Maryland Conservatarian

Over at NRO, Mark Steyn takes note of a blogger’s attempted takedown of Steyn. The blogger - one Jim Henley - took a quote from Mr. Steyn’s book, the best-selling (and highly recommended) America Alone:

“I knew Steyn was a bigot, with a 1920s obsession with demographic decline. …But I imagined Steyn was more adroit in his use of code words and deniability feints. No! “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes” is merely the most spectacular example of - not code words. I’m not completely shocked that Steyn would write with such frank bigotry, or that Regnery would publish it.” Sympathy for the Devil § Unqualified Offerings

The problem, as Mr. Steyn obviously delights in pointing out, is that the supposed bigoted quote used by Jim Henley didn’t originate from Mark Steyn. Instead, it was Mark Steyn quoting another presumably anti-Muslim bigot: Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar.

Check out the readers' comments at Mr. Henley’s site. The first three are favorable to him although the third does touch on the inherent problem with the posting (all the while apparently not finding the mis-attribution that significant a problem):


"Not to take away from what has been written about the Mark Steyn article, one clarification is necessary.

"The comment comparing Muslim population growth to the breeding of Mosquitoes was not made by Mark Steyn, but a Muslims cleric at a Norwegian mosque."

Mark Steyn’s rebuttal was posted on NRO at 3:29 PM today. The next comment on Jim Henley’s site was posted at 3:38 PM:

“Steyn has answered your criticism and is making you sound kind of ignorant. You need to respond because it’s getting embarassing.”

As of 5:30 PM, there were an additional 86!! Posts – just about all of them mocking Jim Henley for being so spectacularly and maliciously wrong (and not yet issuing a retraction). It’s actually a fairly amusing thread to read.

I only post about this because it turns out that the erstwhile Sniffing-Out-of-Islamic-Bigots blogger Jim Henley lives here in Montgomery County (Silver Spring)...which is kind of embarrassing to this Maryland-based blogger. Please note, however, that his site, Unqualified Offerings, is NOT a proud member of the Maryland Blogger Alliance…although, since he is based here, he is certainly eligible to join.