I'm no expert, but, just as a matter of intersest, is a discrepancy of four enough to qualify as a 'massacre'? 23 Israeli soldiers died at Jenin, so the comparative death tolls sounds less like a 'massacre' and more like a - what's the word? - 'battle'."

The Face of the Tiger is a collection of Steyn's awesome essays from Sept. 11, 2001 to Sept. 11, 2002, and it's filled with many such biting observations. I find myself having to suppress the urge to laugh out loud while I'm reading this book on the subway. Check out Mark's website, and a few of his columns from The Spectator, The Daily Telegraph, National Review and the Chicago Sun-Times. He's just brilliant!