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Earlier this week, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Dominion's most prominent advocates of state censorship, posted a short item about yours truly, and my claim in a recent column that they "had taken a variety of positions directly against the interests of Canada’s Jewish community". The CJC says:
Mr. Steyn, however, rooted his assertions in quotations that Canadian Jewish Congress never uttered. Maclean’s apologizes for this misattribution in its current issue.
That's not true, actually. Maclean's issued not an "apology" but a clarification, "regretting any confusion". As reflexively litigious as he is, Bernie Farber surely knows the difference - especially as there was an awful lot of back and forth between the various legal departments. My memory of the deliberations is that Bernie originally wanted Maclean's to "apologize" for any "hurt" caused by such "defamatory" statements as "the only plausible explanation for the CJC is that it’s an Islamist front organization". My reaction was that I'd personally fight such a case all the way to the Supreme Court because (a) it would be a non-stop laugh riot; and (b) Bernie's peculiar touchiness on the subject suggests the odds are better than even that my joke would turn out to be true. I also believe that, given Canada's pioneering role in prosecuting heckler putdowns, suing over throwaway gags would go a long way toward cementing the Dominion's leadership in the field of joke jurisprudence.
At any rate, while apparently satisfied with Maclean's, the CJC still has a bone to pick with me:
Mr. Steyn has neither apologized nor even acknowledged his error and continues to post the fallacious column, without any clarification, on his private website.
"Private website"? By the way, one sign of a guy with a weak case is when he doesn't post any links to the stuff he's whining about: I'm happy to link to the CJC, but you'll notice the CJC doesn't link to me or even the original column as it appears in Maclean's. You begin to see why such insecure types would rather state censors policed dissenting opinion.
But that's neither here nor there. The reason I have "neither apologized nor even acknowledged" my "error" is because I stand by my original column - for reasons I explain in the current print edition of Maclean's. If you're in Canada, pick it up at any newsstand; you won't regret it.
[More on the Dar al Farb: My idiot people, and Ceej and desist.]
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