Like numerous other Canadian bloggers categorized as ‘left leaning’, I too have been singled out and attacked on The Western Standard website in the past. That being said, I am very happy to announce that Ezra Levant’s magazine is no longer financially sustainable and is going out of print.
Of course, in today’s Globe & Mail, Levant denied that the magazine’s closure had anything to do with a downturn in sales. Instead he suggested that the Western Standard had generated…
“a tremendous amount of enthusiasm that we just weren’t able to turn quickly enough into an economic concern.”
So either Levant is employing lame rhetoric to detract from the fact that the magazine’s readership was extremely low, or he’s admitting that he’s just a shitty publisher.
Let’s face it, it’s not as if it was the New Yorker, Harpers, or any other magazine of lasting repute. They tend to stick around for a good reason, primarily because they’re actually good. The Nation, which began as an abolitionist publication, has been around since 1865 (the oldest continually published weekly in US history), and for good reason - it actually includes articles by highly respected intellectuals and journalists that produce coherent and well thought out pieces. Of course, many label it a ‘leftist’ magazine, but given that it outsells The New Republic, The Weekly Standard, and the National Review, I would assume that it’s doing something right.
Levant claims that the closure of The Western Standard doesn’t reflect a downturn in conservatism in Canada, only that the state of print media is tumultuous. Personally, I never found it to be a traditionally conservative magazine, only a rag that, without the existence of the post 9/11 fear state, would never have existed in the first place. It was, in truth, a Canadian print version of Fox News in many ways – loud and empty.
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Well no matter the reasons, I would assume that the print industry would still be competetive. The difference I think between this blog and that magazine is the cost-per-issue, whereby on the blog it is zero and for the magazine it is not. I think that its as simple as that, you get people who are great opinion wriiters but not very good business people, and instead of assuming that the country is suddendly turning left, it is simply bad business.
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Matt, you just made my week! Now if only Sunmedia would go tits up.
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sunmedia goin tits up,i like that idea
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Having had taken issue with that rag for a while, I am most pleased to see that they were unable to maintain a base that was handed to them. Levant is a bandwagon jumper who served the fanatical conservative base that was given a voice post-9/11, and disguised it all as “journalism”.
I completely agree with your comment about TWS being Fox in print (i’ve often made the comparison…albeit in direction only), but with one note. At least Fox has viewers.
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Hi Matt. You disappoint me, again. Last year, you opposed our decision to publish the Danish Mohammed cartoons. Surely, of all people, you’d have known the importance of freedom of expression, especially dissenting opinions — not to mention the importance of a secular society that follows civil law, not theocratic edicts. I would have thought that an independent musician would have sympathized with an independent magazine — if not for our substance, than for our right to be contrary to the official line. But you put your ideological identity first: we were conservative, so you were opposed to us.
Today’s post by you is even more disappointing: you celebrate the silencing of a contrary voice. That’s not liberal in any sense of the word. You can disagree with us; want to rebut us; challenge us; even despise us. But to celebrate our end? Are you really that afraid of different points of view?
I happen to think you serve up nothing but leftist cliches, but I wouldn’t be happy if you were stopped for any reason other than that I had convinced you of your wrongness. Don’t you think you should tolerate ideas other than your own?
God-forbid, if you should ever be silenced (especially by threats of violent censorship, as we were) I hope that I believe strongly enough in freedom, diversity and open-mindedness that I would put aside my policy differences with you to stand up for your right to be wrong.
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Well Ezra, I actually have been threatened for my views, and long before you were.
Regarding the cartoon fiasco, as I said at the time, your publishing of the cartoons was a publicity stunt, not some championing of freedom of expression. You needed the attention and got it. Unfortunately it wasn’t enough to sustain the neo-conservative bandwagon jumping drivel that you published.
Your website is replete with borderline racist and degenerative remarks from low minded individuals who routinely display the inability to express themselves in any fashion that is at all productive with regards to civil discourse. Your magazine was no different – it was, as have many things been these last six years, the product of mind-numbing ridiculousness that pandered to those whose xenophobic tendencies provide them comfort because they lack any sort of humanistic fortitude.
As for my ‘celebrating’ the end of your magazine – as far as I’m concerned, trees will be saved. That fact alone is enough to celebrate it.
As for my line of work, which is in a far worse state of affairs than yours, I’ve been able to last in this country going on 14 years. My last record debuted at #1. I must be doing something right. And if I were to fail, I would be man enough to take it like a man rather than blame the industry.
In closing – am I afraid of different points of view? Not at all. Am I afraid of the wagon train of reckless sycophants that magazines such as yours championed because they’re more comfortable being afraid and close-minded than actually examining why they’re afraid in the first place? Absolutely. Because that only leads to one end, and it is one that is counter to the very principles that you so deceptively like to lean on in rebuttals.
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Oh, and as for a secularist society - would you like to poll your readers on their stance on same sex marriage and see what the results are, and what the majority lean on as the reason they might believe it’s wrong?
Save your ’secularist’ rhetoric. Your entire base is steeped in the Judeo-Christian ethic. Without them you wouldn’t have had a magazine in the first place and the conservative movement in this country would have no base whatsoever.
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I can’t add anything to what Matt has said.
With apologies to Edward R Murrow, good night and good riddance.
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Matt, I wish you would stick to music. Your response is anti-intellectual. I’m not just talking about the clutter of personal insults and some self-congratulation about how awesome you are. I wonder if you’ve ever even read our magazine. Every issue featured a secular atheist, Karen Selick, going head to head with a Christian conservative, Michael Coren. It was great reading — half the time I didn’t know who to cheer for. That’s what debate looks like, Matt — not your chorus of ditto-heads heaping insults at anyone who deviates from your point of view.
I made the mistake of thinking that you were more than a Laurie David or Sheryl Crow — celebrities with intellectual inferiority complexes, desperate to prove to the world they were more than just pretty faces. I see that your blog is not really about ideas, or debate, but a vanity project — to show that you’re more than just someone strumming a guitar. But it’s fake: anyone who celebrates the closure of a magazine is intellectually closed. You think you’re modern and leftist, but it was the Nazis who celebrated the burning of books seventy years ago. Your cheering of our demise bears a closer resemblance to that nihilism than you know.
Good luck, Matt. I think I’ll go back to listening to your music, and ignoring your politics.
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Levant is known for blaming others, so why should the failure of his magazine be any different? It was low quality pap, good riddance.
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“Chorus of ditto-heads”.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I certainly am fully capable of formulating my own opinion and acting upon it. My loathing of people like yourself, who inevitably cry “FREE SPEECH, I AM BEING PERSECUTED” with aims that have nothing to do with such, does not come from a sheep atmosphere. That, Mr Levant, is my own judgement. One who made his living from a “ditto-head” base would do wise not to…how do they say….piss in your own pot. I can browse through the online publication of TWS and find the comment section full of this “debate” you talk about, this masterful “oh my goodness, which side am I going to be on” great debate…..and you have the nerve to come here and call us sheep? Tsk tsk.
I am completely aware that if you are unable to sustain your “magazine” it falls down to two things. That your circulation has dropped so low as to make it pointless to even print to put out in churches anymore….or you as a publisher are unable to meet the demands of making deadlines and keeping current. Feel free to talk circles all you’d like though.
Hitler comparisons? Really? You have to be kidding me. Get a better way to make a point, and get thee to a rabbi. There are plenty of other rags that have been celebrated only for finally ending, and the list includes a great number of anti-semetic rags through the years. Is it wrong to celebrate an anti-semetic magazine downfall? If not, why is yours any different? Just because there was a tide of hatred and fear that rushed through the western world does not make it acceptable. It makes you a shrewd businessman, being able to see such a horrible niche and filling it….albeit for a short time.
You, Mr Levant, are a bandwagon jumper. You rode the xenophobia are far as it would take you, and the money ran out. Or else the tide shifted and your base turned. But one of those two things happened. And one of us has already formulated her opinion. So that leaves you. And it’s a damn shame trying to talk circles around yourself.
So good luck, Mr Levant. I’d leave you on the same note you left Mr Good by saying that I’d continue meeting you in some other venue/format, and ignoring your politics, but your ethics disgust me and I find your morals to be disputable. And I haven’t even gotten to your politics. Suffice it to say, we don’t travel in the same circles.
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Quoting Ezra Levant:
Do I even bother?
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I remember attending the Fraser Institute student conferences in the mid-90s. Ezra Levant, Jason Kenney, Rob Anders were all regular and rabid attendees. They were also, if I remember, fairly unpleasant people, regardless of political stripe, that I wouldn’t want around my sister.
The Western Standard promoted the same bitter and unsavoury viewpoints that most small “c” Alberta conservatives neither agree with nor promote.
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I read the western standard once, it was everything I hate about Alberta in print form. In that issue they slandered Tommy Douglas of all people, branding him a nazi or communist or some such buzzword. The rag seemed to have a hate on for everything that makes Canada something worthwhile, like they were bitter it isn’t the 51st state.
Good ridance you homophobic, spoiled shit stains.
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Yeah, I have no problem with people holding beliefs be they liberal, conversative, or otherwise, that are sincere and based on principle. However, there’s no place for this kind of red-baiting that Levant engages in.
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This comment section has activated Godwin.
It originated on Usenet, but is still fully applicable to website comment sections. For the ultimate bit of hilariousness….go here and scroll down to number 8 in the first section. First paragraph. And remember that Mr Levant is a libertarian.
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There’s nothing to discuss here really. If Mr. Levant wants to talk about intellectual debate, where is the coverage in his magazine, or on his website, about rendition, Black Sites, Blackwater, the scandal involving the CF handing over detainees to be tortured by local Afghan authorities, and so forth? If the Western Standard did anything, it preached to a very small choir, one whose voice is shrinking. I have no time for magazines or publishers that talk of Albertan sepratism, just as I have no time for Quebecois magazines or websites that do the same.
The high point of the publication was the printing of the Danish Cartoons, which was done solely for publicity.
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I would also be interested to see The Western Standard website’s unique daily hit count, as well as the number of registered members for the site.