REMEMBERING ORIANNA FALLACI,
as if we could forget . . .
Steyn on People
Wednesday, 14 September 2011

"...September 15th marks the fifth anniversary of the death of Oriana Fallaci. She was a fearless woman and a beautiful writer - and vice-versa, come to that. I disagreed with her on any number of things, but I miss her enormously, and I cannot read a sentence of hers without reflecting on the absurdity of having to defend her work to obtuse, talentless hacks. This is what I wrote about her in The Atlantic Monthly:

“You go fuck yourself,” said Oriana Fallaci to no one in particular in a recent New Yorker profile. “I say what I want.”

And she did. Latterly, she said what she wanted about Islam, on which subject most of us feel constrained to be more, ah, circumspect. And what she wanted to say to Islam boiled down pretty much to: go fuck yourself. She scorned Muslims for their habits of reproduction, of evacuation, of female genital mutilation. She developed obsessions both arcane – who really invented sherbet (the ancient Romans, not the “sons of Allah”) – and unhealthy, if not psychologically then certainly actuarially: what’s the deal with Mohammed’s nine-year old wife? who sodomized whom at Mehmet..."
SteynOnline - SHE SAID WHAT SHE THOUGHT