The Passing Pageant

I've had the chance to read so many good articles since I've been at home recuperating. Unfortunately, I have the attention span of a 4-year-old because of the meds and can hardly remember what I read. This makes it extremely difficult to comment intelligently on current events.

Anyway, for some reason (which I can't quite recall) I liked this article by Mark Steyn about the opening of Pandora's Box in the Middle East. Here's a bit:

In Causeries du Lundi, Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve recalls a Parisian dramatist watching the revolutionary mob rampaging through the street below and beaming: "See my pageant passing!" That's how opportunist Arabs and indulgent Europeans looked on the intifada and the terrorists and the schoolgirl suicide bombers: as a kind of uber-authentic piece of performance art with which to torment the Jews and the Americans. They never paused to ask themselves: Hey, what if it doesn't stop there?

Well, about 30 years too late, they're asking it now.