Walking into a punch- BBC style.

I'm a big fan of Mark Steyn. There's no-one in the media world I agree with more and admire so much, or who makes me laugh the way Steyn does. He styles himself a 'One-Man Global Content Provider', which is very bold but something I have come to consider not unreasonable- like so much else that he says.

Steyn is one of the (many) reasons I consider the BBC irredeemably biased for an organisation that styles itself 'impartial'. If you think about it Steyn's claim is actually far more modest than the BBC's. But the reason Steyn makes me feel the BBC are biased is that he is often attacked and labelled a right-wing hack(via SteynOnline), a doyen of populist exaggeration, which is so funny since again and again I find that the BBC report in terms diametrically opposed to Steyn's. This means that if Steyn is 'rightwing' as so many claim he is, the BBC must be 'leftwing', no?

And now I come to my examples.

Recently the BBC's Matt Frei's been reporting on an unwelcomed visit by President Bush to Ireland- but Steyn has anticipated this turn of events in his reflections on Ronald Reagan. (second story down).

-Frei says: 'The love affair between the United States and Ireland dates back to the early waves of immigration and continues to be reinforced by a mixture of shared values, folklore and nostalgia.'

Steyn says: '... the lion’s share of green cards in the annual lottery are reserved for the Irish, thanks to an artful wheeze by Ted Kennedy. Plus, if you fly there from Shannon, you get to pre-clear US immigration, a privilege extended to no other country apart from Canada. With Canada, there are compelling economic reasons for facilitating cross-border traffic. With Ireland, it’s pure sentimentality – and largely unreciprocated at that.'

-Frei says: 'St. Patrick's Day - religiously observed as a national holiday in the US - compels tens of thousands of Americans to drink green beer once a year, march to bagpipes or buy plastic shamrocks.'

Steyn says: 'Shamrock-flavoured blather is not what it once was in North America, and St Patrick’s Day has never really recovered from the “queering of the green” – the battle by Irish gays and lesbians to march as such in the parade, which has led either to its cancellation (Boston), its subversion by an alternative “inclusive” parade (New York), or its general fading as a demonstration of political muscle.'

-Frei says: 'There's the ancestral dimension. Ronald Reagan, whose forefathers were Irish Presbyterians, took Nancy to sip Guinness in a pub near their place of birth.'

Steyn says: 'Mr Reagan’s death reminds us that Bush is not the first President to be unloved in Europe.'

-While Frei luxuriates in all the details of the Irish opposition to Bush, Steyn sums it up by saying 'Mr Bush is about to touch down on the Emerald Isle for the US-EU summit, a huge waste of everyone’s time except insofar, as one Dubliner wrote to me, as it enables Dubya to be arrested and tried for war crimes at the Hague.'

But the fundamental difference between Frei and Steyn is that while Steyn makes the argument of a divergent trend between the US and Europe, Frei specifically picks out Bush as the divergent party. Steyn talks history, sociology, trends; Frei talks emotion, flashpoint, mood- and political blame.

One final contrast:

-Frei says: 'More recently there were the scenes of near hysteria and jubilation that greeted Bill Clinton on his numerous visits to the Emerald Isle.

Northern Ireland was a hot political topic during his presidency and one in which he became personally involved.'

Steyn says (reviewing Clinton's book) that Clinton would have done better to 'Shoot for more of 'The shaft of light from the dying sun through the Oval Office window caught the swell of her bosom as she slid the extra-large pepperoni across the desk. I knew it was wrong. I'd penciled in that evening for bringing peace to Northern Ireland, but what the hell, the two sides of that troubled island's sectarian conflict were separated by as deep a divide as the plunging cleavage now beckoning from her low-cut angora sweater. Ulster could wait.' " '

In case anyone thinks that Steyn is beyond the pale here, remember that Clinton did indeed interchange important meetings with international figures with important meetings with full-figured interns. Fact. Since the shallowness of the peace in Northern Ireland seems to be a great problem, isn't it worth asking (and continuing to ask, until we get a response) whether such issues merited more than the periods when Clinton's mind was not on his latest conquest or the scandal generated thereby?

Clearly Matt Frei will never even contemplate such questions. Does that make him biased?