Mark Steyn

Mark Steyn ( ) (born 1959¹) is a Canadian author and a radio, television, and on-line presenter. He has written several books, including The New York Times bestsellers America Alone, After America, and Broadway Babies Say Goodnight. In the US he has guest-hosted the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh Show, as well as Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, on which he regularly appeared as a guest and fill-in host. In 2021, Steyn began hosting his own show on British news channel GB News. He left GB News in early February 2023, saying that the channel wanted him to pay fines issued by the UK media regulator Ofcom, which was investigating complaints of COVID-19 vaccination scepticism aired on The Mark Steyn Show. He has since moved his show to his own website.

Mark Steyn ( ) (born 1959) is a Canadian author and a radio, television, and on-line presenter. He has written several books, including The New York Times bestsellers America Alone, After America, and Broadway Babies Say Goodnight. In the US he has guest-hosted the nationally syndicated Rush Limbaugh Show, as well as Tucker Carlson Tonight on Fox News, on which he regularly appeared as a guest and fill-in host. In 2021, Steyn began hosting his own show on British news channel GB News. He left GB News in early February 2023, saying that the channel wanted him to pay fines issued by the UK media regulator Ofcom, which was investigating complaints of COVID-19 vaccination scepticism aired on The Mark Steyn Show. He has since moved his show to his own website.

Early life

Steyn was baptized a Catholic and was later confirmed in the Anglican Church, which he left to become a Baptist. He has stated that "the last Jewish female in my line was one of my paternal great-grandmothers" and that "both my grandmothers were Catholic". His parents were married in Elliot Lake, Ontario. Steyn's great-aunt was artist Stella Steyn. His mother's family was Belgian. Steyn was educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, in the United Kingdom, the same school that author J.R.R. Tolkien attended and where Steyn was assigned a Greek dictionary that had also been used by Tolkien. Although it was reported by The Age in 2006¹ that Steyn had left school at age 16, his name appears in the King Edward's School yearbook for 1977-78 as a member of "Cl.VI", that is, the "Classics [Upper] 6th form", which is the normal final year for students at that school.

Career

Steyn worked as a disc jockey before becoming musical theatre critic at the newly established The Independent in 1986¹. He acted as TV critic for Channel 4's breakfast show The Channel 4 Daily and was appointed film critic for The Spectator in 1992. After writing predominantly about the arts, Steyn shifted his focus to political commentary and wrote a column for The Daily Telegraph, a conservative broadsheet, until 2006. He has written for many publications, including The Washington Post, The Jerusalem Post, Orange County Register, Chicago Sun-Times, National Review, The New York Sun, The Australian, Maclean's, The Irish Times, National Post, The Atlantic, Western Standard, and The New Criterion. He subsequently stepped back from writing and now devotes most of his time to his show. Steyn's books include Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now, a history of the musical theatre, and the political America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, a New York Times bestseller which predicts the downfall of the West. He has also published collections of his columns and celebrity obituaries, as well as profiles from The Atlantic. Steyn held a Eugene C. Pulliam Visiting Fellowship in Journalism at Hillsdale College in spring 2013. As of 2010, Steyn was no longer the back-page columnist for the print edition of National Review, conservative writer James Lileks having taken over that space. Steyn's back-page column for National Review, "Happy Warriors", resumed with the issue of March 21, 2011. Steyn has contributed to the blog Ricochet.com and recorded numerous podcasts with the organization. From December 2016 to February 2017, Steyn hosted The Mark Steyn Show on the CRTV Digital Network. CRTV abruptly cancelled the show after two months and went to arbitration, with both sides claiming breach of contract. Steyn also sued to keep the show on the air during arbitration, saying it was on behalf of his employees. Former show supervisor Mike Young called this "bullshit" when quoted in The Daily Beast. Former employees provided sworn declarations that Steyn was "incredibly disorganised", tyrannical, and impossible to work with. Steyn was awarded damages for breach of contract, which was confirmed on appeal, as well as attorneys' fees. In October 2021, Steyn began covering for Nigel Farage on his prime time show Farage on GB News on Fridays and was a relief presenter for Farage on other days. On November 19, 2021, Steyn received a permanent prime time host billing on GB News, with the Friday show renamed Mark Steyn. In January 2022, the show began airing five nights a week, Monday to Friday, which in February was reduced to Monday to Thursday. In March 2022, during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Steyn presented the show from Western Ukraine. In December 2022, Steyn suffered a heart attack while broadcasting the Mark Steyn Show on GB News TV. He did not recognise the symptoms as a heart attack, but later suffered a second, while in France, where he was hospitalised. Steyn quit GB News in February 2023, in protest at the channel wanting to change his contract to make him personally liable for any fines issued by the UK's media regulator Ofcom, which was then investigating 411 complaints from viewers about Covid vaccine scepticism aired on Steyn's show, in potential breach of the Broadcasting Code. Steyn also complained changes in his contract would force him and his staff to attend regulatory compliance training sessions, which he referred to as "re-education classes". On 6 March 2023, Steyn was found by Ofcom to have breached its rules during a GB News programme about COVID-19 vaccines. Ofcom said the Steyn programme had "presented a materially misleading interpretation of official data without sufficient challenge or counterweight".

Positions

Criticism of the news media

In a May 2004 column, Steyn commented that editors were encouraging anti-Bush sentiments after the Daily Mirror and The Boston Globe had published faked pictures, which originated on American and Hungarian pornographic Web sites, of British and American soldiers supposedly sexually abusing Iraqis. Steyn argued that the media only wanted to show images to Westerners "that will shame and demoralize them." In a July 2005 column for National Review, Steyn criticized Andrew Jaspan, then the editor of The Age, an Australian newspaper. 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 argued that there is nothing at all wrong with insensitivity toward murderous captors, 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?"

Conrad Black trial

Steyn wrote articles and maintained a blog for Maclean's covering the 2007 business fraud trial of his financial patron Conrad Black in Chicago, from the point of view of one who was adamantly convinced Black never committed any crime. Doing this, he later wrote, "cost me my gig at the [Chicago] Sun-Times" and "took me away from more lucrative duties such as book promotion". Steyn expressed dismay at "the procedural advantages the prosecution enjoys—the inducements it's able to dangle in order to turn witnesses that, if offered by the defence, would be regarded as the suborning of perjury; or the confiscation of assets intended to prevent an accused person from being able to mount a defence; or the piling on of multiple charges which virtually guarantees that a jury will seek to demonstrate its balanced judgment by convicting on something. All that speaks very poorly for the federal justice system." After Black's conviction, Steyn published a long essay in Maclean's about the case, strongly criticizing Black's defense team.

Muslim immigration views

Steyn opposes Muslim immigration to the United States, which he describes as dangerous. According to Steyn, the West faces a choice "between liberty and mass Muslim immigration." Steyn believes that if mass Muslim migration to Europe is not stopped, Europe will turn into what he calls "Eurabia", a future society where the European continent will be dominated by Islam. He has written: "much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive this century, and much of it will effectively disappear in our lifetimes, including many, if not most Western European countries." In his book America Alone, Steyn likened Europe to Bosnia in the lead-up to its civil war and genocide: When some critics claimed that Steyn was advocating genocide in this passage, he wrote: Steyn has written about Muslim demographic projections to back up Bat Ye'or's Eurabia theory and has been on the board of advisors of the International Free Press Society, both key components of the international counter-jihad movement. In 2012, he also participated in the international counter-jihad conference in Brussels, billed as the "International Conference for Free Speech & Human Rights".

Support of the invasion of Iraq

Steyn was an early proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2013, Steyn blamed the United States' lack of success in Iraq on poor communication. Conor Friedersdorf, responding in a column for The Atlantic, noted that Steyn had declared victory in Iraq in 2004, incorrectly stating that the US had left the country at that time.

Books

The Story of Miss Saigon

In one of his first books, The Story of Miss Saigon (1991) co-written with Edward Behr, Steyn offered up his stance on the Miss Saigon controversy of 1990. Steyn accused the Asian-American activists opposed to the musical Miss Saigon of a "new tribalism" that threatened to bring in "a new era of conformity and sanctimoniousness".

America Alone

Steyn's work America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It is a New York Times bestselling nonfiction book published in 2006. It deals with the global war on terror and wider issues of demographics in Muslim and non-Muslim populations. It was recommended by George W. Bush. The paperback edition, released in April 2008¹ with a new introduction, was labeled "Soon to Be Banned in Canada", alluding to a possible result that Steyn then anticipated from the Canadian Islamic Congress' human rights complaints against Maclean's magazine. In an essay about America Alone, Christopher Hitchens wrote that "Mark Steyn believes that demography is destiny, and he makes an immensely convincing case," then detailed many points at which he disagreed with Steyn. Hitchens believed Steyn erred by "considering European Muslim populations as one. Islam is as fissile as any other religion, and considerable friction exists among immigrant Muslim groups in many European countries. Moreover, many Muslims actually have come to Europe for the advertised purposes; seeking asylum and to build a better life." Nevertheless, Hitchens expressed strong agreement with some of Steyn's points, calling the book "admirably tough-minded."

After America

In 2011, Steyn published After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, a follow-up to America Alone. In it, he argues that the U.S. is now on the same trajectory towards decline and fall as the rest of the West due to unsustainable national spending and the subsequent borrowing involved to pay for expanding government. Within its pages, After America discusses the U.S. federal debt specifically and more generally the rise of bureaucratic state control as individual initiative declines. Should decline continue to affect peoples' lives and the expansion of debt go on, Steyn's ultimate worries are apocalyptic, with him declaring, After America peaked at number four on the New York Times bestseller list for non-fiction, but tagged with a dagger for bulk orders. Although written in a polemical style about controversial issues, praise came from publications such as The Washington Times, where Steyn received comparison to George Orwell, and The Spectator, where Steyn's sense of prose received comparison to pyrotechnics. On August 17, 2011, Steyn discussed the book and a variety of related issues while delivering the first lecture in The NHIOP Bookmark Series, a program of the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire. C-SPAN recorded Steyn's comments.

Canadian Islamic Congress human rights complaint

In 2007, a complaint was filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission related to Steyn's article, entitled "The Future Belongs to Islam", published in Maclean's magazine. The complainants alleged that the article and the refusal of Macleans to provide space for a rebuttal violated their human rights. The complainants also claimed that the article was one of twenty-two (22) Maclean's articles, many written by Steyn, about Muslims. Further complaints were filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission, later stripped of its mandate by the Canadian parliament in 2011, and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal. The Ontario Human Rights Commission refused in April 2008 to proceed, saying it lacked jurisdiction to deal with magazine content. However, the Commission stated that it "strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims ... Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism." Critics of the Commission claimed that Maclean's and Steyn had been found guilty without a hearing. John Martin of The Province wrote, "There was no hearing, no evidence presented and no opportunity to offer a defence—just a pronouncement of wrongdoing." The OHRC defended its right to comment by stating, "Like racial profiling and other types of discrimination, ascribing the behaviour of individuals to a group damages everyone in that group. We have always spoken out on such issues. Maclean's and its writers are free to express their opinions. The OHRC is mandated to express what it sees as unfair and harmful comment or conduct that may lead to discrimination." Steyn subsequently criticized the Commission, commenting that "Even though they (the OHRC) don't have the guts to hear the case, they might as well find us guilty. Ingenious!" Soon afterwards, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission issued a public letter to the editor of Maclean's magazine. In it, Jennifer Lynch said, "Mr. Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be given . History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred." The National Post subsequently defended Steyn and sharply criticized Lynch, stating that Lynch has "no clear understanding of free speech or the value of protecting it" and that "No human right is more basic than freedom of expression, not even the "right" to live one's life free from offence by remarks about one's ethnicity, gender, culture or orientation." The federal Canadian Human Rights Commission dismissed the Canadian Islamic Congress' complaint against Maclean's in June 2008. The CHRC's ruling said of the article that, "the writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike." However, the Commission ruled that overall, "the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature, as defined by the Supreme Court." Steyn later wrote a lengthy reflection of his turmoil with the commissions and the tribunals. The reflection appears as the introduction to The Tyranny of Nice, a book authored by Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere on Canada's human rights commissions.

Critical reception

Steyn's writing has drawn supporters and detractors for both content and style. Martin Amis, who was harshly criticized in America Alone but gave it a positive review, said of the style: "Mark Steyn is an oddity: his thoughts and themes are sane and serious—but he writes like a maniac." His style was described by Robert Fulford as "bring[ing] to public affairs the dark comedy developed in the Theatre of the Absurd." Longtime editor and admirer Fulford also wrote, "Steyn, a self-styled 'right-wing bastard,' violates everyone's sense of good taste." According to Simon Mann, Steyn "gives succour to the maxim the pen is mightier than the sword, though he is not averse to employing the former to advocate use of the latter." Dan Kennedy, professor of journalism at North Eastern University, has described Steyn's journalistic technique as "write, twist, smear and sneer, repeat!" Charlie Pierce told the Boston Phoenix in 2004 that "If a guy who is that nakedly, intellectually dishonest can become a successful conservative writer, then conservative intellectualism is dead in this country. If it began with Buckley and the people who taught him, it ends with the likes of Mark Steyn." Susan Catto in Time believed Steyn had an interest in controversy: "Instead of shying away from the appearance of conflict, Steyn positively revels in it." Canadian journalist Steve Burgess wrote: "Steyn wields his rhetorical rapier with genuine skill" and that national disasters tended to cause Steyn "to display his inner wingnut." In 2009, Canadian journalist Paul Wells accused Steyn of dramatically exaggerating the rise of fascist political parties in Europe. Wells also accused Steyn of repeatedly "shrieking" about Islam in his political writings.

Awards

Steyn was awarded the 2006 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism for writing which "best reflects love of this country and its democratic institutions". Steyn has also received awards from the Claremont Institute in 2005, the Center for Security Policy in 2007, the International Free Press Society in 2010, and the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms in 2018.

Personal life

Steyn lives and works mainly in Woodsville, New Hampshire, U.S. He has three children.

Bibliography

The Story of Miss Saigon (by Edward Behr and Steyn; 1991, ) Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (1997, ) The Face of the Tiger (2002, ; collected columns) Mark Steyn From Head To Toe: An Anatomical Anthology (2004, ; collected columns) America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (2006, ) Mark Steyn's Passing Parade (2006, ; collected obituaries) The Tyranny of Nice (2008, ; introduction) A Song for the Season (2008, A Musical Calendar) Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West (2009) After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (2011) The Undocumented Mark Steyn: Don't Say You Weren't Warned (2014) Climate Change: The Facts (2015) "A Disgrace To The Profession" ~ The World's Scientists, In Their Own Words, On Michael E Mann, His Hockey Stick And Their Damage To Science ~ Volume I (2015) The Prisoner of Windsor ~ an audiobook, is a sequel and an inversion of the novel "A Prisoner of Zenda" by Anthony Hope.

See also

Defamation lawsuit against Steyn by Michael E. Mann Conservatism in Canada Culture war List of newspaper columnists

Notes

References

External links

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1372512895 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.