I was in Eugene, Ore., earlier this month and came away feeling that Chapel Hill and Carrboro have nothing on that town’s crazy lefty population. But one guy apparently found a way to be conservative and even successful in a business more associated with left-wingers than patriotic veterans:
He was a spy, a helicopter pilot, a patriot and a right-wing conservative who spent his career screening art films for Eugene’s liberal elite.
Michael Lamont, owner of the Bijou Art Cinemas, was a private man who didn’t exactly hide his views but didn’t exactly trumpet them either, longtime friends and employees say.
“He was someone very far to the right to show left-leaning films. There’s some ambiguity there that I never penetrated,†said Lois Wadsworth, a retired film critic and arts editor.
But even the reporter and Lamont’s friends can’t help taking some shots. According to the story:
Gone is a man of enormous talents and contradictions, say many who knew him.
As a young man growing up in El Paso, Texas, he was a “genius†with a perfect grade record, according to his sister, Michaele Rychetsky, of Redmond.
One of those contradictions, I guess, was being conservative and smart.
And a longtime employee had this to say:
He was a conundrum because he loved art films, and he was this other guy. He tried not to associate his goofy rantings with the Bijou, but he was very politically active,†said Louise Thomas, who knew Lamont for two decades and continues to manage the Bijou.
Yeah, he was a great guy and even kept his “goofy” ideas to himself. Now, that’s a friend.
On the other hand, I have to say that Eugene’s lefties should be complimented for not boycotting Lamont’s business once they learned of his politics. I’m not sure the same would happen here.
