Mark Steyn - Lights Out

After our agreement last evening for Mark to join the debate after the 1x1, we have informed the three panellists about our change of plans. We have just received a negative response from them.

Their main reason is that this is not what they have initially agreed to and that they would not have the time to prepare for such a debate. The other reason they offered is that their complaint is with Maclean’s magazine and not Mark Steyn personally.

Given this picture, I think we need to go back to our original plan of keeping the combatants apart.

To which Kathleen replied:

Hi Wodek-

If these students refuse to debate despite the fact that they have been publically trashing Mark for four months now (including at their press conference two weeks ago when Ms Sheikh called him ‘Islamophobic’,) then it is only fair that these interviews be done in the same order as a Canadian court of law. The students can make their accusations first and Mark, the accused, gets to defend himself only after those accusations.

If they say they are not accusing Mark of anything then why have you juxtaposed them on the same show?

Paikin’s crowd never told us about the Sock Puppets and weren’t planning to, but evidently they told the Socks about me, which is in itself interesting. If I were of a suspicious bent, I might be asking, as Mark Bourrie does, “Is Steyn being set up?” Instead, when I heard about it, I immediately said, great, let’s have a debate. No point me being in the same studio as the Sock Puppets and being kept in a hermetically sealed compartment.

Yet even with a three-to-one advantage the Socks pussied out.

This is Islam as represented by the likes of the Canadian Islamic Congress. They don’t want any kind of honest open debate, because they can’t handle it. That’s why they prefer to use government agencies to shut down debate on the specious grounds of invented crimes like “Islamophobia”. And apparently TV producers, having been complicit in the fraud that the Sock Puppets are “the complainants”, are willing to protect the sensitive little souls from the consequences of their charade.

Ah, well. We’re still negotiating. I think the latest pitch is for me to show up just to trash the set. God Almighty, given the amount of money Canadian taxpayers are giving to the Canadian Islamic Congress to pursue this prosecution, you’d think they could find one Sock Puppet who’d be up to 15 minutes of honest debate. Maybe next time they should be like “Little Mosque On The Prairie” and get the Muslim roles played by non-Muslims.

See you on TV in a couple of hours…

‘We just wanted a chance for open debate, the right to respond.’

‘We just wanted a chance for debate, but not directly or have to respond to others.’

‘We just wanted a chance to tell our side of the story without any chance of debate.’

‘We just want everyone to think just like us.’

‘Everyone needs to think like us …or else.’

Is it a natural progression?

If you didn’t watch it tonight you missed out on the most exciting current events programming I’ve ever watched. Mark Steyn confronted the three Muslim students who initiated a human rights complaint against Maclean’s magazine, chiefly because of one of his articles published therein. Even though they had gone on record saying that all they want is to start a debate, they refused to debate him on the show. Instead Steyn was to be interviewed and then they were to be interviewed separately. In the midst of his interview he repeatedly offered to have the debate, right then and there, on live TV.

Thinking like a moderator, Paikin commented that there weren’t enough chairs which led to Steyn’s uproarious retort that ‘this isn’t a chair issue…’

As Steyn himself was the first to admit, it wasn’t exactly ‘Must-See TV’ but it was enough to clearly illustrate the characters on both sides of the case. In this corner, wearing the sanctimonious and confused trunks, are three kids with no clue what they’re saying. And in this corner, wearing the belligerent and borderline pompous trunks, is the titan with an axe to grind. The kids never had a chance…

However incoherent the shouting was, the mere fact of this event is really a victory for our side, the freedom side; the fact that a ‘debate’ of this kind can still be staged in Canada, that after all the political positioning we can still give way to the arena of free speech to see what truth will come out in uncontrollable manner, is welcome. There are no doubt people in the sock puppet camp who would like to have all ‘debates’ reduced to some sort of ritualistic formula where everyone says only what is proper to say, as if one were engaged, say, in a friendly discussion on proper relations between Muslims and Dhimmis in the offices of the Egyptian state police.

Two of the students were women. One was born in Canada and one came here as a baby from India. The male had been born in Pakistan and had lived in Britain where he grew up before he emigrated to Canada. All of them were in western dress and had they not said they were Muslims there would be nothing about their appearance that would have tipped you off…

What impressed me was their lack of preparation (they came with some idea of a script that they would simply put out without challenge). This is not a good beginning for young lawyers… The second thing was, despite the fact that they have come of age and were educated in Canada, specifically in the legal tradition of Canada, they still don’t understand the concept of free speech… They frequently complained that all Muslims in Canada were tarred with this extremist voice that rises in various parts of the Muslim community that Steyn featured in his book. But at no time did they take the opportunity to point to specific things and say as Canadian Muslims those things were wrong and those people who say them are wrong and are wrong to say them. In short, like nearly all other Muslims, they find themselves incapable of criticizing or taking issue with religious authorities… I am continually left with the impression that the only thing Muslims do not want discussed in any public forum is Islam.

I’m not the greatest fan of Steyn – I think for the topic he is covering, you’re better off reading Bruce Bawer’s book – but I think, regardless, that he is in the right on this matter… I found the students to be, well, whiny and childish. Now, they are young, so some of that is to be expected. But they kept reminding my close-personal-friend Steve Paikin that they wanted the exact same amount of time as Steyn, and that they wanted Paikin to make sure Steyn wouldn’t be mean to them… For the record, Steyn was polite and humorous. The students were polite and humourless.

What really got me, was at the end of the show, Paikin said, ‘Mark, I’ll give you the last word’, and all three students started shrieking, clearly seeing in that decision another slight and another excuse to wallow in victimhood. Unbelievable. Paikin – by his standards – showed a bit of temper, and said, ‘Give me a break, will you?’ or something along those lines…

Finally, watching the two women last night, reminded me somewhat of my experience at the PLO offices in Ramallah, in July of 2005, shortly before the Israeli disengagement from Gaza. The PLO officials we (a group of Canadian journalists) met with trotted out a very western looking woman – beautiful, as were the two on TVO last night – to join in on the meeting. By the end of the meeting, it became clear that the only thing western about her was her appearance. I don’t think I can say entirely the same thing about the women last night, but there was something similar about the situation. Their looks were western, but their words didn’t match up.