Antidotal, again via
Eschaton and
Amir Butler, wrote a letter to the editor
(here) of the National Post, taking issue with a poorly researched and wildly biased article Mark Steyn wrote defending nativism and bias. (Antidotal is, in the offline world - and on, I suppose - Professor Eric Tam of the Yale University Political Science Department).
Secondly, I was pleasantly surprised by Mr. Tam's missive. In the past year, I've been called a hatemonger thousands of times by various correspondents, but this is one of only a handful to accuse me of factual error. Most sail past anything so prosaic as facts and simply say that the column in question is "hateful." ("No free speech for hate speech!" as they say at Concordia, in between beating up Holocaust survivors.), says Mr. Steyn.
Also this:
So I'm grateful to Mr. Tam. He specifically disputed one fact and he called me a hatemonger. That seems fair enough. Dispute two specific facts and you can take me to the Human Rights Commission. Dispute three specific facts and we'll play your karaoke recording on the National Post Web site:
"Hatemonger, hatemonger,
Mong me some hate..."
But just plain old unsupported cries of "hatemonger"? Save it for your next Concordia riot.Question: what exactly is Concordia? Is it in New Haven?
Anyway, I think this is a fun new game to play with the cool new
Google News Engine or one of these spiffy resources
here (Kartoo has a way too cool flash interface). Catch Mark Steyn out on some errors and he'll ritually humiliate himself.
So... it's win a Mark Steyn's Self-Respect! weekend, here on the internet.
Instances of Mr. Steyn's incorrectness should go in the comments section of Mr. Tam's blog.
Thanks for playing.