What's up with Mark Steyn and National Review?
His last post there was Christmas Eve,
and his prior post just two days earlier is salted with enough allusions to editorial disagreement to bring John Derbyshire's fate to mind.
Is Steyn just preoccupied playing hockey stick with Michael Mann, or is something else going on?
They seem to have parted ways insofar as the Michael Mann lawsuit has gone. As Steyn himself says:
ReplyDeleteAs readers may have deduced from my absence at National Review Online and my termination of our joint representation, there have been a few differences between me and the rest of the team. The lesson of the last year is that you win a free-speech case not by adopting a don't-rock-the-boat, keep-mum, narrow procedural posture but by fighting it in the open, in the bracing air and cleansing sunlight of truth and justice.
Gosh, I find it so hard to believe that the National Review editors wouldn't take a strong stand on principle.
ReplyDeleteKeith: "What's up with Mark Steyn and National Review?"
ReplyDeleteNothing other than business as usual, when you consider that what much of what passes for "conservatism" nowadays is mostly a joke.
Steyn just explained what he meant. Apparently he just doesn't like the guy. http://www.steynonline.com/6053/the-real-state-of-the-nation
ReplyDeleteThere's a newish but very good site called Stubborn Things, mostly involving conservatives who used to have quite a presence in the NRO comment threads, and they've been tracking the brouhaha, the silence, and the partial explanations.
ReplyDeleteThe proximate issue was NRO's pro-SSM and not obviously conservative managing editor publicly criticizing Steyn for being Steyn, on a weekend article about the Duck Dynasty fiasco. The big issue is NR's unwillingness to stand athwart on the fundamental issue of free speech, not only regarding lively speech on marriage, but ESPECIALLY in defending themselves from global warm-monger Michael Mann's frivolous lawsuit.