Oh, Ezzie!
I just got this email:
Dear Western Standard reader,
I’m sorry to report that we’ve had to shut down the print edition of the Western Standard. Despite nearly four valiant years of trying, we were unable to make ends meet financially. I regret that means we will be unable to fulfill our oustanding subscription obligations, and for that I’m very sorry.
It is my hope that we will be able to continue with an Internet presence, but it is unlikely that we will be able to revive our print edition.
Here is a note that I posted to our website about this change
Please accept my gratitude for your support over the years, and my apologies for not being able to continue publishing.
Yours truly,
Ezra Levant,
Publisher
Incidentally [cough], this is what Mark Steyn had to say about it in The Corner, which is when I heard the news:
The Corner - Brother, Can You Spare A Dime?
Last night I heard the news that my pals at The Western Standard in Canada were closing up shop. If you think the media scene’s biased here, try spending three months up north or in Europe. And, if you think it can’t happen here, wait till they re-introduce the Fairness Doctrine and then move on to regulating the Internet. Alternative information networks take time to build and they need support.
All of us hate having to do the PBS thing and tout the free Bill Moyers snood with a $200 donation for a cheerless 20 minutes in front of silent phone banks before the fine quality programming resumes (the 1983 Peter, Paul and Mary reunion concert). But the sooner you chip in to NRO the sooner the fine quality programming will resume (the 1999 Jonah, Derb and JPod reunion concert).
Well, I would never subject any of you to a Peter, Paul and Mary concert (I wouldn’t recognize one if I saw one, anyway), but if this isn’t an alternative information network, I don’t know what is. [cough]
PS, just look at these exchange rates!
October 19th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Since this is a Canadian post, I just thought I’d let you know what I’ve been doing today.
Having spent a few days actually working reasonably hard, I thought I’d wander over to the Ox for a lunchtime sharpener. I fell into conversation with a fifty-ish logistician from Hamilton, Ontario who’s been over here for a week doing ancestorly things with his daughter. Nice enough in his way, but I found the casual contempt for Americans really a bit much - the easy assumption of cultural and intellectual superiority came particularly hard when he started impressing people with how well he knows the Blues scene in Chicago, which the last time I looked wasn’t actually in Canada anyway.
So there we were, him talking about how Americans don’t know about or care about a wider world, try to impose their values on societies about which they know nothing etc etc etc. People like that can find a ready audience among Leftwards types in Friday afternoon pubs, it seems. So I asked him what he thought of Stephen Harper, and he astonished me by saying what a pleasant change it made to have a genuine leader in charge, one who takes his own decisions, rather than be stuck with someone like Chretien who just chased poll ratings.
He then went on to being not at all nice about Les Quebecois, which I thought was a bit off, what with today being the feast of St Jean de Brebeuf and his companions and all, and with les Quebecoises having some of the hottest jeunes filles on the planet as well. I thought he could have taken a more measured view. Then he started talking about ice hockey, and, since he’d used the name Gretsky, I thought I’d throw in the only other ice hockey name I know and so I said “Lemieux” and he went off for about 5 minutes about the silky skills of said Quebecois superstar.
The impression overall was of a bloke who’d got into the habit of coming out with the customary pieties/platitudes when meeting people for the first time - he immediately assumed I shared his view of Americans as ignorant xenophobes (which is in my experience the exact opposite of the truth) - but who after a couple of beers gained the confidence to say what he really though. Odd really. Poor sod.
For sports fans, I ought to mention that if England beat South Africa at rugby union tomorrow we may well see every Scottish fan’s darkest nightmare of a headline: “England retains World Cup”. One can hardly wait.
October 19th, 2007 at 1:26 pm
You’re a prince.