Standard procedure
By Frank Moher
I felt some sympathy for Ezra Levant around the shuttering of his Western Standard magazine, until I received this item of boilerplate e-mail:
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 [...]
He’s too sexy for his shirt
By Frank Moher
I was as excited as I know you must have been to receive a note from Ezra Levant, publisher of The Western Standard, announcing that the new Mark Steyn T-shirts are in — and just in time for Christmas.
“Do you love our columnist Mark Steyn as much as I do?” Mr. Levant writes. [...]
The Streyn is showing
By Frank Moher
Here at backofthebook.ca we’ve done a rigorous scientific study and determined that Mark Steyn has used the personal pronoun “I” precisely 1,546,784 times since beginning his “Books” column for Maclean’s. We’d provide documentation of our rigorous scientific study, but this is the internet, so we don’t have to. But if, say, our figures [...]
We are not The Walrus. (Or Maclean’s. Or, god-save-us, the Western Standard.)
By Frank Moher
Does a magazine’s title determine its chances of success?
It doesn’t seem to. The Walrus, having weathered that not-paying-freelancers-on-time thing, seems to be doing all right, despite being named . . . The Walrus. And despite being . . . dull. (The Walrus reminds me of nothing so much as The New Yorker in [...]