The Red Deer Report

The day after my date with Amos Loewenstein, I must have checked my email, like, twenty thousand times to see if he had sent me a message. But nothing. It was June 3rd, 2005, and I was anxious about Amos, and what I was starting to feel for him. Rather than simply obsess, I decided to obsess productively: I decided to read the box of Red Deer Reports he had given me. That way, I could impress him with my friendly devotion, and with my knowledge of his product. And I could maybe even convince him to let me write for him. Actually, I had previously pitched stories to the Red Deer Report, but the Report’s snotty editor, Colin Lampoonovitch, had rejected my ideas in a most dismissive manner. My pride would never allow me to approach him again -- but I tried to put my pissed-offedness about that aside and give the magazine a fair shot. It meant so much to Amos, and Amos was so damn cute.

Fuck!

Anyway, I sat down that day, and read. And read. And read. And the Red Deer Report really needed help. Oh, they had a famous and entertaining columnist, Dirk Weiss -- a very funny and internationally successful Canadian who hated gays and Muslims and spoke with a fake British accent. He had previously written for the National Highbrow Tabloid, which is how most Canadians came to know him. I knew Amos must have been paying him a fortune, but if he brought readers to the Report, then what the heck. The other writers at the Report, though, left much to be desired. First of all, there was Brit Balding, a pretentious, nutty, homophobic Brit who had managed to make a career for himself in Canada -- one he would never have managed in a country with actual competition, such as England or the U.S. Balding had a crappy TV show on Canada’s Christian channel, sandwiched in between the 700 Club and reruns of the Muppet Show. Most of Balding’s ramblings seemed to focus on how allowing gays to marry would bring about the certain downfall of Western civilization. Apart from Weiss and Balding, the only other noteworthy Report contributors were Rob Johnson, a very nice fellow who actually could write and actually had important things to say...when he wasn’t being homophobic (what was up with all the homophobes? Amos wasn’t like that!), and Kristi Morning, daughter-in-law of Chadwick Morning, a famous Alberta politician who was a Christian who also hated gays. (WTF?) Kristi Morning’s columns were all about teaching her children to pray and garbage like that. Urgh. Seriously, as I read the Report, I kept thinking, "I have to find a diplomatic way to tell Amos this magazine needs help." I mean, there was no question Canada needed -- and needs -- more conservative media. But if it’s nonsense conservative media, what good is that? What good? It just allows the left to point and say, "What a bunch of nuts! Don’t vote for them!" In fact, the high point of each Red Deer Report I looked at was the "Letter from the Publisher" that Amos penned. It was the only part of the magazine with common sense in it, and the only part of the magazine that wasn’t permeated with fear and hatred. Amos needed non-homphobic conservatives to write for him, conservatives who would write about the war on terror and the importance of a freer market and so forth. What was up with all the Christian nuts?

And then I remembered, "Oh yeah, Red Deer is in Alberta." That’s what was up.
I kept wondering -- how could someone as smart and cultivated and, well, Jewish, as Amos Loewenstein tolerate these people? How?

I didn’t have much time to dwell on that question before I saw, in my inbox, a message from Loewenstein, late in the day of June 4th, 2005. I was so excited to see it. I was so excited to see his name there.

"Hi Jane," it read. "It was great having fun with you in Toronto this week. I’m back in Alberta now. Hope to see you soon, Amos."

That was it?
And there was that word again, "fun."