You, too can lose your job at a prestigious conservative publication in one easy step!
It's very simple to do.
All you have to do is take your displaced delusion of intellectual grandeur, mix in several completely gratuitous public insults directed to Mark Steyn in same publication that he writes in and that you edit and VOILA, you will be almost assured to be promptly scanning the ever-thinning conservative "help wanted" ads!
So easy to get in trouble-so very hard to avoid.
As a public service, I am elucidating the steps that Jason Lee Steorts (who is this guy anyway??) has gone though. It is a case study in how to get bounced from your pretty freaking awesome conservative gig.
1. First read the master, Mark Steyn, witnessing him totally ON FIRE about free speech. This is one of the topics that the Prophet Steyn, PBUH, absolutely and totally and utterly OWNS. Kapish? If you read him in print on this, hear him on the radio, watch him testify in various Houses of Parliament, or just sit around over drinks with him, you will understand that nobody more passionately articulates the case for free speech (and unfortunately, we do need to constantly make a case for it in this day and age) than Mark Steyn.
2. Decide that after reading your columnist, that you would like to take a swipe at him for some unknown (read: career suicide) mission. Call it "less than illuminating". Use words like "puerile" that will definitely piss him off. Say that you are "disappointed" in him even though seriously-who the hell are you? Then, insinuate that he is boorish, and has no manners (And FOR REALSIES: OMG-having met the man in person, I can personally guarantee that Mr. Steyn's manners are so wonderful and rare and ever so polished, and simply from another era-he is courteous, polite, and generously listens to everyone around him and remembers personal details about everyone he speaks to or speaks about). Then double down on your suicidal remarks!
3. Add in one publisher who is befuddled by grotesque move by editor and STIR.
4. Watch as general, conservative public views and comments on the public spectacle of suicide by insane insult journalism over-reach.
And voila!
You will quickly be polishing off your LinkedIn page.
When this first happened, the evil seeeeeeekrit Jew Kathy Draidle e-mailed me the post by Mr. Steorts and I wrote back saying "Probably his last post at The Corner".
Mark Steyn rightly does not like being insulted publicly, in his own home publication by someone who is clearly out of his intellectual league.
(If you think I'm kidding, check and see when his last column for Maclean's Magazine was written. You may notice a pattern. Again, I'm not very bright, but I do very well in pattern recognition-although I do prefer solid colours of course, patters are SO DISTRACTING and can make you look sort of dated and eccentric, but I digress...)
As for Mr. Steorts claim that he would go to the barricades with Mr. Steyn in the free speech war-well, with friends like that...
There are plenty of people who "get" the free speech issue.
Lots of us, in fact.
Lots of us looking for nice, conservative writing and editing and journalism gigs-most having to turn to America where the market is bigger and freer (or it used to be, Obama has screwed things up quite nicely).
I know I'm just a Jewish mother from suburban Toronto, and I'm not very bright, but my advice would be for "conservative" publications to really evaluate themselves, their editors and their columnists on the free speech divide.
Without freedom of speech, there are no other freedoms.
As Mark Steyn has always pointed out, it's not a left-right issue, it's a free-unfree issue.
Anyone who doesn't understand that point, and it's not so complicated, does not deserve a platform in an influential "conservative" publication.
Steyns' piece was outstanding, it's a topic that ignites his passion and he has a distinct comic and intellectual mastery of it. Free speech is just his thing.
That concludes today's lecture on "Losing Your Conservative Job 101" at Rosen's School of Hard Knocks and Bitter Reality.
YOU'RE WELCOME!
