Let me see if I understand the BBC Rules of Engagement correctly: if you're Robert Kilroy-Silk and you make some robust statements about the Arab penchant for suicide bombing, amputations, repression of women and a generally celebratory attitude to September 11 - none of which is factually in dispute - the BBC will yank you off the air and the Commission for Racial Equality will file a complaint to the police which could result in your serving seven years in gaol. Message: this behaviour is unacceptable in multicultural Britain.Trevor Phillips of Britain's Commission for Racial Equality has this creepy proposal:
But, if you're Tom Paulin and you incite murder, in a part of the world where folks need little incitement to murder, as part of a non-factual emotive rant about how "Brooklyn-born" Jewish settlers on the West Bank "should be shot dead" because "they are Nazis" and "I feel nothing but hatred for them", the BBC will keep you on the air, kibitzing (as the Zionists would say) with the crème de la crème of London's cultural arbiters each week. Message: this behaviour is completely acceptable.
So, while the BBC is "investigating" Kilroy, its only statement on Mr Paulin was an oblique but curiously worded allusion to the non-controversy on the Corporation website: "His polemical, knockabout style has ruffled feathers in the US, where the Jewish question is notoriously sensitive." "The Jewish question"? "Notoriously sensitive"? Is this really how they talk at the BBC?
But apparently not. "What Robert could do," suggested the CRE's Trevor Phillips helpfully, "is issue a proper apology, not for the fact that people were offended, but for saying this stuff in the first place. Secondly he could learn something about Muslims and Arabs – they gave us maths and medicine – and thirdly he could use some of his vast earnings to support a Muslim charity. Then I would say he has been properly contrite."And once again Steyn's response to this is right on the mark:
Extravagant public contrition. Re-education camp. "Voluntary" surrender of assets. It's not unknown for officials at government agencies to lean on troublemaking citizens in this way, but not usually in functioning democracies.Its a shame that this is what things have come to in the West. As this story shows things aren't much better in Canada. Certain groups must be 'sensitive' to others, while others are basically given a free ticket to say anything they want. Another good example of this can be found here.
And in all actuality I can't figure out why things have come to this. There could be several reasons some of which could be:
- we are afraid of what they'll do if we get 'tough' with them and expect them to treat everyone respectfully
- we don't expect them to behave any better, which is a sort of reverse rasicm
- society as a whole my not be able to deal with the fact that our national creed of multiculturalism may have serious flaws and we would rather ignore the problems and pretend that they don't exist instead of dealing with them
Anyways as an aside, is Mark Steyn not the most entertaining writer at any of the major newspapers? I'ld have to say Jonah Goldberg would have to be a close second though I'm not sure if he is published regularly in any of the major news spreads.