It's Friday, which means I'll be hosting another edition of our Clubland Q&A live around the planet. The action begins at 3pm North American Eastern/8pm Greenwich Mean Time. We'll try to pin down the rest of the time zones below, but do, as they say, check local listings.
As always, we'll take questions from Mark Steyn Club members across the globe on a wide range of issues. Whether or not you're a Steyn Clubber you can listen to our Clubland Q&A live as it happens wherever you chance to be on this turbulent earth: membership is required only to ask a question. We love to hear from brand new members, and we are delighted to say that this week we have been deluged by GB News viewers who've chosen to follow The Mark Steyn Show to its new home. So if you've joined the Club in recent days - or re-joined (as several lapsed members have), either for a full year or a see-how-it-goes experimental quarter, do shoot me a head-scratcher for today's Q&A, and I will do my best to get to it.
This was the week in which I departed GB News, as I discussed in Mark's Mailbox. Somewhat to my surprise, on Monday that rather under-nourished production – a haggard guy recuperating from his heart attacks blathering to himself on a fake library set the morons of the London media are stupid enough to mistake for his actual house... somewhat to my surprise, on Monday Mark's Mailbox drew a bigger audience than GB News's Number One rated show that day (Farage). True, it wasn't a huge victory margin (we pipped Nige by ten thousand viewers or thereabouts), but even so. I'm thankful to everyone who swung by - and then re-swung by for Wednesday's inaugural post-cardiac show with Alexandra, Eva and Leilani, for whose friendship these last difficult weeks I am so grateful.
I was also immensely touched by the reaction of the audience at The Conservative Woman's conference yesterday in London. It was a day to honour the victims of these hideous pseudo-vaccines and the attendant state propaganda. I would love to have been there, but, from this distance, I feel faintly unworthy of the applause that greeted my name:
The Mark Steyn Show will return to the topic of the vaccine-injured in the days ahead.
On today's Q&A I'm happy to take questions on the media and on the woeful state of free speech around the west – including in America, where James O'Keefe appears to have fallen to a similar fate as my own, as Project Veritas undergoes its own variant of a GBNews-esque Pauline conversion. I'm also interested to hear your thoughts on those behind these sudden career-detonating interventions (whether Big Pharma or their state enforcers) and the now routine demonisation of those who try to resist: In Britain, the MP Andrew Bridgen spoke out against the vaccines, and within days was expelled from the Tory Party for "anti-Semitism". Six days ago, my friend Neil Oliver spoke out against "one-world government", and whaddaya know? He's now an "anti-Semite".
Meanwhile, the ructions from my departure from GB News rumble on. The Spectator reports:
The TV shock jock has made a name for himself with his diatribes about the Covid vaccine.
Steady on. I thought I'd "made a name for" myself writing for the Speccie for a decade-and-a-half, but apparently now I'm a mere "shock jock". Nevertheless, the comments are worth reading, and offer a range of opinions. Moira Girvan, for one, is glad to see the back of me:
As much as I like GB News I thought Steyn really pushed it too far at times. With the censors (Ofcom) breathing down your neck and advertisers already reluctant to appear on the channel I'm surprise this has happened. But was he really ill or was it a ruse to get rid of him?
Ms Girvan thinks I'm faking my heart attacks - but I'm the conspiracy theorist. Gotcha. As a fellow Speccie reader responds:
Yes. He faked two heart attacks to collaborate with GB News so that they could ditch him. It all makes sense now.
Indeed. I'm glad The Spectator picked up this nugget:
'At one point yesterday GB News was down to 700 viewers. As Mark observed, it would be more cost-effective to invite them all round to the car park at Watford Gap'.
Their CEO, Angelos Frangopoulos, has announced that GB News will be replacing The Mark Steyn Show with The Jacob Rees-Mogadon Show. Mr Rees-Mogadon was formerly Lord President of the Privy Council and thus a key player in delivering for the British people such "Conservative" accomplishments as "Net Zero" energy policy, the highest tax burden since the 1940s, a thousand-per-week excess deaths in England and Wales all year long, and an ambulance service that requires two business days to get to you if you collapse in the street. But I'm sure he'll be able to explain why all that and more is just what you losers need.
By the way, I had to look up what Angelos Frangopoulos's actual name is because I'm so tickled by Laura Rosen Cohen's (entirely accidental) rendering of the poor chap as Angelos Flaccidopoulos:
I'm just sort of surprised that the big wigs and 'Ofcom's bitch' had never Googled what Mark and Ezra Levant did to Canada's 'hate speech' regime. As Mark has pointed out, Maclean's magazine stood firm with him for that free speech battle, which ended up obliterating the 'hate speech' laws, while GB News, with all the GB views blah blah, broadcasting from none other than the land OF MAGNA CARTA FOR GOODNESSSSSAKE, went limper than a wet noodle and more saggy than Justin Trudeau's wet toupee when it comes back from its fresh hair dye job. And its CEO, Angelos Flaccidopoulos, so so so so wants to hear your views, because PEOPLE'S CHANNEL, that his Twitter account is locked-upoulous. Ridonculous.
Fabulous.
Katie Hopkins' video on Mr Flaccidopoulos's channel went down well with viewers at SteynOnline. Miss Hopkins is back with some further thoughts:
A lot to follow-up on there. So see you back here at 3pm EST/8pm GMT. If you have no desire to join The Mark Steyn Club, no worries, as they say in Oz: We seek no unwilling members - and as always the show is free to listen to, so we hope you'll want to tune in.
As soon as we go live, members should log-in and submit their queries via our comment form below - and they'll be answered as-it-happens on the audio livestream that should magically appear just before we go on air.
~Notwithstanding the week's turbulence, we're getting back in the cruise biz - because OffComm can't get you in international waters (I think). No tests, no vax passports, but just a week of fun on the 2023 Mark Steyn Cruise with Alexandra, Eva, Leilani, Mr Snerdley, Michele Bachmann and other Steyn Show favorites. More information here – and we'll be introducing a brand new addition to the guest roster on The Mark Steyn Show next week.
~Clubland Q&A is a special production for The Mark Steyn Club. We're not paywalling off SteynOnline or any of that nonsense - and in fact this site now offers more free content than ever before in our twenty-year history. However, Club membership does confer a few benefits, including not only participation in our Q&As but also access to Tales for Our Time, our Sunday Poems and much more.
So make sure you join us live this afternoon at 3pm North American Eastern Time. That's 4pm in the Canadian Maritimes, half-past-four in Newfoundland - and, beyond the Americas, 8pm in London; 9pm in Paris; 10pm in Kiev; 11pm in Moscow; half-past-eleven in Tehran, for all you Newfoundlanders who move to Iran for the half-hour time zone; 1.45am in Kathmandu, for all you Iranians who move to Nepal to check out the quarter-hour time zone; 4am in Singapore, 7am in Sydney, 9am in Auckland, and Saturday lunchtime in His Majesty's Dominions across the Pacific.