Rare indeed is the writer. . .

. . .who can hold my interest from beginning to end in a theater review. Well, that rarity is Mark Steyn, and he does it in a review of not one, but two productions in juxtaposition.

"If Twelve Angry Men is a civics lesson, Nine Parts of Desire is a lesson in a country without civics. In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, there are no citizens, and thus no obligations of citizenship, and certainly no rights. You exist only at the pleasure of your rulers. One woman, Layal, paints a watercolor of a dead friend, who made the mistake of telling another that she’d been raped by Saddam’s son Uday. “They stripped her, covered her in honey and watched his Dobermans eat her,” Layal explains."

Mark has a gift (to name one) that allows him to flawlessly distill the differences between red and blue America, and apply the elements to a seemingly limitless array of cultural phenomena.

Hat tip, Tino for the heads-up.