The Most Important Part

...of Mark Steyn's latest, True North strong not free, was not actually written by Mark. It's this bit added at the end by an appalled (one would hope) editor:

Editor’s Note: In this column, “True North strong not free,” (April 12, 2010), quotes were attributed to the Canadian Jewish Congress that came from The Mississauga News. The CJC had posted the quotes on their website under the heading ‘Articles of Interest.’ Subsequent commentary and satire in the column was linked to those quotes. Maclean’s regrets any confusion they might have caused by attributing certain positions directly to the CJC.

The Mississauga News article, if you want to read the whole thing, is here. Steyn's reference came through Scaramouche, who was operating under the assumption that if the CJC posted something on their website, they must be in agreement with it. Steyn either accepted that assessment or, more likely, didn't give a shit. One wonders, though, what Macleans thinks of its editorial staff having to follow this guy around like a dog owner with gloves and a baggy.

In any case, you don't really need to read the Steyn piece. Its his typical Muslims blah blah, political correctness blah blah blah, with a bit of trash talking re the CJC thrown in for good measure. He really needs to find a new minority groups to bash; his schtick is getting tired.

And while we're on the topic of Mark Steyn, the folks at Media Culpa have turned uncovering the man's many instances of self-plagiarism into a cottage industry:

Whatever it’s called, there are more identical or similar (and apparently interchangeable) paragraphs. You can be chugging along through the same 500 words or so, and bump into Lloyd Axworthy in one version, and Bill Gates in the other.

[...]

And copyright? It’s nice that his publishers are willing to share (and maybe pay twice), but isn’t all this communal property stuff a bit - well, leftist?

Finally, a bit OT (but not much), I swapped a few emails this week with Isabelle, Poirier of the Gatineau police. It turns out I was right: there was indeed a third person with Nick Bergamini and Mark Klibanov the night they were allegedly attacked by a mob of machete wielding Arabs outside Le Volt. As of Friday, though, there was no more further information on the incident to be had. Updates, when they become available, should appear here but perhaps, since the "attack" seems to already have passed into the realm of legend, they don't matter.