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The infamous Western Standard "Libranos" cover from 2005. (FPinfomart: Restricted, Canada.com: Restricted) |
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Over dinner last week, a journalist friend and I
commiserated over how boring our profession had become. A generation ago,
newsrooms were full of cranky rageaholics with mysterious contacts in low
places, a bad reputation with the copy girls and a fifth of hard stuff in the
top drawer. These days, we tend toward boring middle-aged Google-jockeys who
drink Diet Coke, eat low-carb and spend our leisure hours updating family photo
montages on Facebook. Over my decade-long career in the business, I've worked
with exactly two people who made me think "If I write a novel, this guy will be
in it." One of them is named Ezra Levant.
Not that Ezra is some boozy old-schooler. Just the opposite: He's a
35-year-old Hummer-driving neo-con who peppers his rapid-fire verbiage with a
steady stream of ironic, self-deprecating bon mots. He's funny enough to get a
laugh out of you in the first 15 seconds of any conversation. Then he hits you
with his catch phrase, "I don't want to bore you, but …" and spends the next
five minutes giving you the smooth sell. If Ezra had become an investment banker
or an oil field entrepreneur (he's from Calgary), he'd be filthy rich.
But that was never Ezra's goal. Since his salad years in the early 1990s,
he's been plugging away as a conservative ideologue in one form or another. Last
Friday, he announced that his most recent venture, the Western Standard
magazine, would cease print publication. Having already reinvented himself
professionally half a dozen times, Ezra will have to do it all again.
When I first met Ezra, I found him both intimidating and freakish. It was
1999, and the two of us were working together on the editorial board of the
then-fledgling National Post. Having recently graduated from law school and a
short-lived career as a tax lawyer, I saw editorials as legal briefs with less
Latin -- which is why everything I wrote then was so boring. Ezra, on the other
hand, had just come off a stint as the Reform Party's Question Period
strategist: He knew that a good political idea didn't mean anything unless you
could wrap it around an attention-getting stunt, slogan or human-interest angle.
While railing against the anti-tobacco messaging in the Hollywood film The
Insider, he dug up dirt on the story's activist star, suggesting he was a
wife-beater and liquor-store thief. In a column denouncing the squishy politics
of the Canadian Jewish Congress, he wrote "The J doesn't belong in the CJC
anymore." When he found out the Liberals were doling out large grants to
left-wing gay groups, he wrote a column mocking the "Millesbian Fund." I was
appalled. But as the Post's far wiser editor at the time put it, "Ezra is good
coffee."
While I spent my days writing wonky editorials, Ezra carved out a mini-empire
from the next cubicle, writing incendiary columns, broadcasting a talk show on
the Internet, doing TV and delivering back-channel political advice to the
Stockwell Day camp. I marvelled at his ability to multitask.
But Ezra's hyperactivity got him into trouble, too. And his professional life
has been full of uphill battles he's waged with moxie but ultimately lost. In
early-2001, while Day was getting massacred in the media, Ezra left the Post to
become his communications director. Within months, he was forced out, the victim
of a misguided spat with a dissident Canadian Alliance MP. Shortly thereafter,
Ezra won the Canadian Alliance party nomination for Calgary Southwest -- then
stood up unsuccessfully to Stephen Harper when the newly elected party leader
selected the riding for himself. Then he picked up the pieces and became
founding publisher of the biweekly Western Standard, into which he's poured his
heart and soul these last three-and-a-half years. Now that's failed, too.
In truth, the Standard probably wouldn't have survived half as long if it
didn't have Ezra to champion it. Despite the obvious commercial risks -- the
Standard was built on the ashes of the Alberta Report, a similarly targeted
Western conservative publication featuring many of the same writers -- Ezra
convinced rightwing "ethical investors" to put money into his project. He threw
amazing anniversary parties for the magazine at Conrad Black's house in Toronto.
He organized Caribbean cruises, with conservative-minded passengers paying top
dollar to schmooze with the magazine's writers. He convinced the
English-speaking world's best columnist, Mark Steyn, to write for every issue.
And he made noise in the patented Ezra way with some genuinely daring moves --
such as the infamous "Libranos" cover in 2005 (artfully melding the
Adscam-tainted Liberals and The Sopranos) and the publication of the Mohammad
cartoons in 2006. He even dared to challenge the sainted Maher Arar when the
rest of the Canadian media was taking his tale at face value.
In the end, though, keeping the Standard afloat was impossible. Once you
flipped beyond the provocative cover stories and the strong investigative
reporting, the rest of the magazine was an awkward mix of regional news stories
about oil and agriculture, and syndicated rightwing columns trumpeting
libertarian ideology. However skilled the editors and writers, this mix of
partisan and parochial meant there was not one but two reasons for urban
Maclean's types to dismiss the Standard. East of the Prairies, few read it.
All this bloodless market analysis notwithstanding, I was still upset to hear
news of the magazine's demise -- and not just because I felt bad for Ezra, whom
I am now happy to call a friend. In many ways, Ezra and his magazine serve as
metaphors for red-meat conservatism itself in this country: feisty,
iconoclastic, resourceful and clever, but ultimately marginalized by an eastern
Canadian intellectual establishment still beholden to the left-wing dogmas and
anti-Western antipathies of the Trudeau era.
As the Canadian population shifts Westward, taboos surrounding Medicare melt
away and the electorate becomes comfortable with Stephen Harper's Conservatives,
the intellectual climate in this country is slowly changing. Though it hasn't
changed fast enough to save the Standard, I hope Ezra won't give up the good
fight entirely. When I met the guy eight years ago, I thought he was a maniac.
Older and wiser, I realize that we need folks like him: Like every ideological
movement, conservatism requires its august philosophers, smooth-talking
politicians and savvy strategists. But at the end of the day, you'll never
change the country without at least one or two guys who know how to make good
coffee.
jkay@nationalpost.com
Illustration:
• Black & White Photo: Western
Standard Magazine / The infamous Western Standard "Libranos" cover from
2005.
Idnumber: 200710090051
Edition: National
Story
Type: Column
Length: 1078 words
Keywords: AUTOMOBILE INDUSTRY;
AUTOMOBILES
Illustration Type: P
PRODUCTION FIELDS
NDATE: 20071009
NUPDATE: 20071009
DOB: 20071009
POSITION: 1
