Mark Steyn
Steyn at CPAC 2008
Born	(1959-12-08) December 8, 1959 (age 52) Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Occupation	Author and Commentator
Website
http://www.steynonline.com

Mark Steyn (born December 8, 1959) is a Canadian-born writer, conservative-leaning political commentator, and cultural critic.^[1] He has written five books, including America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It, a New York Times bestseller. He is published in newspapers and magazines, appears on shows such as those of Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, and Sean Hannity.

Steyn, a Canadian^[2] citizen, now resides mainly in New Hampshire in the United States. He is married, with three children.^[3]

Life and career[link]

Steyn was born in Toronto. He was baptized a Catholic and later confirmed in the Anglican Church;^[3] he has stated that "the last Jewish female in my line was one of my paternal great-grandmothers" and that "both my grandmothers were Catholic".^[4] Steyn's great-aunt was artist Stella Steyn.^[5] Steyn was educated at the King Edward's School, Birmingham, in the United Kingdom. This is the same school that author J. R. R. Tolkien attended and where Steyn was assigned a Greek dictionary that had also been used by Tolkien.^[6] He left school in 1978 at 18 and worked as a disc-jockey before becoming musical theatre critic at the newly established The Independent in 1986.^[7] He was appointed film critic for The Spectator in 1992. After writing predominantly about the arts, Steyn's focus shifted to political commentary and moved to the conservative broadsheet The Daily Telegraph (which stopped carrying his column in 2006).

He has written for a wide range of publications, including the Jerusalem Post, The Orange County Register, Chicago Sun-Times, National Review, The New York Sun, The Australian, Maclean's, Irish Times, National Post, The Atlantic Monthly, Western Standard and New Criterion.

Steyn's website^[8] provides special commentary and access to many of his columns and other published work. He occasionally posts to the National Review Online group blog, The Corner.

Steyn's books include Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (a history of the musical theatre) and America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, a New York Times bestseller. He has also published collections of his columns and his celebrity obituaries and profiles from The Atlantic.

Steyn occasionally fills in for Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, America's number one and number four talk show radio hosts, respectively.^[9]

Steyn is a visiting professor at Hillsdale College. As of 2010, Steyn was no longer the back page columnist for the print edition of National Review, conservative writer James Lileks assuming that space in the print edition. Steyn's back page column for National Review, "Happy Warrior", resumed with the March 21, 2011 issue.

Steyn also has contributed to the center-right blog Ricochet.com and recorded numerous podcasts with the organization.^[10]

Positions[link]

Criticism of media[link]

Steyn frequently criticizes the institutional media.

In a May 2004 column Steyn commented that editors were encouraging anti-Bush sentiments after The Daily Mirror and the Boston Globe had published faked pictures, originating from American and Hungarian pornographic websites,^[11] of British and American soldiers supposedly sexually abusing Iraqis.^[12] Steyn argues that media only wanted to show images to westerners "that will shame and demoralize them."^[13]

In a July 2005 column for National Review, Steyn criticized Andrew Jaspan, then the editor of The Age, an Australian newspaper. Jaspan was offended by Douglas Wood, an Australian kidnapped and held hostage in Iraq, who after his rescue referred to his captors as "arseholes." Jaspan claimed that "the issue is really largely, speaking as I understand it, he was treated well there. He says he was fed every day, and as such to turn around and use that kind of language I think is just insensitive." Steyn argued that there is nothing at all wrong with insensitivity toward murderous captors, and that it was Jaspan, not Wood, who suffered from Stockholm syndrome. He said further, "A blindfolded Mr. Wood had to listen to his captors murder two of his colleagues a few inches away, but how crude and boorish would one have to be to hold that against one's hosts?"^[14]

Conrad Black trial[link]

Steyn wrote articles and maintained a blog^[15] for Maclean's covering the 2007 business fraud trial of his friend Conrad Black in Chicago, from the point of view of one who was never convinced Black committed any crime. Doing this, he later wrote, "cost me my gig at the [Chicago] Sun-Times" and "took me away from more lucrative duties such as book promotion".^[16] Steyn expressed dismay at "the procedural advantages the prosecution enjoys—the inducements it's able to dangle in order to turn witnesses that, if offered by the defence, would be regarded as the suborning of perjury; or the confiscation of assets intended to prevent an accused person from being able to mount a defence; or the piling on of multiple charges which virtually guarantees that a jury will seek to demonstrate its balanced judgment by convicting on something. All that speaks very poorly for the federal justice system."

After Black's conviction, Steyn published a long essay in Maclean's about the case, strongly criticizing Black's defense team.^[17]

Eurabia[link]

Steyn believes that what he describes as "Eurabia" — a future where the European continent is dominated by Islam — is an imminent reality that cannot be reversed. "The problem, after all, is not that the sons of Allah are 'long shots' but that they're certainties. Every Continental under the age of 40 — make that 60, if not 75 — is all but guaranteed to end his days living in an Islamified Europe."^[18] "Native populations on the continent are aging and fading and being supplanted remorselessly by a young Muslim demographic."^[19] Steyn claims that Muslims will account for perhaps 40 percent of the population by 2020, but Globe and Mail correspondent Doug Saunders labels the assertion false:

Slightly more than 4 percent of Europe's population is Muslim, as defined by demographers (though about 80 per cent of these people are not religiously observant, so they are better defined as secular citizens who have escaped religious nations). It is possible, though not certain, that this number could rise to 6 percent by 2020. If current immigration and birth rates remain the same, it could even rise to 10 percent within 100 years. But it won't, because Muslims don't actually have more babies than other populations do under the same circumstances. The declining population growth rates are not confined to native populations. In fact, immigrants from Muslim countries are experiencing a faster drop in reproduction rates than the larger European population.^[20]

In his book America Alone, Steyn posits that Muslim population growth has already contributed to a modern European genocide:^[21]

Why did Bosnia collapse into the worst slaughter in Europe since the second World War? In the thirty years before the meltdown, Bosnian Serbs had declined from 43 percent to 31 percent of the population, while Bosnian Muslims had increased from 26 percent to 44 percent. In a democratic age, you can't buck demography — except through civil war. The Serbs figured that out, as other Continentals will in the years ahead: if you cannot outbreed the enemy, cull 'em. The problem that Europe faces is that Bosnia's demographic profile is now the model for the entire continent.

When some left-wing critics claimed Steyn was advocating genocide in this passage, he wrote:^[22]

My book isn't about what I want to happen but what I think will happen. Given Fascism, Communism and ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, it's not hard to foresee that the neo-nationalist resurgence already under way in parts of Europe will at some point take a violent form. ... I think any descent into neo-Fascism will be ineffectual and therefore merely a temporary blip in the remorseless transformation of the Continent.

Criticism of multiculturalism[link]

Steyn has commented on divisions between the Western world and the Islamic World. He criticizes the tolerance of what he calls "Islamic cultural intolerance." Steyn argues that multiculturalism only requires feeling good about other cultures and is "fundamentally a fraud ... subliminally accepted on that basis."^[23] In Jewish World Review, Steyn argues "Multiculturalism means that the worst attributes of Muslim culture — the subjugation of women — combine with the worst attributes of Western culture — licence and self-gratification." He states, "I am not a racist, only a culturist. I believe Western culture — rule of law, universal suffrage — is preferable to Arab culture."^[24]

Support of Iraq invasion[link]

Steyn was an early proponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In 2007 he reiterated his support while attacking Democrat John Murtha, stating that his plan for military action in Iraq was designed "to deny the president the possibility of victory while making sure Democrats don't have to share the blame for the defeat. ... [Murtha] doesn't support them in the mission, but he'd like them to continue failing at it for a couple more years".^[25]

Books[link]

[edit] America Alone

Steyn's work America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (ISBN 0-89526-078-6) is a New York Times bestselling nonfiction book published in 2006. It deals with the global war on terror and wider issues of demographics in Muslim and non-Muslim populations. It has been widely praised by conservative commentators,^[26] and recommended by George W. Bush.^[27] The paperback edition (ISBN 1596985275), released in April 2008 with a new introduction, was labeled "Soon to Be Banned in Canada", alluding to a possible result that Steyn then anticipated from the Canadian Islamic Congress human rights complaint against Maclean's Magazine.

[edit] Response to America Alone

In an essay about America Alone,^[28] Christopher Hitchens wrote that "Mark Steyn believes that demography is destiny, and he makes an immensely convincing case," then went on to detail many points at which he disagrees with Steyn. For instance, Hitchens believes that Steyn errs by "considering European Muslim populations as one. Islam is as fissile as any other religion, and considerable friction exists among immigrant Muslim groups in many European countries. Moreover, many Muslims actually have come to Europe for the advertised purposes; seeking asylum and to build a better life." Nevertheless, Hitchens expressed strong agreement with some of Steyn's points, calling the book "admirably tough-minded."

The left-wing British publication the New Statesman criticized "gaping holes of logic and fact in [Steyn's] argument."^[29] The publication compared Steyn's warning about an Islamic takeover of Europe to past racial fear-mongering about Chinese overtaking white Americans and wrote Steyn had a history of promoting "invented conspiracies like the Protocols of the Elders of Mohammed."^[29]

[edit] After America

In 2011, Steyn published After America: Get Ready for Armageddon, a followup to America Alone. In it, he argues that the United States is now on the same trajectory towards decline and fall as the rest of the West, but that its decline will be more sudden and less pleasant than that seen in Europe.^[30] While America Alone concentrated on demography and the rise of Islamofascism, After America concentrates on Federal debt and the growth of government and bureaucracy.

After America peaked at number 4 on the New York Times' non-fiction bestseller list.^[31]

Canadian Islamic Congress human rights complaint[link]

In 2007, a complaint was filed with the Ontario Human Rights Commission related to an article "The Future Belongs to Islam",^[32] written by Mark Steyn, published in Maclean's magazine. The complainants alleged that the article and the refusal of Maclean's to provide space for a rebuttal violated their human rights. The complainants also claimed that the article was one of twenty-two (22) Maclean's articles, many written by Steyn, about Muslims.^[33] Further complaints were filed with the Canadian Human Rights Commission and the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.

The Ontario Human Rights Commission refused in April 2008 to proceed, saying it lacked jurisdiction to deal with magazine content. However, the Commission stated that it, "strongly condemns the Islamophobic portrayal of Muslims ... Media has a responsibility to engage in fair and unbiased journalism."^[34] Critics of the Commission claimed that Maclean's and Steyn had been found guilty without a hearing. John Martin of The Province wrote, "There was no hearing, no evidence presented and no opportunity to offer a defence — just a pronouncement of wrongdoing."^[35] The OHRC defended its right to comment by stating, "Like racial profiling and other types of discrimination, ascribing the behaviour of individuals to a group damages everyone in that group. We have always spoken out on such issues. Maclean's and its writers are free to express their opinions. The OHRC is mandated to express what it sees as unfair and harmful comment or conduct that may lead to discrimination."^[36]

Steyn subsequently criticized the Commission, commenting that "Even though they (the OHRC) don't have the guts to hear the case, they might as well find us guilty. Ingenious!"^[37]

Soon afterwards, the head of the Canadian Human Rights Commission issued a public letter to the editor of Maclean's magazine. In it, Jennifer Lynch said, "Mr. Steyn would have us believe that words, however hateful, should be give free reign [sic]. History has shown us that hateful words sometimes lead to hurtful actions that undermine freedom and have led to unspeakable crimes. That is why Canada and most other democracies have enacted legislation to place reasonable limits on the expression of hatred."^[38] The National Post subsequently defended Steyn and sharply criticized Lynch, stating that Lynch has "no clear understanding of free speech or the value of protecting it" and that "No human right is more basic than freedom of expression, not even the "right" to live one's life free from offence by remarks about one's ethnicity, gender, culture or orientation."^[39]

The federal Canadian Human Rights Commission dismissed the Canadian Islamic Congress' complaint against Maclean's in June 2008. The CHRC's ruling said of the article that, "the writing is polemical, colourful and emphatic, and was obviously calculated to excite discussion and even offend certain readers, Muslim and non-Muslim alike." However, the Commission ruled that overall, "the views expressed in the Steyn article, when considered as a whole and in context, are not of an extreme nature, as defined by the Supreme Court."^[40]

Steyn later wrote a lengthy reflection of his turmoil with the commissions and the tribunals. The reflection appears as the introduction to The Tyranny of Nice,^[41] a book authored by Kathy Shaidle and Pete Vere on Canada's human rights commissions. In it, Steyn writes:

I've learned a lot of lessons during my time in the crosshairs of the [Canadian human rights investigator Jennifer] Lynch mob. Although the feistier columnists have spoken out on this issue, the broad mass of Canadian media seems generally indifferent to a power grab that explicitly threatens to reduce them to a maple-flavoured variant of Pravda. One boneheaded "journalism professor" even attempted to intervene in the British Columbia trial on the side of the censors. As some leftie website put it, "Defending freedom of speech for jerks means defending jerks." Well, yes. But, in this case, not defending the jerks means not defending freedom of speech for yourself. It's not a left/right thing; it's a free/unfree thing. But an alarming proportion of the Dominion's "media workers" seem relatively relaxed about playing the role of eunuchs to the Trudeaupian sultans.

Critical reception[link]

Steyn's writing draws supporters and detractors for both content and style. Martin Amis, who was harshly criticized in America Alone yet nevertheless gave it a positive review, says of his style: "Mark Steyn is an oddity: his thoughts and themes are sane and serious—but he writes like a maniac." ^[42][43] His style was described by Robert Fulford as "bring[ing] to public affairs the dark comedy developed in the Theatre of the Absurd."^[44] Longtime editor and admirer Fulford also wrote, "Steyn, a self-styled 'right-wing bastard,' violates everyone's sense of good taste."^[44] According to Simon Mann, Steyn "gives succour to the maxim the pen is mightier than the sword, though he is not averse to employing the former to advocate use of the latter."^[7]

Susan Catto in Time noted his interest in controversy, "Instead of shying away from the appearance of conflict, Steyn positively revels in it."^[45] Canadian journalist Steve Burgess wrote "Steyn wields his rhetorical rapier with genuine skill" and that national disasters tended to cause Steyn "to display his inner wingnut."^[46][47]

In 2009, Canadian journalist Paul Wells accused Steyn of dramatically exaggerating the rise of fascist political parties in Europe. Wells also accused Steyn of repeatedly "shrieking" about Islam in his political writings.^[48]

Music[link]

Mark Steyn and Jessica Martin have released annual Christmas albums containing a mixture of parody and well-known Christmas classics.^[49]

Awards[link]

Mark Steyn was awarded the 2006 Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Opinion Journalism for writing which "best reflects love of this country and its democratic institutions".^[50] The announcement quotes from Steyn's syndicated column for 26 June 2006, "Be Glad the Flag Is Worth Burning":^[51]

One of the big lessons of these last four years is that many, many beneficiaries of Western civilization loathe that civilization, and the media are generally inclined to blur the extent of that loathing.

Roger Ailes of Fox News presented the prize, which included a check for $20,000.

In 2010, Steyn was presented the Sappho Award from the International Free Press Society in Copenhagen, Denmark for what was described as both "his ample contributions as a cultural critic" and "his success in influencing the debate on Islam, the disastrous ideology of multiculturalism and the crisis of the Western civilization."^[52]

See also[link]

• Conservatism in Canada
• Culture war
• List of newspaper columnists

Bibliography[link]

• The Story of Miss Saigon (by Edward Behr and Steyn; 1991, ISBN 1-55970-124-2)
• Broadway Babies Say Goodnight: Musicals Then and Now (1997, ISBN 0-415-92286-0)
• The Face of the Tiger (2002, ISBN 0-9731570-0-3; collected columns)
• Mark Steyn From Head To Toe: An Anatomical Anthology (2004, ISBN 0-9731570-2-X; collected columns)
• America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It (2006, ISBN 0-89526-078-6)
• Mark Steyn's Passing Parade (2006, ISBN 0-9731570-1-1; collected obituaries)
• The Tyranny of Nice (2008, ISBN 978-0-9780490-1-0; introduction)
• A Song For The Season (2008, A Musical Calendar)
• Lights Out: Islam, Free Speech And The Twilight Of The West (2009) ISBN 0-9731570-5-4
• After America: Get Ready for Armageddon (2011) ISBN 1-59698-100-8

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Mark Steyn

• Mark Steyn's web site
• C-SPAN Interviews with Mark Steyn
  • In Depth interview with Steyn, February 5, 2012
• Kathy Shaidle, The Kafkaesque Show Trial of Mark Steyn, 2008-06-11

Michael Coren (born January 15, 1959) is an English-Canadian columnist, author, public speaker, radio host and television talk show host. He hosted the television talk show The Michael Coren Show on the Crossroads Television System from 1999 to 2011 when he moved to the Sun News Network to host an evening talk show, The Arena with Michael Coren.^[1] He has also been a long-time radio personality, particularly on CFRB radio.

He has written more than ten books, including biographies of G.K. Chesterton, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, and C. S. Lewis. His latest book, Why Catholics are Right, was published in 2011.

Life and career[link]

Coren was born in Essex, England. After obtaining a degree in politics from Nottingham University, he moved from the UK to Canada in 1987. For several years, he was a columnist for Frank and then The Globe and Mail, before he began syndicated columns for the Financial Post and Sun Media in 1995. Following his departure from Frank, he became a favourite target of that publication, culminating in a spoof ad contest to "deflower" Michael Coren (a nod to Frank's notorious "Deflower Caroline Mulroney" contest, and a satirical jab at Coren's conservative leanings.) Coren had also been a favorite target of Frank back in the days before he began writing for them. Coren took exception to being labelled a "literary prostitute" during a 1994 interview.^[2]

His career as a broadcaster began in the early 1990s when he co-hosted a political debate segment with Irshad Manji on TVOntario's Studio 2. In 1995, he began an evening talk show on CFRB. In 1999, Coren briefly moved to Talk 640 for a short stint as its morning man. He returned to CFRB, where he hosted a show from 6:30 to 8:00 p.m. weekday nights, and regularly filled in for other hosts until November 2005. Coren was dismissed by CFRB as a result of complaints arising from comments ridiculing the weight of an apparent guest. In fact, the guest was an actor and the segment was scripted. According to CFRB's Operations Manager, Steve Kowch, "Pat Holiday, our general manager and myself went through the tape of Monday night's show and were shocked....it was totally out of bounds." Coren argues that it was a satire comparing in his mind public attitude to third world starvation with North America's obsession with slimming and self-indulgence. ^[2]

Despite this acrimonious termination, Coren made regular talk show appearances on CFRB in July 2006, at the start of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, as he happened to be in Israel at the time. After receiving 60% approval from CFRB listeners in an August 2006 poll, Coren returned to the CFRB airwaves in September 2006 with a Sunday evening show.^[3] As of the 22nd of April 2007, the show expanded from its usual 1 hour 7-8pm to 7-9 pm.^[4] Coren celebrated by giving away double the prizes usually given out. In the fall of 2007 he and former Liberal Party of Canada president Stephen LeDrew launched a daily hour-long afternoon show on CFRB called Two Bald Guys With Strong Opinions in which the two argue about the issues of the day.^[5] After the departure of LeDrew, Coren was joined by Tarek Fatah after several on air auditions by potential replacement co-hosts. Coren was again let go by CFRB along with 12 other staff of the Toronto radio station on 27 August 2009.^[6]

On television, Coren hosted the Michael Coren Show on the Crossroads Television System until June 2011 when he left to join the Sun News Network where he hosts The Arena with Michael Coren weeknights on beginning August 30, 2011. Coren also has a newspaper column published every Saturday in the Sun newspaper chain. He has been a columnist for the Western Standard, Catholic Insight and The Women's Post and has contributed to National Post, Reader's Digest and several other publications. A self-professed Tottenham Hotspur fan, he has appeared as a guest host on The Score's The Footy Show. Coren is also a public speaker, particularly at religious gatherings.

Political controversies[link]

In his earlier, satirical Aesthete column in Frank magazine Coren was by his own admission deliberately provocative. In response to a 1994 interview question about AIDS he responded:

"Look, people are dying all over. When it was blacks in Africa dying of AIDS, no one gave a toss. Nobody gave a toss. Suddenly, it's middleclass men in California and everyone goes crazy about it. It's a double standard. I'm trying to provoke people into rethinking comfortable points of view."^[2]

In September 2006, Coren published an article in the Toronto Sun, supporting the use of tactical nuclear strikes against Iran.^[7] This position was later retracted.^[8]

On the subject of AIDS Michael Coren wrote a column in 2006 titled "Why is AIDS so special?" in which he said "At its most simple, stop fornicating." "AIDS in the West is still overwhelmingly a threat to male homosexuals and intravenous drug users."^[9]

In an article which appeared in Sun Media in 2007, Coren said "As for Jesus not condemning homosexuality, nor did He condemn bestiality and necrophilia."^[10]

Religious Views[link]

His articles and speeches often include stories of his own personal spiritual journey. Coren's father was Jewish as was his maternal grandfather, while his maternal grandmother came from a family of Welsh coalminers and converted to Judaism. Coren's father and uncle were cab drivers. Coren has said that his father's family left Poland a few decades before the Holocaust.^[11] He has also said that his father's family emigrated from Poland in the 1890s.^[12] He said "People have called me an anti-Semite. I thought it quite rich since my father's family was massacred in the Holocaust".^[2] Michael Coren was profiled on Credo, on Vision TV, and said that his father told him he could not attend his son's wedding in a Catholic Church without becoming "physically sick."

He converted to Roman Catholicism in his early twenties while still living in England, but that didn't last long. He said that he "converted to an institution." He eventually converted to Evangelical Christianity in the 1990s, after a conversion experience as an adult, greatly influenced by Canadian televangelist Terry Winter.

In 1991 Michael Coren said in a column for a humour magazine: "The evangelical Christians may be intolerant, small-minded, and repellent, but at least they hold a consistent set of beliefs".^[2]

In a 1993 book review he said "Can anyone imagine a detective priest? Regrettably, it is easier to conjure up the image of a priest being questioned by secular detectives over abuse charges." Also in 1993, Michael Coren had a falling out with the Catholic Church over an unflattering profile he wrote of Archbishop Aloysius Ambrozic for Toronto Life magazine^{[citation needed]}. The Bishop, who made Coren a "Knight of the Holy Sepulchre" in a ceremony in October 1992, was quoted using words including "friggin" and "bitch", and said that Francisco Franco was a "conservative Roman Catholic and not a bad fellow." Coren defended himself, saying "He's an archbishop and he was vulgar...obviously what thousands of Roman Catholics expected me to do was lie. I still get hate mail about the article."

After this incident, Coren said that he didn't consider himself a Roman Catholic anymore. He said "My wife is Catholic and the children will be raised Catholic, but that's it. It's just not there for me."^{[citation needed]} Daniel Richler observed that Coren loves scandal, but hates having it come his way. In one of his columns for the satirical humour magazine Frank, Michael Coren depicted Mother Teresa getting drunk in a bar.^[2]

In early 2004, he embraced Catholicism again. He cites St. Thomas More, C. S. Lewis, Ronald Knox and his godfather Lord Longford as spiritual influences, and remains connected to the ecumenical scene in Canada and beyond.

Published books[link]

• Theatre Royal: 100 Years of Stratford East (1985) ISBN 0-7043-2474-1
• Gilbert: The Man Who Was G.K. Chesterton (1990) ISBN 1-55778-256-3
• The Invisible Man: The Life and Liberties of H.G. Wells (1993) ISBN 0-689-12119-9
• The Life of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1993) ISBN 0-7475-1229-9
• The Man Who Created Narnia: The Story of C. S. Lewis (1994) ISBN 1-895555-78-7
• Setting It Right (1996) ISBN 0-7737-2940-2
• J.R.R.Tolkien: The Man who Created the Lord of the Rings (2001) ISBN 0-7522-6156-8
• As I See It (2009) ISBN 0-9812767-0-9
• Why Catholics Are Right (2011) ISBN 0-7710-2321-9

Awards[link]

Awards Michael Coren has won.^[13]

• 2005: The Ed Murrow Award for Broadcasting.
• 2006: The RTNDA Radio Broadcasting Award.
• 2007: The Communicator Award in Hollywood.
• 2008: the Omni TV Award.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Michael Coren's blog
• [1] Coren's column in The Toronto Sun

Tom Switzer (born 1971) is editor of The Spectator Australia, succeeding Oscar Humphries in December 2009. ^[1] He is also a research associate at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney where he teaches American politics and history. ^[2] He was a candidate to replace former Australian Liberal leader Brendan Nelson in his northern Sydney electoral seat of Bradfield.^[3]

Biography[link]

Early life and education[link]

Switzer was an Australian schools track and field champion in 1989, won medals in several national and state athletics championships and was trained by Australian Olympic coach Jackie Byrnes. As a 17-year-old schoolboy in 1988, he won distinction for being the first Australian to beat Olympian Darren Clark .

Career[link]

Before politics, he was an assistant editor at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, DC (1995-98), an editorial writer at the Australian Financial Review (1998-2001) and opinion editor for The Australian (2001-08) where he attracted controversy for hiring conservative columnist Janet Albrechtsen^[4] and writing conservative polemics on the public broadcaster, the US alliance,^[5] the Iraq war^[6] and the culture wars.^[7] In recent years, he has also been a regular commentator for Sky News television, The Spectator Australia,^[8] The Wall Street Journal^[9] and Quadrant magazine.

In 2008 he was senior adviser to former federal Liberal Party Leader Brendan Nelson until the leadership vote that saw Malcolm Turnbull take over in the top job.^[10] During his time in the Opposition Leader's office, he provoked controversy for his role in toughening up policy on an emissions trading scheme.^[11]

References[link]

Janet Kim Albrechtsen (born 23 September 1966) is a Australian opinion columnist with the News Limited-owned newspaper, The Australian. From 2005 until 2010, she was a member of the Board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Australia's state-owned national broadcaster.

Early life and education[link]

Albrechtsen was born in Adelaide and attended Seacombe High School. She subsequently studied at University of Adelaide, graduating in law, with honours.^[1] Albrechtsen later moved to Sydney, where she worked as a solicitor in commercial law at Freehills.^[1] She subsequently attained a doctorate in law (SJD) from the University of Sydney.^[1] Her thesis was titled: 'The regulation of the fundraising process in Australia: searching for an optimal mix between legislative prescriptions and market forces'.^[2] Albrechtsen has also taught as an academic.^[3]

Career[link]

Since turning to commentary, Albrechtsen has written for the Australian Financial Review, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Sunday Age, Quadrant, Canada's National Post, The Vancouver Sun and The Wall Street Journal Asia.^[1] Albrechtsen has been a member of the Foreign Affairs Council since 2003.

Albrechtsen was appointed to the board of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2005.^[1][4] She told reporters in late 2009 that she was planning to retire from the board, and completed her five-year term on 18 February 2010 without seeking reappointment.^[5][6]

In 2008, Albrechtsen wrote a chapter for Peter van Onselen's book The Liberals and Power. She argued the Liberals have become preoccupied with "dominating the rational low ground," abandoning the high moral ground to the left. Left-wing reviewer Norman Abjorensen said he appreciated her view of Howard's legacy as not just a transformation of the Australian economy but also one of the Labor Party.^[7]

Janet Albrechtsen is also an Ambassador for the Australian Indigenous Education Foundation.

Personal life[link]

She was married in 1991 to lawyer John O'Sullivan and now has 3 children, two daughters and a son.^[1]

Views and influence[link]

This article's Criticism or Controversy section may compromise the article's neutral point of view of the subject. Please integrate the section's contents into the article as a whole, or rewrite the material. (November 2010)

Albrechtsen's views are generally right-wing. She supports free market policies, as well as social conservativism, such as opposition to gay marriage and institutional multiculturism.

A frequent commentator on legal issues, she has criticized both the High Court of Australia and the Family Court of Australia for judicial activism.

Global warming[link]

According to Mark Davis, a Melbourne University academic, Albrechtsen was one of four 'suspect' commentators in the Australian press to "sound the warning that this environmental catastrophe [global warming] will pass into memory" in the 2000s.^[8]

Media Watch[link]

In 2002, following a blog post by controversial Muslim Amir Butler,^[9] the ABC's Media Watch program queried Albrechtsen's source for a claim she attributed to psychiatrist Jean-Jacques Rassial a column that "pack rape of white girls is an initiation rite of passage for a small section of young male Muslim youths", asserting that she was misquoting a report in the London Times.^[10] Media Watch also said that Albrechtsen misrepresented the findings of Flemming Balvig, a criminologist at Copenhagen University, who wrote in an email to Butler that:

The citation is completely wrong. What I have said is, that the main explanation of gang rape probably is social, and not cultural or religious.^[11]

In the lead-up to this episode of Media Watch sent Friday 6 September 2002, Albrechtsen told them she was took the contested quotes from The Times and The Copenhagen Post, that "journalists are entitled to, and very frequently do, rely on such sources reasonably believed to be accurate" and that they "appear to have done exactly the same, although from a source (a blog spot) of far lower stature than those [she] used".^[12] She also told them:

If you misrepresent me, selectively quote from my work or this letter, fail to check your sources or commit any of the other sins you seek to expose in others, you will be guilty of a more egregious wrong than those you seek to expose in journalists. Hypocrisy.^[12]

She ended that message by saying that she would "be interstate at a conference from 2.30pm today until 5pm Monday. Kindly do not attempt to ambush me in my absence."^[12] At 1:10 pm that day,^[13] Media Watch sent another fax with several more questions, again requesting a reply by 5pm.^[14] They went to air without any further response from Albrechtsen.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Archive of Albrechtsen's columns with reader comments, from February 2007 onwards