Mark Steyn Totally Explained

Everything about Mark Steyn totally explained

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 right wing 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. In 1992, he became film critic for The Spectator. After writing predominantly about the arts, he 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 and the National Post. He also wrote columns for the Western Standard until that magazine ended its hardcopy edition in October 2007. . Steyn also writes theatre reviews for the New Criterion and obituaries for the Atlantic Monthly Steyn's www.steynonline.com website

collates links to his columns and occasionally publishes material written exclusively for the website. Blog Central at macleans.ca

shows 70 pages of entries titled "Mark Steyn covers the Conrad Black trial from opening arguments to sentencing." He does occasionally post to National Review Online's group blog, The Corner, along with other conservative commentators.
In February 2006, Steyn ceased to write for the Spectator or the Daily Telegraph. In response to a letter on his website on 2nd March 2006, Steyn hinted at the reasons for his departure. "The Telegraph Group and I've been unable to reach agreement on a new contract, and what’s more they seem to be having great difficulty ponying up the final payment on my last contract. A sad end to a long and for the most part happy relationship.".
Steyn's books include, Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (a history of the musical theatre) and 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 isn't 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.
Vanity Fair's James Wolcott 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 criticized Steyn's comment that the majority of Iraq is "no different from the peaceful shires of the United Kingdom." Sullivan added that Steyn was, "...long on colorful rhetoric but short on dry facts." 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 can't hide the gaping holes of logic and fact in his argument."

Political Positions

Conservatism

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”.
Steyn frequently mocks environmentalists, particularly those he regards as "global warming alarmists". He argues that global warming isn't authentically “global”, as it isn't 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 discussing media bias and low journalistic standards, attributing this to a political agenda, and double standards in relation to the conflict in Iraq. He attacks The Daily Mirror, “a raucous Fleet Street tabloid”, for publishing false pictures of British and American soldiers committing crimes against Iraqi prisoners and women. Further in the article, Steyn claims the Mirror published the pictures because it wanted to further anti-Bush sentiments. He argues that “If you want to see what the Islamists did to Nick Berg or Daniel Pearl or to those guys in Fallujah or even to the victims of September 11, you'll have to ferret it out on the Internet. The media aren't interested in showing you images that might rouse the American people to righteous anger, only images that will shame and demoralize them".
In a July, 2005 column for National Review, Steyn exemplified 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 isn't 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?”
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."

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

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's 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'll be America's defeat."

Human rights complaints in Canada against Steyn's writings

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.

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's 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.

Award

Mark Steyn was awarded the 2006 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism (External Link

). 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"(External Link

). 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)
(2006, ISBN 0-89526-078-6)
Mark Steyn's Passing Parade (2006, ISBN 0-9731570-1-1; collected obituaries)

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