Tag Archives: The Spectator

Kassam in The American Spectator: Here’s How Dry January Makes Me Better Than You

My American friends gawp at me with a delectable cocktail of envy, anger, and disappointment. For most of them, I’m their heaviest drinking friend. For January, I’m the bane of their existence.

This is my third “Dry January,” a very British phenomenon which began in 2013. If Christmas is the most wonderful time of the year, Dry January is surely the worst. But I want to evangelize about it for a moment.

The Wall Street Journal reports that I’m right (of course) to do it. Dry January participants lose an average of 4 lbs. over the month, and their liver function improves while their cancerous…ness declines. We get better sleep. We are mentally quicker on the draw, and by and large we are the most annoying people around all month. I enjoy that aspect, too.

Because, you see, from February 1 to December 31 I’m the guy who’s always texting my entire phonebook at around two in the afternoon.

“Drink? Trump Hotel? Morton’s? For goodness sakes, I’ll bring a bottle of whiskey to your house just let me sit on the stoop and you can talk to me from the window. Just spare me the indignity of drinking alone.” (No, there’s nothing “empowering” about doing that. It’s just sad, guys).

So now I get to exact my revenge for people being totally rubbish at drinking all year long.

Every sip you take, every drunk face you make… I’ll be mocking you.

READ MORE IN THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR

Kassam in The American Spectator: Burka Brawl; Britain Finally Standing Up to Islamism?

The Boris Johnson Burka row has raged much longer than it should have. It is almost becoming boring.

Yes, I’m getting tired of winning.

But like any semi-competent writer, I can still squeeze the last drops of juice from this festering orange of pseudo-shock and intimidatory outrage.

One of the recent protests against Boris — in his constituency and my hometown of Uxbridge — saw a Muslim fundamentalist, niqab-clad, also sporting a sign which read “#MyDressMyChoice.”

The hashtag was popularized in 2014 after a number of Kenyan women were brutally beaten for daring to wear short skirts.

The irony of this caption being co-opted by the adherents of the antithetical position to the victims of abuse has clearly been lost on Britain’s Muslim fundamentalist community, who have engaged in a coordinated campaign of both threats, victimhood, outrage, blasphemy enforcement, and political leverage wielding.

The same gaslighting approach as those predominantly male abusers of Kenyan women, and of other women in Iran, to give another example, who cruise around in public looking for other women to shame and attack for their failure to cover up.

In truth, the reason Britain’s Boris burka saga has continued on so long (apart from the alliterative possibilities that mean tabloid editors don’t want it to die) is that everyone — right, left, center, up, down, and all over the political spectrum — realizes this is a litmus test for Britain.

READ THE REST AT THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR