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'Beheading Sodomites' Is Funny At The Wall Street Journal

0 61 320 Jer BigtopMark Steyn reviewed a book about a Broadway songwriter for the Wall Street Journal, and there was just no way for the National Review contributor to write on that topic without somehow dragging Islamic militants into the whole thing, so he wrote this hackneyed lede about how this one Muslim Brotherhood founder hated on Broadway showtunes in like the 1940s or whatever. To return to the book from the topic of Muslims Hating Our Precious Freedoms, Steyn wrote probably the worst transition in the history of literary criticism, in any language, on any planet, ever. It is, at best, a terrible joke puking its own awfulness all over women, gays, Israelis and anyone who remembers exactly how the Wall Street Journal lost a reporter in Pakistan eight years ago. It reads as follows:

I'm a reasonable chap, and I'd be willing to meet the Islamists halfway on a lot of the peripheral stuff like burqas for women, nuking the Zionists, beheading the sodomites and whatnot. But you'll have to pry "Baby, It's Cold Outside" from my cold dead hands and my dancing naked legs. A world without Frank Loesser and "Baby, It's Cold Outside" would be very cold indeed.

Fuller context:

Frank Loesser isn't as famous a songwriter as Irving Berlin or Cole Porter, but, unlike them, he's apparently responsible for this whole clash-of- civilizations thing. A few decades back, a young middle-class Egyptian spending some time in the U.S. had the misfortune to be invited to a dance one weekend and was horrified at what he witnessed:

"The room convulsed with the feverish music from the gramophone. Dancing naked legs filled the hall, arms draped around the waists, chests met chests, lips met lips . . ."

Where was this den of debauchery? Studio 54 in the 1970s? Haight-Ashbury in the summer of love? No, the throbbing pulsating sewer of sin was Greeley, Colo., in 1949. As it happens, Greeley, Colo., in 1949 was a dry town. The dance was a church social. And the feverish music was "Baby, It's Cold Outside," written by Frank Loesser and sung by Esther Williams and Ricardo Montalban in the film "Neptune's Daughter." Revolted by the experience, Sayyid Qutb decided that America (and modernity in general) was an abomination, returned to Egypt, became the leading intellectual muscle in the Muslim Brotherhood, and set off a chain that led from Qutb to Zawahiri to bin Laden to the Hindu Kush to the Balkans to 9/11.

I'm a reasonable chap, and I'd be willing to meet the Islamists halfway on a lot of the peripheral stuff like burqas for women, nuking the Zionists, beheading the sodomites and whatnot. But you'll have to pry "Baby, It's Cold Outside" from my cold dead hands and my dancing naked legs. A world without Frank Loesser and "Baby, It's Cold Outside" would be very cold indeed.

Loesser isn't a household name, but he wrote household songs ("Two Sleepy People," "Heart and Soul") and household shows ("Guys and Dolls," "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying"). Had he enjoyed a typical American life-span....

[Wall Street Journal, Mark Steyn]

9:26 PM on Tue Feb 5 2008
By Ryan Tate
3,604 views
27 comments

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