The VERY Curious Case of Conrad Black
If you strip all the venom against someone so velvety arrogant (and perhaps with some cause), the case against Conrad Black, for me, has always been more about him than the law.
In a 9-0 decision of the U.S. Supreme Court (including the Democrat appointed liberal law reviewers) Lord Black’s fate was changed in a heartbeat. U.S. Prosecutors Eric Sussman and Patrick Fitzgerald should hang their heads in shame for the political hunt (they’re both registered Democrats–a popular target of Lord Black) they engaged in. Those charges were dubious from the beginning. Without getting too complicated, in fact to make it quite easy to understand, Lord Black was vilified for what essentially boils down to moderately raiding a cookie jar housed in a home that is situated in a quadrant of a city which he, and only he, built.
If I were on the Board of Directors of Hollinger and Black came along, bag in hand, loaded with $60 million or even $160 million, I’d ask if he was interested in taking one of the planes as well.
He made the company billions. Without him, Radler would have been merely a very good newspaper executive, likely on his own. Contrast Black’s performance of massively enriching his company with REAL MONEY, and delivering to stockholders a busty bottom line on every quarterly report, with people like Ebbers, Madoff and Lay–all of whom belong/ed in jail.
Notwithstanding this, Lord Black’s wife, writer Barbara Amiel, cannot seem to understand why people find them intolerable (more her than him). To collect her beloved Connie from prison, she arrived, resplendent, um…in fish net stockings (the picture has now gone viral on the internet) and smirking from ear to ear. No, I’m not kidding.
Oh well, Lord Black is now free to roam his palatial estate in Florida and to live his life as a free man. The court in the review will most likely release him. And then he’ll be off to spend another few million fighting the IRS, who are essentially wasting American tax dollars on trying to collect from a British citizen, who never lived in the U.S. as a resident.
Did Black do anything wrong? Of course, but in this regard a hefty fine would have sufficed.
And on one personal matter of interest, I’d LOVE to bump into the CTV’s Paula Todd, who thoroughly embarrassed herself and her network the day Black was convicted. Her glee over Lord Black’s incarceration was palpable (if not nauseating) and her review of the charges (she’s a lawyer) was a textbook case of allowing personal hatred for someone to get in the way of impartially telling the part of the story that demanded, well, impartiality. She was, and remains, a pathetic example of the East Coast elitist media. Several emails to her, from that time, remain unanswered.
Letting Black go is not only right, but just.
Regardless of how much you loathe him–or in particular, the Lady, sometimes, wearing black…
There was a staement that Conrad Black’s attorney stated that he and Amiel should be allowed to return to Toronto becase she has some kind of condition that makes her slightly intolerable to sunlight and because of that, she can’t live in Florida.
So what would be wrong with them settling in Minnesota or even down there in Washington State?
I think the irritation towards Black is more to do with his trademark arrogance and the fact that he had caused alot of grief. He’s also one who figures he is Nobility. He doesn’t seem to be humbled. That
“Lord” label is something he personally wanted, it wasn’t awarded
because of his lineage or accomplishments within the UK.
He’s a perfect example of the “corporate boardroom” guy. Always business, but doesn’t seem to much regard for other people. I’ve run to many of them, but others who are wealthy, but down to earth.
One thing about the IRS. If you did business out of the United States even though you’re not a citizen, they will get you.
Think of this Old Boy, Black is no Jimmy Pattison.
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He is not Jimmy, without question. Pattison remains one of my favorite people. It doesn’t matter where or when I see him, he’s always willing to sit and chat and always remembers to say tell me to say ‘Hi’ to my old man for him. (Jimmy used to patronize Dad’s steakhouses throughout B.C. in the , 60s, 70s and early 80s)
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Didn’t appreciate Mark Kelley’s hate-filled tirade about Black on CBC Friday night, especially since, as you so rightly put it, it was on my dime. You would think professional reporters would love Black’s confusing, controversial and quite vocal life; lots of material to work with! Instead, they work up a personal angle and lose their credibility and all perspective. There are not many more unpleasant things on my nice TV than smug, liberal media types telling us Canadians what we are supposed to think.
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Complete agreement.
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Babs has never been very good at playing second fiddle. She cut quite the drama queen rug at Maclean’s abg in the day, from the stories i have heard.
Still, there is good value in providing the chattering classes with such an interestign target. As for Lord Black, vendetta from the fed prosecutors (in the Age of Enron) is probably the word, as well as grasping opportunism from board members such as H. Kissinger (wow, there’s an unholy union!). Still, his “fees” and the structure of same do raise questions of governance issues, at least in my mind. He should have talked to Frank Stronachs peeps before heading out on his own!
At any rate, it will be interesting to how this all plays out as well as seeing if Black gets his Canadian citizensgip baclk. Would that back the PM into a corner, or what??
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Hardly. I think with Black’s rarely reported generosity (he donated entire wings of hospitals) I think the PM could easily do it. Chretien was the one who embarrassed himself in the affair that had Black giving up his citizenship (a huge mistake). Besides, Black is largely exonerated. The laws that landed him in jail have been essentially extinguished by the USSC.
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I forgive Conrad Black for his sometimes odd and materialistic ways because he gave us the National Post, which flabbergasted the Main Stream Media, a sort of Family Compact of media, both print and electric, that ruled the airwaves and the pulp press without competition for so many years. Like many of the very rich, he is sometimes shallow and callous and unthinking about the poor and those less blest, or less lucky or too conscientious, but he loves history and knows how to write, very well, and is not afraid to use the English language as it should be used.
Carry on Conrad (and Alex).
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Alex, can’t let you off that easy. What about the, nowadays, ever present video of his Lordship carting the evidence out the ‘trades’ entrance? He’s guilty of obstruction if nothing else. & if nothing else, why the late night maneuvers? Is obstruction a fine, i don’ think so.
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Sure, let’s work this backwards. In the same state of Illinois, an equivalent charge of murder in the second, with two mitigating factors, first offense–gets you SEVEN years (parole available).
Black was sentenced to six….
And he was not carting of boxes late at night. Black was legendary in being first in to the office and last out, at around 9-10pm. Like Glen Clark hunting knife and Bill VanderZalm’s holding $20,000 in his safe for a new friend and business associate, the public fixates on the easily explained–but NOT by the ‘National Enquirer’ like MSM.
Black should go to jail for this????? Come again?
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Alex, of course most are unaware of his charitable causes (Let not the left hand see what the right is giving) or something along those lines, and most corporate charity is an essential part of business having more to do with public perception and taxes than “caritas”. Still, if you say he is more generous than we would assume, then so be it. Besides he proved to be a model prisoner and was apparently well respected by those around him, though I doubt too many of them were ruffians in any real sense. Pettifoggers most of them, and obviously no better at it than himself. He did his time, enough already.
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I fully agree.
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