Steyn Wars: Bloggers Bummed By Moon

With the US economic drama taking up all of the headlines, I was remiss in looking at the Canadian news for a while. Lo and behold, the human rights deal has boiled over again with the latest episode of Steyn Wars.

Yesterday, Mark Steyn showed up at an Ontario legislature meeting looking into the behavior of government agencies. Sounds nice, but let's be real: who cops the cops?

Anyway, Steyn made an appearance and said that human rights commissions should be abolished because they trample upon a free people's ultimate freedom: speech.

All fine, and to be honest, nothing new. While I think it's a good thing to have someone like Steyn keeping the pressure on (and let's face it, he doesn't have to; the human rights gurus must be wondering when he'll take his bestselling book money and disappear), it will be a cold day in hell before the government dissolves an entire branch of itself. If the government can be likened to a human body, then asking it to dissolve the human rights bureaucracies at the Federal level and in each province would be like asking a man to cut off all of his fingers and toes. Ain't gonna happen.

Still, yesterday did provide one piece of comedy: Dr. Richard Moon slammed the free speech crowd, to the chagrin of anyone who used his November report as ammunition for saying that the commissions must go. The National Post:

Richard Moon, the University of Windsor law professor who last fall became a darling of right-wing free speech advocates when he recommended scrapping the federal human rights hate-speech law, on Monday lashed out at his admirers.

He accused them of launching a "smear campaign" against human rights commissions and "baseless personal attacks" against their staff.

"I urge the committee not to be taken in by these individuals. They don't care about the truth. They make stuff up," he said in a submission to an Ontario government committee reviewing the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario.

Ah, the old liar-liar-pants-on-fire approach. How I miss it. Grammar school was such fun.

I hate to say it (well, no I don't), but...I told you so. Here's me, back in November, after reading Moon's report:

Moon's peace treaty isn't bad. If he had stopped typing after saying that Section 13 should be scrapped, I would have been on board. But the second he remembered who he is (and who he's working for) I got off the train. Telling papers what to print, and who to write stories about, is how we got into this mess in the first place.

See, here's the thing. Did you really expect Dr. Moon to enjoy the atta-boys from the free speech crowd? After submitting his report, he must have thought that was that. Imagine his horror when bloggers - bloggers! - began using his name to prove their cause was just. The man's a university law professor. He must have taken fifteen hot showers to wash the heebie-jeebies from his skin after hearing that people with emoticons for signatures were quoting him in the footnotes.

More from the Post:

In an interview, Prof. Moon said he was initially "perplexed" by his invitation, given that his expertise is not with Ontario's Human Rights Code, nor the Tribunal that adjudicates complaints.

"Why invite me? It didn't make any sense," Prof. Moon said. He initially declined, but accepted after hearing Mr. Steyn, author of a controversial book excerpt that led to three human rights hate speech complaints against Maclean's magazine, would also appear.

He said he also felt obliged to publicly rebut the claims of personal malfeasance by CHRC staff, of which he found no evidence in his own research, and which are often repeated by commentators who cite him admiringly as an authority.

The invitation "made me realize that there is serious interest, and maybe this smear campaign against the commissions generally has taken hold to some extent. Why else invite me?"

If the Post's story is accurate, then this is a scream. A scream. Let's take it one by one: The man admits having no expertise on the Ontario Human Rights Code, yet shows up when a celebrity declares he is going to attend, then admits that he felt obliged to refute a smear campaign against people that hired him last year, though the article quotes him as saying, "I'm hoping to return to obscurity." Uh-huh. Just as he was until Steyn walked on stage.

Even better, the Post has it that Moon only realized "there is serious interest" in Canada's human rights commissions after being invited to Ontario, though last year he was asked to write a report about the CHRC and was paid for his services. That would have sounded like pretty serious interest to me. Honestly, did the man think the CHRC wanted him to investigate their raison d'être merely for the hell of it?

So now I get what all the hoo-haw is about. Note to Mark Steyn and his blogger friends: the only reason people are taking this seriously now is because your smear campaign has taken hold "to some extent." Way to go, jerks.

There's a punchline to all of this. Dr. Moon showed up to clear the CHRC's good name, yet only the National Post quotes him as saying anything. In fact, the other major papers don't even let you know he was in the vicinity. For the Ottawa Citizen, it's "Moon who?" For the Toronto Sun, it's "What Moon, where?" Even the Toronto Star hasn't seen the Moon since it don't know when.

Who does let you know that Moon was around town and then quotes him so he can have his say? The bloggers.

Funny.