At National Review, Mark Steyn Tells Rich Lowry, ‘You were Wrong and Hypocritical to Fire John Derbyshire, and You Bought Yourself No Peace

from the Racist Left’
Posted by Nicholas Stix

Re: Derb
By Mark Steyn
April 9, 2012 2:59 P.M.
Comments

Andy [McCarthy], for what it’s worth, I regret the loss of John Derbyshire to National Review. Short version: Didn’t like the piece, but don’t think NR should have hustled him into the drive-thru guillotine on the basis of 24 hours of hysteria from the Internet’s sans-culottes. Longer version:

I didn’t agree with Derb on many things, from Ron Paul and talk radio to God and science. For his part, he reckoned I was a bit of a wimp on what he called “the Great Unmentionables.” He thought that neuroscientists and geneticists’ understanding of race trumped my touching belief in “culture.” I’m not so sure: Why is Haiti Haiti and Barbados Barbados? Why is India India and Pakistan Pakistan? Skin color and biological determinism don’t get you very far on that.

But I almost always learned something from his columns, and, at a time when punditry is increasingly parochial, I appreciated his range of historical and literary allusion (his recent “Duke of Marlborough moment,” for example). He will be impossible to replace on that front.

On the career-detonating column, I don’t have anything terribly useful to add. But Derb’s wife is Chinese and his children are biracial. And I can see why, in a world in which a four-time mayor of America’s capital city can disparage your own family’s race (“these Asians coming in . . . those dirty shops . . . they ought to go”) and pay no price, a chap might come to resent the way polite society’s indulgence of racism is so highly selective.

So I don’t share Andy’s insouciance about how what’s sauce for the MSNBC race huckster, Hollywood address-tweeter and New Black Panther bounty-offerer should be a “hanging offense” for the iconoclastic right-wing gander, and them’s the rules and we just have to accept it. The Left is pretty clear about its objectives on everything from climate change to immigration to gay marriage: Rather than win the debate, they’d just as soon shut it down. They’ve had great success in shrinking the bounds of public discourse, and rendering whole areas of public policy all but undiscussable. In such a climate, my default position is that I’d rather put up with whatever racist/sexist/homophobic/Islamophobic/whateverphobic excess everybody’s got the vapors about this week than accept ever tighter constraints on “acceptable” opinion. The latter kills everything, not least the writing skills of the ideologically conformist: Note how cringe-makingly limp the Derbyshire “satires” are, even in the marquee publications.

The net result of Derb’s summary execution by NR will be further to shrivel the parameters, and confine debate in this area to ever more unreal fatuities. He knew that mentioning the Great Unmentionables would sooner or later do him in, and, in an age when shrieking “That’s totally racist!” is totally gay, he at least has the rare satisfaction of having earned his colors. Yet what are we to make of wee, inoffensive Dave Weigel over at Slate? The water still churning with blood, the sharks are circling poor old Dave for the sin of insufficiently denouncing the racist Derbyshire. Weigel must go for not enthusiastically bellowing, “Derbyshire must go!” Come to think of it, I should probably go for querying whether Weigel should go.

NR shouldn’t be rewarding those who want to play this game. The more sacrifices you offer up, the more ravenously the volcano belches.

PS If Derb’s piece is sufficiently beyond the pale that its author must be terminated immediately, why is its publisher — our old friend Taki — proudly listed on the NR masthead?
 

[Thanks to reader-researcher "W," for sending this article.

Previously, on L’Affare Derbyshire, at WEJB/NSU:

And Then They Came for John Derbyshire: Racial Socialists Organize High-Tech Lynching Over Trayvon Martin Column, with White “Conservatives” Begging, ‘Please Let Us Join in the Fun!’

“Kapo Con Rich Lowry Fires John Derbyshire, Continues No Comments Policy at National Review.”;

“Is Peter Brimelow Next on Racial Socialists’ list, or was He Just Temporarily Bumped?”; and

“The Atlantic, Trayvon Martin, and John Derbyshire: Fake “Discussion Thread” for Ta-Nehisi Coates is a Rigged, Affirmative Action Echo Chamber.”

 
From WEJB/NSU’s Trayvon Martin Hoax files:

“Sanford, Florida: Black ‘Little Boy,’Trayvon Martin 17, Beat White ‘Vigilante’ George Zimmerman Bloody; Zimmerman Shot Martin Dead; Now Black WFTV ‘Reporter,’ Daralene Jones, Black Supremacists, and White Aunt Jemima Earwitness Demand That Zimmerman be Arrested”;

“Trayvon Martin: ABC ‘News’ Gets on Bandwagon, Acting as Martin’s Family Mouthpiece; Family Lawyer Refuses to Release All Information about Teen’s Last Phone Call to Girlfriend, but Insists That It Requires That George Zimmerman be Arrested ‘Right Now’”;

“Arrest First, Investigate Later: Press Conference by Lawyer Benjamin Crump, of Trayvon Martin’s Family, Seeks Through Violation of Due Process… to Railroad George Zimmerman”;

“News Coverage of the Trayvon Martin Case Keeps Getting Worse: New York Daily News Passes Off ABC News Hearsay as ‘Interview,’ While Changing the Hearsay!”;

“USA Today: ‘In wake of black teen Trayvon Martin's death, USA is soul-searching’; McPaper Invokes Jena 6, Quotes Al Sharpton, Self-Described ‘ThugNiggaIntellectual’ Mark Neal, and Jena Attacker Theo Shaw as Moral Authorities”;

“Why the Secret ‘Interview’ with Trayvon Martin’s Secret Girlfriend is Bogus, and His Alleged Last Cell Phone Call is Insignificant”;

“Another Trayvon Martin Supporter: Florida Atlantic U. Hate Crime Attacker Jonatha Carr Had Just been Interviewed about the Jena Six/Nuremberg-Style Rally She’s been Organizing; CBS12 News Tries to Rationalize Her Crimes”;

“Trayvon Martin’s Parents Attend New York City Riot Held on Their Behalf”;

“Associated Press and Penn Live: Arrest George Zimmerman for Killing Trayvon Martin, the Law be Damned! Let Zimmerman Prove His Innocence in Court!”

“National Review ‘Conservative’ Rich Lowry Goes to Bat for Al Sharpton in Trayvon Martin Case, Ignoring or Misrepresenting Facts of the Case”;

“Trayvon Martin Case: Real Eyewitness Supports Zimmerman’s Story, as Opposed to Lynch Mob’s Fake Eyewitnesses”;

“Barack Obama: Because Trayvon Martin was Black, and Vaguely Resembled Me, ‘All of Us Have to Do Some Soul-Searching’”;

“Federale on the Trayvon Martin Hoax: National Review’s Rich Lowry and Robert VerBruggen Seek Street Cred with Black Supremacists by Sacrificing George Zimmerman; America Needs More Zimmermans, and Fewer Lowries and VerBruggens”;

“The Trayvon Martin Hoax: Business Insider Joins Mob Seeking to Lynch George Zimmerman”;

“The Trayvon Martin Hoax: Geraldo Rivera Finally Does the Right Thing!”;

“Black Supremacist Spike Lee (‘Tawana Told the Truth!’) is Trying to Get George Zimmerman Murdered, by Tweeting His Address: The Trayvon Martin Hoax”;

“Hoax Starts to Unravel: Trayvon Martin Started Fight, and was Going to Kill George Zimmerman”;

“George Zimmerman’s Lawyer and Friend Defend Him Against Trayvon Martin Hoax, While ABC News Soldiers on, Repeating Refuted Claims”;

“First Report on Trayvon Martin’s Death One Month Ago Already Included Eyewitness Description of Martin Beating George Zimmerman, and Zimmerman Yelling ‘Help Me!’”;

“George Zimmerman: Trayvon Martin was Trying to Murder Me (Orlando Sentinel)”;

“Jesse Jackson Called for Riots on Behalf of Trayvon Martin, and North Miami Beach Senior HS Students Came Through, Ransacking a Walgreen’s”;

“Another ‘Honor Student’: Trayvon Martin was a Thug, Vandal, Burglar, Pothead and/or Drug Dealer, and Had been Suspended from School at Least 3 Times”;

“The Nation of Islam’s New Black Panther Party Offers $10,000 Bounty for the Kidnapping (or Murder?) of George Zimmerman, for Shooting Trayvon Martin”;

“Walter Williams on Profiling and the Trayvon Martin Case”;

“Barack Obama’s Ally, the Genocidal Nation of Islam’s New Black Panther Party, Calls for the Murder of George Zimmerman”;

“Trayvon Martin: Racist Terrorist Rep. Bobby Rush (Race-Chicago/Black Panthers), is Thrown Off House Floor for Donning a Hoodie, and Denouncing ‘Racial Profiling’; CBS ‘News’ Soldiers on with Race Hoax”;

“Heather MacDonald Goes Halfway on the Trayvon Martin Case, Race, and the Media”;

“I Guess Everybody Would Have Preferred George be Beaten to Death; My Son being Shot”: Video of George Zimmerman’s Father’s Exclusive Miami Herald Interview”;

“Trayvon Martin FAQ”;

“Elderly Couple Terrorized by Spike Lee Hires Attorney; Lee Simulates Humility and Humanity, in Order to Avoid Losing Millions in Court”;

“Vichycon David Frum to MSM: I’ll Support Your Trayvon Martin Hoax, if You’ll Continue Supporting Me as a ‘Conservative’”;

“Cartoonist Stephanie Eisner Gets Fired for Excessive Honesty in Racial Fairy Tale Pic Depicting Trayvon Martin Hoax”;

“Petition Demands That Suppressed UT Cartoonist Stephanie Eisner, Victim of the Racist Trayvon Martin Witch Hunt, be Reinstated!”;

“Sherlock Holmes on the Curious Case of Trayvon Martin, the State of the Legal Mechanisms in ‘the Colonies,’ and the Value of Even a Corrupt Press”;

“A Washington State Reader Writes on the Trayvon Martin Hoax, a Raceless Shooter, Readers Who Do Reporters’ Work for Them, and Seattle’s Northgate Mall”;

“Relative of George Zimmerman: George Stepped Up for Black Homeless Beating Victim Sherman Ware, When the Black Community Ignored Ware, but the Same Black Community, Including Ware’s Sister, Now Denounces Him as a ‘Racist’”;

“The Orlando Sentinel Provides a Non-Explanatory Map of the Shooting of Trayvon Martin, Highly Censored Comments, and One Typical, Black Racist Post”;

“Racist, Black L.A. Times Columnist Sandy Banks Goes to Plan B: Trayvon Martin Case ‘Transcends the issue of race’”; and

“George Zimmerman's Father: My Son is Not Racist, Did Not Confront Trayvon Martin”;

“Populist Outrage, or Racist Astroturfing? New NPR Cover Story for Trayvon Marttin Hoax Lawyer Covers Up How He Really Works”; and

“Federale on Trayvon Martin and the Second Amendment: Gun Nuts Looking to Trade Freedom for Security on Race Will Find They Lose Their Guns, in the Bargain.”