I don’t think the paper dropped this story, but I do think it had run its course… I think this is one of those stories that runs for a couple of days, then subsides.
Well, the reason he thinks this is one of those stories that runs for a couple of days is because he chose to run it only for a couple of days. Had it been something more consequential – like, say, fictitious stories about guards at Gitmo desecrating the Koran – he would have run it into the ground.
Why would a Minneapolis editor with a hot local story decline to cover it? Because the implications of that story – that those imams were deliberately probing the weaknesses of an airline system too craven to profile – is at odds with the orthodoxies of a free press edited by relativists.
When the Canadian Islamic Congress filed their multiple “human rights” complaints because a privately owned magazine had declined to let them hijack its content, cover and artwork, it quickly became clear that the broad mass of Canadian media were generally indifferent to the outrage. Had the CIC prevailed in their power grab, it would have reduced mainstream Canadian news publications to a maple-flavored variant of Pravda. However, as some leftie website put it, “Defending freedom of speech for jerks means defending jerks.” Well, in a very narrow sense. But, in a far larger one, not defending the jerks means not defending freedom of speech for yourself.
Consider a cringe-making TV appearance by my old boss at The Chicago Sun-Times, John Cruickshank. Newly ensconced as the big cheese at CBC News, John was appearing on his own network to explain the particular sensitivity of Canada’s national broadcaster on a certain topical subject. He posited a sophisticated equivalence between Muslim “extremists” and “extremists” who are “intolerant of any restrictions on speech rights”. “To equate violent terrorists with free speech activists,” pointed out Ezra Levant, “is grotesque.” But, as the head of CBC News sees it, we’re both just as “extreme” – on the one hand, people who threaten to (and actually do) kill you; and, on the other, people who point out there are fellows who want to kill you. A pox on both their extremist houses.
An alarming proportion of the Dominion’s “media workers” seemed relatively relaxed about playing the role of eunuchs to the Trudeaupian sultans, if the alternative involved re-examining their complacent assumptions. Even when the Canadian Association of Journalists roused itself to apply for intervenor status at the trial in Vancouver, not every member was happy about the move. An esteemed – okay, self-esteemed – Ottawa journalist wrote back to the executive committee:
Hello alclass="underline"
I would like to find out more from the CAJ executive about what we feel is at issue here, and what we plan to say before the tribunal. I am familiar with some of Steyn’s work in the past and have written about it. It was not the sort of material that I was able to defend on a professional basis. At the time I believe I referred to it as ‘obscene’.
It is one thing to say ‘I don’t agree with what you are saying, but I will fight to defend your right to say it’ and quite another to say we will tolerate as professional journalists the most unprofessional sort of journalism just because someone wrote it.
Oh, my. I only wish my work were more “obscene” and preferably state funded: you know, crucifixes floating in my urine, or pictures of naked kids – I’d have a lot more defenders.
It’s regrettable how few expensively educated members of the west’s elites understand principle, but it’s even sadder how few can even grasp basic self-interest. Were the Canadian Islamic Congress to get both the statutory penalty (the cease-and-desist order) and the remedy they applied for (a court-ordered right of reply), that would be a landmark legal precedent in advancing state regulation of the editorial content of Canada’s mainstream magazines and newspapers. That’s what you’re defending, Obscenity Boy. I’ll be long gone, a fading memory in the dimmest recesses of a few lonely right-wing madmen. But the BCHRT and the OHRC and the NSHRC and the CHRC and all the rest have made it plain that what you do is subject to their whims and the ambition of whatever fashionable lobby groups take their fancy. You’ll be the poodle on their leash, not me.
A while back, I had lunch with Ken Whyte, my publisher at Maclean’s, and mentioned en passant that one consequence of a year’s worth of thought-police investigations was that it was no longer possible to avoid the painful truth that, for a profession that congratulates itself incessantly on its courage, bravery, fearlessness, etc (far more than, say, firefighters do) and hands out awards all year long for “speaking truth to power”, most journalists are total pussies happy to suck up to state power as long as it’s in PC clothing. A “journalism professor” boldly campaigning for the right of government bureaucrats to censor writers, would seem to be an almost parodic example of the phenomenon. Yet that was the role in which John Miller, a J-school ethics bore, chose to cast himself. Professor Miller attempted to intervene in the British Columbia trial on the side of the censors. Even after he was denied standing, he persisted in ever more obtuse attacks on me. Of course, even in Canada few journalists are willing to come out in favor of direct censorship, so instead they choose to defend the thought police as a kind of copy-editor of last resort: My writing, declared Professor Miller, was riddled with errors and thus unworthy of the protections accorded to “professional” journalism. I stand by the accuracy of my columns – although, given that truth is no defense at the “human rights” commissions, that’s neither here nor there. But when the professor attempted to point out an actual example of factual inaccuracy he ran into a wee spot of bother. He ended up pinning an awful lot of his prestige on a nuttily obsessive determination to fact-check a joke. I thought Professor Miller’s charges were so loopy they made a useful “case study”, which begins on the page opposite. It illustrates the western media’s commitment to the PC pieties: If it’s a choice between illusions and the facts, they’ll stick with the illusions, even as they’re consumed by them.
THE SHAGGED SHEEP
Precepts of ejaculation
OF ALL THE flagrantly Islamophobic Steyn material Elmo’s Sock Puppets introduced in evidence, the allegation that most tickled my critics’ fancy was this one, from page ten of the Canadian Islamic Congress dossier:
The representation that a large number of Muslims are ‘sheep-shaggers’.
Oh, my. Let’s examine this accusation in some detail. What follows is long, but it does have underage sex and bestiality in it. So enjoy!
The so-called “representation” arose from the following passage in my review of Oriana Fallaci’s final book, The Force Of Reason:
Signora Fallaci then moves on to the livelier examples of contemporary Islam – for example, Ayatollah Khomeini’s ‘Blue Book’ and its helpful advice on romantic matters: ‘If a man marries a minor who has reached the age of nine and if during the defloration he immediately breaks the hymen, he cannot enjoy her any longer.’ I’ll say. I know it always ruins my evening. Also: ‘A man who has had sexual relations with an animal, such as a sheep, may not eat its meat. He would commit sin.’ Indeed. A quiet cigarette afterwards as you listen to your favourite Johnny Mathis LP and then a promise to call her next week and swing by the pasture is by far the best way. It may also be a sin to roast your nine-year-old wife, but the Ayatollah’s not clear on that.