{"id":2933,"date":"2005-03-22T12:01:00","date_gmt":"2005-03-22T12:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/03\/steyn-on-sondheim\/"},"modified":"2005-03-22T12:01:00","modified_gmt":"2005-03-22T12:01:00","slug":"steyn-on-sondheim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/03\/steyn-on-sondheim.html","title":{"rendered":"Steyn on Sondheim"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><span style=\"font-family:georgia\">Political punditry aside, one of the reasons I like Mark Steyn so much is that he is one of the funnier and more entertaining columnists around, and, unusually for a right-wing kind of guy, his sense of humour is deeply influenced by his love of show tunes. P.J. O\u2019Rourke may be up-to-date on the latest pop-culture fads, and Dennis Miller may love to flaunt his encyclopedic knowledge of every trivial thing under the sun, but Steyn has a uniquely passionate and historically-engaged awareness of his chosen artform, so when he drops a line from a Broadway musical into one of his political pieces, he\u2019s not (just) being glib \u2014 he is speaking a vocabulary that he knows and loves; he is speaking about subjects that matter to him in a vocabulary that matters to him. (Y\u2019know, kind of like how I bring movies into every conversation.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:georgia\">All that intro just to say that today, in honour of Stephen Sondheim\u2019s 75th birthday, Steyn has posted an <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.steynonline.com\/index2.cfm?edit_id=67\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">excerpt<\/a><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"> from his book <\/span><i><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/0415922879\/petertchatta\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Broadway Babies Say Goodnight<\/a><\/i><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"> on Sondheim\u2019s unusual career path, from the major artistic and commercial successes of <\/span><i>West Side Story<\/i><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"> and <\/span><i>Gypsy<\/i><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"> to the comparative, and almost intentional, flops of <\/span><i>Assassins<\/i><span style=\"font-family:georgia\"> and <\/span><i>Passion<\/i><span style=\"font-family:georgia\">.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-family:georgia\">My favorite quote: \u201c\u2018Art Isn\u2019t Easy\u2019? Oh, yes, it is, compared with craft.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Political punditry aside, one of the reasons I like Mark Steyn so much is that he is one of the funnier and more entertaining columnists around, and, unusually for a right-wing kind of guy, his sense of humour is deeply influenced by his love of show tunes. P.J. O\u2019Rourke may be up-to-date on the latest [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Steyn on Sondheim<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Political punditry aside, one of the reasons I like Mark Steyn so much is that he is one of the funnier and more entertaining columnists around, and,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/03\/steyn-on-sondheim.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Steyn on Sondheim\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Political punditry aside, one of the reasons I like Mark Steyn so much is that he is one of the funnier and more entertaining columnists around, and,\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2005\/03\/steyn-on-sondheim.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2005-03-22T12:01:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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