Steyn’s Way (If you're defined by your enemies then Mark Steyn is doing something right)

The Boston Phoenix ^ | June 18 - 24, 2004 | Dan Kennedy

[Bonaparte]

Can't wait to read Steyn's reply to this.

[NYCVirago]

Tucker Carlson, a commentator for CNN and, soon, PBS, who was recently attacked by Steyn as a "conservative cutie" who’s gone soft on the war, says of Steyn, "He’s kind of pompous. He’s obviously smart, he can be quite witty. I mean, I agree with a lot of what he writes. But the problem with being a columnist for too long is that a) you tend to repeat yourself and b) you tend to forget that you need to marshal facts to support your opinions."

Tough talk from Bow Tie Carlson, considering his great contribution to conservative talk has been talking about having sexual fantasies about Hillary Clinton!

[Watery Tart]

"I'm up against a REAL writer here!

Gotta slap something down on paper!

I can write any evil, unsubstantiated garbage I want,
but I've got a DEADLINE!

C'mon, man, think! THINK!

If only I wasn't so JEALOUS of the evil Steyn!

Curses!

[zoyd]

Oooohhkay... this Kennedy guy has some serious blinders on. I've been sitting here, thinking about how long it might take me to do a full examination of the biases in this guy's logic, and it would be a long time. But let's just examine this little gem from the article:

"Leaving aside the not-unreasonable notion that organizers of Diversity Week may have believed the kids were getting quite enough of homosexuality-is-a-sin at home and in church,"

Biases on display here. First, it's a 'not-unreasonable notion' that trying to force a particular view of religion on captive children is acceptable, since religious kids must be saved from the evil teachings of their parents. Kennedy wants to save your kids from your religious beliefs by siding with an obviously political gay-themed Diversity Week. As if you dumb religious parents need to have Dan Kennedy enlighten you as to how you NEED to live. But let's move on...

"Steyn omitted crucial facts: Hansen’s family enlisted the aid of the right-wing Thomas More Law Center; a federal judge ruled against the school system; and Ann Arbor officials responded by canceling Diversity Week. "

Gee, Dan, if Diversity Week was such a great idea, and a 'not-unreasonable notion' that kids were getting bad messages from their religious parents, why is it that a federal judge ruled against the school system, and that Ann Arbor officials responded by cancelling Diversity Week?

This guy is an odd bird. There's fodder in this piece for hours and hours of argument-ripping fun, but he's just not worth it.

[Brian Allen]

Thank you for posting this piece.

Poor dan kennedy -- and the rest of the envy-motivated hatred-engined and rage-driven pathologically-hesperophobic, parasitical sufferers of the Liberal Psychosis -- that their froth-and-foam-flecked stream-of-consciousness vomitus so efficaciously exposes the putrid black holes that double for their souls.

And thank God for the depth of intellectual resources, awe-inspiring creative genius, output and generosity of the world's Bill Buckleys, Bob Tyrells, Mark Steyns, Ann Coulters, others on the side of Right -- and for [Even] the Sean Hannitys and Mr Limbaughs that -- after every intelligent American is spiritually, morally and intellectually reassured, nurtured and inspired by their output -- and his loins girded to fight another day -- there is left-over energy to feed the ludicrous left's parasitites.

And to give dan kennedy and al[fredo] franken[stein] -- and the loony left's hundreds of other second-handers something to react to.

BUMPping

[Tolik]

Hah! Dan Kennedy just painted a large target on himself. Steyn will eat this poor xxx for lunch. Not that I am sorry for him.

[FastCoyote]

My my my, so many words of green envy. Surely no other reason to obsess over one columnist.

"[Will, Gigot, Brooks, et.al.] they would never sully their reputations by actually taking part. "

That is the problem, the plantation Republicans have spent years hiding their lazy asses down in the cotton field without taking any heat from Massah. That's why I really dislike Will, he has stayed safe.

[AmishDude]

Bad link, excerpt boy.

[ontos-on]

But to suggest that he was injured in a non-combat situation is obscene. The fact is that Cleland lost three of his limbs carrying out a necessary mission in a war zone.

It is not obscene, it is accurate. If you were just in a firefight and then two hours later, while still technically in a combat zone, drive too fast around a curve in the road, you were not injured in a combat situation. Is that hard to understand?

[MinuteGal]

The Boston Phoenix.....asses rising from the ashes.

Leni

[carton253]

Thanks for posting the entire article.

[Loyal Buckeye]

"Yet here is what Steyn wrote in the National Post: "Mr. Pierce’s point is a simple one: Sure, 34 years ago, Teddy fished himself out of the briny, staggered away and somehow neglected to inform the authorities until the following morning that he’d left some gal down there. But, if he was too tired to do anything for her back then, he’s been ‘tireless’ on her behalf ever since...."

I think Steyn nailed it. I doubt that Steyn will take the time to set the left wing carney barker straight.

[Taliesan]

Let's see...Joe Conason is lecturing us on decency.

And Mark Steyn has a reputation as a pundit (though you've never heard of him) because he's a fancy writer and doesn't deserve all his fame (though you've never heard of him).

The only name here I've never heard of is Dan Kennedy. He apparently writes for something called the Boston Phoenix. I spent two weeks in Boston once and I have vague memories of fragments of this paper being passed among scruffy youths with nose rings.

By Dan's argument it may be that Dan deserves a greater reputation than he has now, due to his tight grip on facts and logic and all, but it is only his lack of talent which has held him back.

[proud American in Canada]

Thanks for posting the entire article.

"Write, twist, smear and sneer. Repeat!"

That's exactly what Dan Kennedy does in this piece. For example, he states that Steyn's "main source of income is the Hollinger chain, a worldwide media conglomerate run, until recently, by Conrad Black, now in trouble for allegedly lying about money, or lying about alleged money, or some such thing"

Conrad Black's troubles have nothing to do with Mark Steyn, but Kennedy is trying to impute some sort of guilt to Steyn with that statement.

He also sneers that Steyn's formal education stopped at high school. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, so what? To me that's even more evidence of his genius/hard work. Most people who only finish high school don't get very far in life. And having a university degree doesn't mean a person is smart.

[Naomi4]

This guy's problem with Steyn boils down to envy. He does not and never will have the talent Steyn has with words and ideas.

[arthurus]

Can't wait to read Steyn's reply to this

Why should Steyn reply to this?

[AmishDude]

First, Steyn made a hideously unfair comparison, linking those who were demanding Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation to Berg’s executioners. . . . Senators Kennedy, Levin, Leahy, Harkin . . . ‘calling for Rumsfeld’s head’ at a time when America’s enemies have already got Nick Berg’s . . ."

And? They had used the unfortunate metaphor and Steyn made the juxtaposition. It's clever wordplay, something that Mr. Kennedy, clearly, would not understand.

His example was the Boston Globe, which, . . . had just published a photo . . . in which pictures purportedly of American troops raping Iraqi women were visible in the background . . . . Never mind that the accompanying story expressed deep skepticism about the authenticity of those pictures;

Never mind? That was the whole point! They splashed the photos while mumbling, below the fold, something about skepticism, etc. etc. Pictures say a thousand words and can overshadow many thousands more.

The nonpartisan media-watch Web site Spinsanity.org

The website is down, so I couldn't check it, but I have checked a cache and the title of their book is "All the President's Spin". They try to balance, apparently, but according to the cache suggests that the low-circulation and conservative Washington Times is a favorite target.

Brendan Nyhan told me by e-mail, "We’ve written several times about Steyn’s aggressive, inflammatory rhetoric and loose regard for logic and factual accuracy."

I'm looking hard for the false statement. Can't find it.

And neither, he wants to be damn sure you know, is Mark Steyn.

And yet, no evidence is provided. Hmmm. I read Steyn for months without knowing he was married and over a year to find out he had kids. I'll bet $100 that Mr. Kennedy is gay, though. You can hear the axe being ground throughout each paragraph.

[O]ne of his assistants, Tiffany Cole, e-mailed back to me, "Mark isn’t sure what he’s done to merit the attention of the Boston Phoenix, but he wishes you all the best with the piece. He says he prefers not to speak to writers on these kinds of stories because ‘he always sounds like a jerk in interviews.’"

OK, Kennedy, let me translate for you, "You are a nobody, your paper is a rag and we don't care what the hell you do. Stop calling."

"As Ann Coulter pointed out in a merciless but entirely accurate column, it wasn’t on the ‘battlefield.’ It wasn’t in combat. . . . He saw a grenade dropped by one of his colleagues and bent down to pick it up. . . . He was, in his words, ‘no hero’ — which is true. He was a beneficiary of the medal inflation that tends to accompany unpopular wars. But Cleland learned to stop hating himself to the point where he’s happy to be passed off as a hero wounded in battle because that makes him a more valuable mascot to the campaign. Sad."

All of which is perfectly, 100% accurate. 100%. It's also true in a deeper sense. Cleland was running for re-election on the "You can't criticize me, I got three limbs blown off in 'Nam" ticket. He was a mascot. Just note how the people whose political proclivities lead their compatriots to speak of "baby killers" defend the mere whiff of criticism of Cleland. Steyn may have been harsh here to a person who served his country and suffered a terrible accident, but for a man who has been propped up by the Democrats -- both literally and figuratively -- the true nature of his injury needed to be told and it is only the "right-wing carny barker" Ann Coulter who dared reveal it to the nation.

And as to Steyn's accuracy, he bothered to read Cleland's book. How sloppy of him.

The fact is that Cleland lost three of his limbs carrying out a necessary mission in a war zone.

He wasn't "carrying out" the "mission" if you need to be anal-retentively accurate, but Steyn never said that Cleland wasn't in a war zone, but Cleland is perfectly happy to allow people to conclude that he stepped on an enemy mine.

[Cleland] called their columns part of "this massive Karl Rove right-wing slime machine" aimed at undermining Kerry’s presidential campaign.

Well, now I can't possibly see why Georgia wouldn't have sent this paranoid creep back to the Senate. He's so much less acerbic than the "sarcastic" Steyn.

In a passage dripping with sarcasm and irony, Pierce wrote this: "That’s how you survive what he’s survived. That’s how you move forward, one step after another, even though your name is Edward Moore Kennedy. You work, always, as though your name were Edward Moore. If she had lived, Mary Jo Kopechne would be 62 years old. Through his tireless work as a legislator, Edward Kennedy would have brought comfort to her in her old age." Now, I’ll grant that without the full context, it might not be immediately obvious that Pierce had just dropped a two-ton pile of fertilizer on Kennedy,

Really? Well, here's David Kenner's explanation of how the Globe's ombudsman described it (pardon me for not finding the direct source, but I'm not getting paid for this)

Well, the Globe Ombudsman just printed an "explanation" of the "misunderstood or unappreciated" quote. Apparently the writer, Charles Pierce, was being "brutally ironic." Those specific sentences were written to illustrate the point that "Kennedy's work on behalf of the elderly has enhanced benefits for the nation's senior citizens -- and Kopechne would have been one of them."

I think Steyn got it pretty much on the mark. And never mind all of the dastardly right-wingers who interpreted it that way, but it's not evidence of Steyn's inaccuracy, it's evidence of Pierce's inability to get his point across.

[Pierce]: "If a guy who is that nakedly, intellectually dishonest can become a successful conservative writer, then conservative intellectualism is dead in this country. . . ."

Here's a clue: The great intellectual lights of liberalism are . . . Michael Moore and Al Franken. Everybody else is in an academic echo chamber, who merely echo those two in haughtier verbiage.

THERE ARE MANY, many more examples I could cite.

Examples of what? Steyn's wit? Accuracy? Excellent writing style?

In a New Criterion piece, for instance, Steyn mentioned the title of a New Republic essay by Andrew Sullivan, "We Are All Sodomites Now," as being some sort of commentary on the state of gay sexuality. In fact, Sullivan’s was a closely argued piece in which he contended that all non-procreative sex, whether heterosexual or homosexual, is a form of sodomy.

Just as Kennedy interprets Steyn so does Steyn interpret Sullivan. Sullivan can "mean" whatever he wants, Steyn is able to discuss the subtext of Sullivan. And Sullivan (one who whips out his axe and furiously grinds it in public) is one whose columns are nothing but subtext.

(For good measure, Steyn got the title wrong, too; it was "We’re All Sodomists Now.")

Well, now we're just over the edge of anal-retentiveness. Complain to his editor.

The effect, in all too many instances, is of a second-rate Maureen Dowd — that is, of a writer who makes the same kind of pop-culture analogies as the New York Times columnist, only without the deft touch.

Oh . . . my . . . God . . . . If Dan Kennedy thinks Maureen Dowd has a deft touch, he should be forcibly institutionalized this very minute. Second-rate Maureen Dowd is fourth-rate Dan Kennedy which is eighth-rate AmishDude.

Unfortunately, that only reinforces the impression that Steyn is on firmer ground when writing about the arts than when he ventures into the political world.

Nope, Dan-o, it says more about you. Much more. Tell me about your mother . . .

But he reserved his deepest anger for the administrators of Pioneer High School, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who put together a "Homosexuality and Religion" panel for a Diversity Week program.

Aaaaaaauuuuugggggghhhhh! The screeching sound of the grinding axe. Aaaaaaauuuuugggggghhhhh!!!!!!!!

Leaving aside the not-unreasonable notion that organizers of Diversity Week may have believed the kids were getting quite enough of homosexuality-is-a-sin at home and in church,

Think again. If that is their premise (it probably is), then how dare they? It is not up to the school to provide "equal time" to parents' notion of how to raise them.

Ann Arbor officials responded by canceling Diversity Week. Then again, sharing that information would have conflicted with another of Steyn’s favorite tropes: that liberals specialize in victimology, and that they love nothing better than to find a judge willing intercede on their behalf.

Yeah, this is so much less indoctrination than "under God".

But if American papers are duller than they need to be, they at least try to get the facts straight. They often fail

No kidding. I'll bet Steyn (who does make corrections on his website when necessary) has a better record than the New York Times. When he said he was in Iraq, he was actually there, unlike a certain Mr. Blair.

Yet, in his hands, facts are malleable things, to be twisted and reinterpreted and omitted in order to advance his particular point of view.

You mean he picks and chooses what will reinforce his points? The horror! THE HORROR! I hope Mr. Kennedy doesn't try to read a Ph. D. dissertation anytime soon. He's going to be shocked (SHOCKED!) at the selective choice of facts to buttress a thesis. And they don't even have the burden of column-length.

or the accuracy of his so-called facts

And for all of Dan Kennedy's word-smithing, he's found no evidence of any inaccuracy on Steyn's part.

If somebody has already emailed our dear Mr. Kennedy, could you send this to him also? I don't want anybody associated with the Boston Phoenix to have my email address.

[diotima]

Ping.

The Boston Phoenix is just a little to the left, in case ya' didn't notice.

[Bonaparte]

"Why should Steyn reply to this?"

No reason he should. But typically he loves to clown these people.

[AnnaZ]

I finally got a chance to read the whole thing. It's actually hilarious... Steyn is so grudgingly admired by this critic, his biggest crime seems to be not being on his side!

 

Thanks for the ping.