Mark Steyn
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Mark Steyn is a Canadian journalist, columnist, and film and theatre critic. He is senior contributing editor for Hollinger Inc. Publications, senior North American columnist for Britain's Telegraph Group, North American editor for The Spectator and an internationally syndicated columnist, also writing for the Jerusalem Post (also owned by Hollinger), the National Review in the United States, and the Irish Times in Ireland.
He is a strong conservative, who writes on foreign policy issues. He is a close ally of fellow Canadian Conrad Black, and has written for many of Black's newspapers.
He also formerly wrote for National Post in Canada, but his position became uncertain after the purchase of the newspaper by Canwest Global. It was not confirmed until May 2003 that he no longer writes for the Post, from which he quit. He is currently writing for the Western Standard in Canada.
Steyn now lives in New Hampshire in the United States, in part because of its favourable tax regime and the absence of curbs on gun ownership.
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Steyn and politics
He has long railed against the policies of the Liberal Party, which has dominated federal politics in Canada since the 1960s. These policies include multiculturalism, public healthcare, high taxation, gun control, concessions to Quebec separatists and anti-Americanism, which he desribes as 'Trudeaupian', in a reference to former Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
He was a leading proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and has continued to support that action, scornful of the United Nations, from which he advocates US withdrawal, and of countries like France, which opposed the war.
He wrote a column in May 2004 complaining about media bias and low journalistic standards in newspapers, attributing this to a political agenda, and double standards in relation to the conflict in Iraq:
- "In the last few days, The Mirror, a raucous Fleet Street tabloid, has published pictures of British troops urinating on Iraqi prisoners and the Boston Globe, a somnolent New England broadsheet, has published pictures of American troops sexually abusing Iraqi women. In both cases, the pictures turned out to be fake. From a cursory glance at details in the London snaps and the provenance of the Boston ones, it should have been obvious to editors at both papers they were almost certainly false. Yet they published them. Because they wanted them to be true. Because it would bring them a little closer to the head they really want to roll - George W. Bush's. 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". [1] (http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20040517-085416-5457r.htm)
Mark Steyn is notable as a commentator on divisions between the United States and Europe, which he emphasises. He harks back to the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and discusses polarisations of outlook, linked to different attitudes since 1945 to national armed forces.
Barbs by Steyn
Steyn is known for lacing his pieces with wry and vivid humor. To some fellow conservatives, he is a gifted polemicist; others find him an unbalanced and ill-mannered writer, whose reliance on disparagement makes his views less worthy of attention.
His detractors frequently claim that he disregards both opposing arguments and events that contradict his earlier predictions. His interventions in British and European political matters in his Daily Telegraph column have led to hostile reaction, for example from the senior journalist Peter Preston writing in The Observer in June 2004. Preston took him to task as a 'neo-con ranter', citing Steyn's labelling of Neil Kinnock and Chris Patten as on the 'lunatic fringe' in matters relating to the EU.
Bibliography
- Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (2000)
- The Face of the Tiger (2002)
- Mark Steyn From Head To Toe: An Anatomical Anthology (2004)
- America Alone: Our Country's Future as a Lone Warrior (2004)
See Also
External links
- Steyn Online (http://www.steynonline.com/)
- Quotable Barbs (http://homepage.tinet.ie/~odyssey/Politics/Quotes/Steyn.html)
- Caught in the cross-fire (http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20040517-085416-5457r.htm), column in The Washington Times
- Steyn October 24 2004, Bin Laden and Loch Ness monster (http://www.suntimes.com/output/steyn/cst-edt-steyn24.html)
- C-Span, Washington Journal Interview with Mark Steyn (http://www.c-span.org/search/basic.asp?resultstart=1&resultcount=10&BasicQueryText=mark%20steyn)
- A liberal's point of view of Mark Steyn (http://www.portlandphoenix.com/features/other_stories/multi2/documents/03919478.asp)