We don't have cooties, for goodness sake!

Like Colby Cosh, I'm also glad that Sam Mikes has decided to subscribe to the magazine that I work for, although he does add an amusing story of how people fall all over themselves to say that they don't read "Alberta Report". I'm used to that. My pastor, for example, reads several news periodicals and newspapers and quotes them in sermons, but he hasn't shown any evidence from the pulpit that he has ever got around to reading the magazine that I work for.

I can top that. When I first started freelancing for B.C. Report as the conservative magazine then was, I was still writing for The Ubyssey during an era when the latter publication was edited by ultraliberal anarchists, feminists, gays and lesbians. Once in a blue moon, I covered the same subject for both periodicals!

I remember once that one of my editors, who was a friend, was quite perturbed that I hadn't lead with the criticism from a leftist critic when the news, in my opinion, was what the speaker was saying during his visit. (The critical material was there in the story, but I had it further down in the story so it would make better sense to the reader when he was reading it. Mr. X said A, but y says that A is wrong because...)

Getting back to that story, I remember that the editor was a little perturbed that I had "buried" what he felt was the news. He said "Rick, this reads like something I would read in B.C. Report!"

"Thanks!" I replied, smiling.

The Ubyssey got their digs in one year by hiding the fact from me that their annual spoof parody issue was to be of B.C. Report, with my "work" prominently featured. I only found out when the spoof was laid out in the newspaper. Little did they know that my new colleagues at the Report thought that parts of the spoof were pretty funny. I wasn't offended...but I did enjoy pointing out various places where they had made errors in copying the Report's style and layout.