MARK STEYN LAMBERTED

Mark Steyn has some fun at Cate Blanchett's expense:

The other day, an admiring profile of Cate Blanchett ("Green before it was hip, she cites Al Gore and David de Rothschild as heroes and believes that leaf blowers 'sum up everything that is wrong with the human race,' " etc.) revealed that, in order to give her new mansion as small an environmental footprint as possible, she requested that the plumbing be constructed to "allow them to drink their own waste water."

The embedded quotes are from a feature story on Blanchett in W. Steyn continues:

Miss Blanchett and her husband have paid their architect thousands of dollars to design a system whereby the bodily waste goes down the toilet, gets whisked by pipeline through the walk-in closet, over the balcony, down the wall, back in through the rec room, and up into the wet bar directly into the soda siphon.

For humerous effect Steyn is taking liberties with the truth: waste water is obviously not going to be recycled from the toilets to the soda siphon. Computer nerd Tim Lambert can't quite understand this, accusing Steyn of factual error. As proof Lambert links to a Sydney Morning Herald article -- incorrectly referred to by Lambert as the Sydney Sun Herald -- providing this excerpt:

The Oscar-winning actor and her playwright husband, Andrew Upton, are splashing out almost $1.5 million in renovations to create an environmentally friendly home.

A massive 20,000-litre water tank, high-tech solar panelling, low energy lighting and grey water recycling will be among the features of the Hunters Hill home.

Lambert claims this totally discredits Steyn:

Contrary to Steyn's belief, grey water recycling does not involve drinking urine, because:

Grey water does not contain urine -- it is the water from showers and laundry.

It is treated to remove impurities.

You use it for watering the garden, flushing the toilet, and clothes washing. Greywater outlets must be labelled with "WARNING DO NOT DRINK".

This ignores that Steyn's column is based on the W feature story which claims Blanchett's home will be plumbed so as to "allow them to drink their own waste water." Lambert isn't finished "fact-checking", however, also taking exception to this from Steyn:

Sheryl Crow, meanwhile, recently proposed that when it comes to, ah, other waste products, her environmentally conscious fans should only use a single sheet of bathroom tissue per visit.

Lambert claims "Crow was making a joke". Crow's toilet paper limitation strategy was first mooted at her blog, with the BBC and numerous other media outlets treating the proposal as genuine.


So here again we have Lambert employing fact-bending in attempting to discredit -- I was going to say resorting to but with this guy it's the method of choice. Anyway, it's a classic example of Lamberting.