Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn
Born	(1959-12-08) December 8, 1959 Toronto , Canada
Occupation(s)	author, columnist, political commentator, music critic
Website	http://www.steynonline.com

Mark Steyn, born in Canada in 1959, writes on politics, arts and culture. He is a self-described conservative polemicist whose work is published in newspapers, magazines and websites. He appears regularly on politically conservative radio shows such as those of Rush Limbaugh and Hugh Hewitt and has authored five books, including America Alone, a New York Times bestseller. Steyn, a Canadian citizen, now resides mainly in New Hampshire in the United States. He is married with three children.

Career

According to Simon Mann in the Australian newspaper The Age, Steyn left school at 16 and spent early days in Britain. After working as a disc-jockey, he began writing as an arts critic in London at newly established The Independent. He became film critic for The Spectator in 1992. After writing predominantly about the arts, Steyn embraced political commentary and moved to The Daily Telegraph, a conservative London broadsheet.

Since then, Steyn has written for a wide range of publications, including the Jerusalem Post, The Orange County Register, the Chicago Sun-Times, the National Review, The New York Sun, The Australian, Macleans and formerly for the Irish Times, the National Post and The Atlantic Monthly. He also wrote columns for the Western Standard until that magazine ended its hardcopy edition in October 2007. Steyn writes theatre reviews for the New Criterion.

Steyn's www.steynonline.com website provides access to many of his columns and other published work and offers for sale books, t-shirts, mugs and other merchandise. Blog Central at macleans.ca published entries titled "Mark Steyn covers the Conrad Black trial from opening arguments to sentencing." He occasionally posts to National Review Online's group blog, The Corner, along with other conservative commentators.

Steyn's books include, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (a history of the musical theatre) and America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It a New York Times bestseller. He has also published two collections of his columns, and a collection of his celebrity obituaries and profiles from The Atlantic. (See Bibliography below.)

Writing Style

Steyn's writing draws supporters and detractors for content but his distinctive expression is generally admired. Steyn’s style has been described as “bring[ing] to public affairs the dark comedy developed in the Theatre of the Absurd”. He is eccentric and staunchly opinionated. According to Simon Mann, Steyn's writing “gives succour to the maxim the pen is mightier than the sword, though he is not averse to employing the former to advocate use of the latter.” Steyn's writings demonstrate an easy familiarity with past and current pop-cultural phenomena such as South Park.

Steyn has been noted for using words to offend political correctness. In 2001, he wrote in The Spectator, “...it's one thing to let the Japs build your car and the Chinks supply your cuddly toys....”. In another article widely published in 2002, Steyn referred to people of India as wogs and while guest hosting The Rush Limbaugh Show, he spoke about "...the gooks in Vietnam."

Susan Catto in Time Magazine noted the writer's interest in controvery, "Instead of shying away from the appearance of conflict, Steyn positively revels in it." Canadian journalist Steve Burgess wrote in The Tyee that "Steyn wields his rhetorical rapier with genuine skill." Burgess also commented that national disasters tended to cause Steyn "...to display his inner wingnut."

James Wolcott of Vanity Fair says that he asks himself, "...how can one man be so wrong" when he (Wolcott) reads "...the latest dimestore prophesy from neocon jester Mark Steyn, whose occult powers of clairvoyance never fail to fail him." Andrew Sullivan of The Atlantic wrote that Steyn was, "...long on colorful rhetoric but short on dry facts." Ironically, Sullivan did not supply examples of inaccuracies in Mr. Steyn's writings to back his statement up. British journalist Johann Hari, writing in the New Statesman stated, "Steyn's prose has a jangling musicality; like Ann Coulter, he writes in a demonic demotic that makes you chuckle even as you retch. But this cannot hide the gaping holes of logic and fact in his argument."

Positions

Environmentalism

Steyn frequently mocks environmentalists, particularly those he regards as "global warming alarmists". He argues that global warming is not authentically “global”, as it is not universally observed. In an article titled "Eco-chondriacs crank up the hysteria", he states, “In the Antarctic, the small Palmer peninsula has got a little warmer but the main continent is colder. Up north, the western Arctic's a little warmer but the eastern Arctic's colder.”

Media

Steyn wrote a column in May 2004 in which he states that The Daily Mirror and the Boston Globe published false pictures of British and American soldiers abusing Iraqis because editors were encouraging anti-Bush sentiments. Steyn argues that media only wanted to show images to westerners "that will shame and demoralize them." Boston Phoenix media critic Dan Kennedy said that Steyn's column was an effort to "rally the spirits of his fellow warmongers: by demonizing anyone who dared to criticize the war."

In a July, 2005 column for National Review, Steyn amplified his dislike for the media. He criticized Andrew Jaspan, the editor of the Australian newspaper, The Age. Jaspan was offended by Douglas Wood, an Australian kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq, who after his rescue referred to his captors as "arseholes". Jaspan claimed that “the issue is really largely, speaking as I understand it, he was treated well there. He says he was fed every day, and as such to turn around and use that kind of language I think is just insensitive.” Steyn responded in his column by arguing that insensitivity toward captors is not the most important, and that it was Jaspan, not Wood, who suffered from Stockholm Syndrome. He said further, “A blindfolded Mr. Wood had to listen to his captors murder two of his colleagues a few inches away, but how crude and boorish would one have to be to hold that against one’s hosts?”

In a January 2007 column in the Chicago Sun-Times, Steyn wrote that Barack Obama was a Muslim, “...raised in an Indonesian madrassah by radical imams.” He added, “The madrassah stuff was supposedly leaked to Insight Magazine…by Hillary Rodham Clinton’s team.” Two days later, Lynn Sweet of the Sun-Times corrected Steyn regarding what she called the smear on Obama and the attack on Clinton. She wrote, “And there is no evidence whatsoever that Clinton's campaign had anything to do with spreading the damaging rumor that Obama hid a Muslim background.” Sweet noted the visit by CNN's John Vause to the state run elementary school that Obama attended from 1969 to 1971.

Steyn has been a vocal critic of American journalism and the so-called j-school culture ostensibly entrenched in the journalism departments of many American universities, describing American newspapers as "the dullest in the world", and dismissing the idea of journalism as a profession to be studied. "When I started out in journalism, in Fleet Street, everybody I knew was only doing journalism because their lives had gone horribly wrong...and that's what happened to me. I needed some money in a hurry and thought I'd do journalism for a few weeks until something better came along, and it never did so now I'm stuck with it."

Conrad Black trial

Steyn wrote articles and maintained a blog for Maclean's covering the 2007 Conrad Black fraud trial in Chicago. Questions were raised by voices in the media over the objectivity of Steyn's coverage , for example Andrew Clark of The Guardian referring to Steyn as one of Black’s "loyal supporters", quoted from Steyn’s Blog, “If it is bad news, I'm sorry I won't be there to support my old boss…” . Suanne Kelman, writing in the Literary Review of Canada, said the leader of Black's media cheering section at his Chicago trial was "above all Maclean’s Mark Steyn, in both the magazine and his logorrheic blog." Kelman stated that Steyn began coverage with the view that Black's trial was a "cruel farce". Mark Steyn has strongly denied unfair bias in his reporting.

Multiculturalism

Steyn has commented on divisions between the United States and Europe, as well as divisions between the Western world and the Islamic World. He frequently criticizes the tolerance of what he deems to be "Islamic cultural intolerance" in the name of multiculturalism. Steyn has written that multiculturalism is "fundamentally a fraud," and he argues that it "was subliminally accepted on that basis. Most adherents to the idea that all cultures are equal don't want to live in anything but an advanced Western society."

Steyn again criticized multiculturalism in an article in Jewish World Review. In it, he argues that multiculturalism benefits only Western civilization, which he calls "white-bread cultures", but Muslim ghettos are left with a combination of the worst attributes of Muslim and Western culture: "Tattoed, pierced Pakistani skinhead gangs swaggering down the streets of Northern England are as much a product of multiculturalism as the turban-wearing Sikh Mountie in the vice-regal escort at Rideau Hall." Steyn further explains his position by reiterating that he considers himself not a racist, but a culturist, who prefers the culture of the West to Arab culture. He states that a majority of the world also recognizes this preference, and he argues that the massive immigration of Muslims into Western countries is evidence to this.

Iraq

Steyn was an early proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2007 he reiterated his support while attacking Democrat John Murtha, stating that his plan for military action in Iraq was designed “to deny the president the possibility of victory while making sure Democrats don't have to share the blame for the defeat. … [Murtha] doesn't support them in the mission, but he'd like them to continue failing at it for a couple more years”.

Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald called Steyn a "faux warrior" who is “one of the most extremist warmongers in our country”, adding that Steyn has been “as fundamentally wrong as one can be about virtually every issue he has touched.”

Steyn made the following assertions following the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. Two weeks after military operations began, he wrote, “The war is over. … it's the Anglo-Aussie-American side who are the geniuses. Rumsfeld's view …has been vindicated…” In 2004, he wrote, “Last year I thought the Americans won an amazing military victory in Iraq;” and, "I don't think it's possible for anyone who looks at Iraq honestly to see it as anything other than a success story."

In 2005, defending his analyses of Iraq, Steyn stated, “I got a lot of things wrong these last three years, but ….. I got the big stuff right.”

For the fifth year of the Iraq War, Steyn reported, "To the Slow-Bleed Democrats, it's the Republicans' war. To an increasing number of what my radio pal Hugh Hewitt calls the White-Flag Republicans, it's Bush's war. To everyone else on the planet, it's America's war. And it will be America's defeat."

Human rights complaints in Canada against Steyn's writings

Main article: Canadian Islamic Congress human rights complaint against Maclean's Magazine

In December 2007, complaints were filed against Maclean's after the Canadian weekly news magazine published a cover article by Steyn, "The Future Belongs to Islam". A complaint to the Ontario Human Rights Commission was made by Osgoode Law School students associated with the Canadian Islamic Congress. Further complaints to the British Columbian and federal Human Rights Commissions were lodged by Mohamed Elmasry and Naiyer Habib of the Canadian Islamic Congress. The complaints claimed that Maclean's published a series of nineteen articles (eight by Steyn; seven by Barbara Amiel) with characteristics that promoted Islamophobia and that Maclean's simultaneously refused to allow representative Muslim organizations and voices to rebut the anti-Muslim and Islamophobic content of its articles, particularly Steyn's “The Future belongs to Islam”. Steyn reported on 1st March 2008 that the Ontario Human Rights Commission had declined to hear the suit against Maclean's,, citing a lack of jurisdiction. In Ontario, the Human Rights Code specifically prohibits the Commission from “interfer[ing] with the freedom of expression of opinion". In April, 2008, the Ontario Human Rights Commission, citing its "broader mandate to promote and advance respect for human rights in Ontario, forward the dignity and worth of every Ontarian and take steps to alleviate tension and conflict in the community, including by speaking out on events that are inconsistent with the spirit of the Code", issued a public statement that stated that while it lacked the jurisdiction to hear the complaint, it had "serious concerns" about the content of a number of articles in the magazine and other media outlets, the type of which contributed to "Islamophobia and promoting societal intolerance towards Muslim, Arab and South Asian Canadians".. The statement said the Maclean's article was an example of "an unwillingness to consider accommodating some of (the) religious beliefs and practices (of Muslims)". It stated the article, and others like it, portrayed "Muslims as all sharing the same negative characteristics, including being a threat to ‘the West’", the effect of which was to further perpetuate and promote "prejudice towards Muslims and others." As evidence of this, the Commission cited an unnamed "“blog” discussion concerning the article that was brought to the attention of the Commission which, among many things, called for the mass killing, deportation or conversion of Muslim Canadians." The Ontario Human Rights Commission was strongly critical of Maclean's for choosing to publish the material and stated that more discussion on the matter was necessary. In turn, the Commission was heavily criticized by Steyn and an array of others such as the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's Rex Murphy for issuing what was in effect a finding of guilt without jurisdiction or the hearing of evidence. The federal and British Columbia human rights complaints were still unresolved as of May 2008.

Award

Mark Steyn was awarded the 2006 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism [12]. The annual award recognizes the work of a columnist, editorialist or writer whose work defends and expresses admiration of the United States and its democratic institutions. Steyn's article "Be Glad the Flag Is Worth Burning" was nominated for the award. The following is an extract: "One of the big lessons of these last four years is that many, many beneficiaries of Western civilization loathe that civilization, and the media are generally inclined to blur the extent of that loathing"[13]. Roger Ailes of Fox News presented the prize, which included a $20,000 check from an endowment founded by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.

Bibliography

• The Story of Miss Saigon (by Edward Behr and Steyn; 1991, ISBN 1-55970-124-2)
• Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (1997, ISBN 0-415-92286-0)
• The Face of the Tiger (2002, ISBN 0-9731570-0-3; collected columns)
• Mark Steyn From Head To Toe: An Anatomical Anthology (2004, ISBN 0-9731570-2-X; collected columns)
• America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (2006, ISBN 0-89526-078-6)
• Mark Steyn's Passing Parade (2006, ISBN 0-9731570-1-1; collected obituaries)

External links

• Steyn Online
• Quotable Barbs
• BookBites - Quotes from America Alone
• C-SPAN Interviews with Mark Steyn
• "Caught in the cross-fire", a column by Steyn in The Washington Times of 18 May 2004
• "The man who likes to poke the world in the eye", Linda Frum, National Post, October 14, 2006
• Audio: Mark Steyn talks about his book, America Alone on "Shire Network News" (2 parts) January 2007
  • Podcast lets Mark Steyn Predict the End of the World 21 January 2007
  • Podcast lets Mark Steyn Predict the fall of Britain 28 January 2007
• Audio: Mark Steyn talks about the Canadian Human Rights complaints against him, on "Shire Network News" (2 parts) February 2008
  • Podcast reveals smiley-face fascism in Canada 04 February 2008
  • Podcast asks who will rid us of this turbulent priest? 11 February 2008
• Column where Steyn calls the police officer who arrested Senator Craig "creepy."