By Frank Moher
The various human rights commissions that rejected the complaint against Maclean’s magazine — most recently the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal — were right to do so, of course. Members of the Canadian Islamic Congress had charged Maclean’s with inciting hatred and contempt towards Muslims when it published an excerpt from Mark Steyn’s America Alone, in which he advanced various xenophobic warnings about jihadists taking over the world. Much hand-wringing followed, as the media proclaimed that the media should be left to do as it pleases.
In its decision, the B.C. tribunal — and if they wanted to raise the spectre of totalitarianism, they couldn’t have done better than by calling themselves a “tribunal” — declared that “The article may attempt to rally public opinion by exaggeration and causing the reader to fear Muslims, but fear is not synonymous with hatred and contempt.” I’m inclined to agree with Andrew Coyne that this bit of casuistry was just the members’ way to avoid enforcing B.C.’s human rights law. Whether Steyn’s article incites fear or hatred depends on the incitee, it seems to me; maybe it’ll cause wimps like me to flee from the nearest brown-skinned person, but your average good ol’ boy might react differently.
Still, except for one genuinely hateful paragraph, in which he links some teenagers’ violence to their North African background, Steyn’s article is soft soap. As usually happens when he cares about a subject, he ceases to be funny. And without the disarming laughs, Steyn is — here, at least — revealed as a common coin hysteric, even claiming at one point that Japan’s declining birth rate means it’s “likely to be the first jurisdiction to embrace robots and cloning and embark on the slippery slope to transhumanism.”
The CIC’s critics were right — dragging this stuff into court was unnecessarily heavyhanded.
Then again, I would say that. I’m white. And so are almost all the people running Maclean’s. And so are most of the journalists wringing their hands. But do you think if we were, say, Arab or South Asian or Trinidadian we might feel differently? D’ya think?
Maclean’s waxing about freedom of the press and creeping fascism and whatnot would be a lot more convincing if they could point to a few more non-Anglo Saxons on the masthead. Then we’d know that they know the marketplace of ideas isn’t just for the majority, and we’d know they have a genuine marketplace of ideas happening in their newsroom. Frankly, I don’t really care what Ken Whyte or Andrew Coyne has to say about the CIC suit; it’s all too predictable. What I would like to know is what their Features editor, Sarmishta Subramanian, has to say. (Has Subramanian commented on it? If so, I couldn’t find it.)
Similarly, Ian Mulgrew’s grumblings in The Vancouver Sun aren’t nearly as pertinent as Haroon Siddiqui’s analysis in The Toronto Star — not only because Siddiqui is liable to have the more nuanced view, but because The Star‘s hiring actually reflects Canadian multicultural reality. They’ve earned the right to an opinion.
This skirmish is a heads up for Maclean’s and all its journalistic brethren who are behind the curve. Time to change up their staffs to look more like the country they cover. Then maybe next time Steyn writes one of his nativist screeds they’ll decide to pass on it — not because they’re self-censoring, but because they can’t stop laughing long enough to get it into print.
On racial issues, the discounting of every white’s opinion while presenting any non-white’s opinion as automatically credible is itself racist.
Racism occurs among individuals of every race and culture with no exceptions. It is the content of the argument, not skin color that should be heeded.
Distrusting whites merely because they’re white makes no more moral sense than did discrediting all blacks in a previous age.
Case in point, Haroon Siddiqui of the Star and the word “nuanced” should not appear in the same sentence.
I’m a woman but I do think men can write very well about our circumstances. In fact, many of the best insights I have read about female life are written by men. I never want to read an opinion because of the writer’s sex.
Even MCPs allow me to look at their views and find some kernels of truth from their ranting. Truth hurts and the unsayable hurts too.
This blog offers the type of opinion that is well meaning and inclusive but oh so Eighties.
To Anonymous #2: Our ads are automatically served by Google, based on words appearing on that particular page, as well as the reader’s location.
If you really believe what you wrote, Mr. Frank “I’m white” Moher, you are welcome to remove yourself from the media and give your position to Sarmishta Subramanian at any time on the grounds that your ethnicity disqualifies you from representing the “genuine marketplace of ideas”. (“Genuine” meaning whatever is the identity fashion of the moment, apparently.)
You won’t, naturally, perhaps because the Cause needs people like you despite your being the opposite of the principles you claim to represent, or some such Gore-esque excuse.
The real reason, of course, is that you don’t really believe what you wrote and you are just a careerist representing the majority view of the media multiculturalists.
“The marketplace of ideas isn’t just for the majority.” This is the one thing we agree on. But then you go to say that not everyone has “earned the right to an opinion.” Very Kim Jong-il of you.
Perhaps when the government launches a Right To An Opinion Tribunal we will be spared all this confusion about who may and who may not have an opinion. At least Kim Jong-il is clear ahead of time about who is allowed an opinion. You just make it up as you go along. Or have you already prepared a list of whose opinions are allowed and whose are not? If so, I’d like to see it. Just in case you become a Tribunal member or something.
Gee, you sound to me like a typical left wing white apologist who blames whitey for all the ills of the world. How extremely racist you are. Perhaps some good ol’ boy should haul you before a human rights commission for trying to incite hatred towards him.
Uh…. I found the book to be extremely funny.
Wow, your article is surrounded by adverts for muslima.com and singlemuslim.com.
Bias much?
“…even claiming at one point that Japan’s declining birth rate means it’s “likely to be the first jurisdiction to embrace robots and cloning and embark on the slippery slope to transhumanism.”
I swear to you that as I was reading this article I was listening to a piece on television about the elderly of Japan purchasing “robotic grandchildren” that they could tend to as if they were real.
Score another one for Steyn.
OK, so let me get this straight: you only said what you said because you’re white (actually I assume you’re more of a pinkish color)? So, if McLeans got someone who wasn’t white, or at least was less pink, to comment on Steyn that would be…better? How? Wouldn’t they only say what they said because they WEREN’T white?
This is what passes for reasoned discourse on the left, I fear: identity politics. “You only said [fill in the blank] because you’re white/Christian/US citizen/Republican/gun owner/rich/whatever”, this implying, of course, that whatever was actually said isn’t true, just self-serving.
Of course the opinions people express MAY be influenced by “self-servingness” (blech), but it is incumbent on the one claiming that this is so to at least give some evidence that what was said isn’t actually true. If EVERYTHING one says is because one is whatever one is (leftist/rightist/Christian/atheist/blogger/butcher/baker/Indian chief), then no statement is actually true, is it? In fact, I think you only said that you would say what you said because you were white, because you’re a brainless lefty. How’s that for reasoned discourse, eh?