Spectator

February 2008 Archive

Just how accurate is Michael Clayton?

Posted on February 29, 2008 by

If the recent success of Michael Clayton is any indication, the public perception of lawyers breaks down into four archetypes, each represented by a character in the movie: brutal (Sydney Pollack), disappointed (George Clooney), psychotic (Tom Wilkinson) and criminal (Tilda Swinton). It’s probably no coincidence that Clayton’s only Oscar went to Swinton. A piece on the film and its effects on legal culture in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal Law Blog reprised a review from Slate:

It’s official: Conrad Black is going to jail

Posted on February 29, 2008 by

“It’s like back to boarding school, without, one dares to assume, the tedium and indignity of corporal punishment.” So said Lord Black in a recent missive to the Irish Independent, and so it shall be. Last evening, as expected, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Black must report to the Coleman Federal Correctional Institution—located an hour or so northwest of Palm Beach—no later than 2 p.m. on Monday. In a twist, both Jack Boultbee and Peter Atkinson were granted a continuance of their bail, pending appeal.

Bleeding the CBC is the government’s God-given right

Posted on February 29, 2008 by

image for Bleeding the CBC is the government’s God-given right

Filed under “P” for “pigs flying in formation; possibility of” is a CP wire story reporting that the Commons Heritage committee “is recommending the federal government commit ‘stable, multi-year funding’ to the CBC.” What? And take away the God-given right of every federal government since the Mulroney era to cut the national broadcaster’s year-over-year budget, thereby forcing it to put on “populist” T&A claptrap like MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives?

Forget it.

• CBC should receive stable, multi-year funding: report [Globe and Mail]
• MVP: The Secret Lives of Hockey Wives [CBC]

John Ibbitson flaunts knowledge of NAFTA, human condition

Posted on February 29, 2008 by

In this the most compelling political season in recent American history, the powers that be at The Globe and Mail have as their man in Washington (and further afield) the hard-working and, for the most part, balanced John Ibbitson. He is the quintessential “Globe man”: fiscally conservative and progressive on social issues. Another quality he shares with the Globe is rampaging self-importance. Wednesday, Ibbitson chastised The New York Times’ lead political columnist, David Brooks, for failing to grasp the central importance of Barack Obama’s campaign. Details, such as they are, after the jump.

Dateline NBC crosses the line

Posted on February 28, 2008 by

If the excruciatingly worthy 10-page pullout section in yesterday’s Globe describing in gruesome detail the most uneventful federal budget in human memory (oh, all right, Canadian memory) left you with the uneasy feeling that journalism was less vacuous, vicious and underhanded than you might have thought, then may I recommend a little story on page C6 of yesterday’s New York Times. In it, the writer Alan Feuer describes a $105-million lawsuit pitting the family of a deceased alleged pedophile against NBC.

Eddie Greenspan: defending Conrad Black “was like a forced march through a swamp”

Posted on February 28, 2008 by

With the curtain set to come down on Friday (with the almost-certain rejection of his appeal to remain free on bail pending appeal), there’s a surprising amount of Conrad Black–related journalistic flotsam and jetsam today. The Star’s Rick Westhead, for example, provides a backgrounder detailing how life will change for his Lordship inside the pokey:

Jeanne Beker busts out at the Oscars

Posted on February 28, 2008 by

A couple of sidebar observations on the Canadian Oscar coverage Sunday night:

In her interview with Barbara Walters, Ellen Page pointed out the difference between what is understated and fundamentally decent and what is crass and fundamentally gauche. And while Ms. Page rendered unto Caesar (we all gotta make a living), she proved you don’t necessarily have to wax his laurel while you’re at it.

Conrad Black’s sense of occasion, if not context

Posted on February 27, 2008 by

Yesterday, when F. David Radler—inmate number 18189-424—surrendered himself at 11:30 a.m. to the Bureau of Prisons at the Moshannon Valley prison, the wheels of justice continued to grind for Conrad Black, Peter Atkinson and Jack Boultbee. The following quote appears in the 47-page government response to the Hollinger three’s joint application to continue bail pending appeal:

Shifting sands (and ethics) at The Globe and Mail

Posted on February 27, 2008 by

The current media debates in Britain are dominated at the moment by discussion of the new book Flat Earth News by Guardian investigative journalist Nick Davies. In an interview with the Guardian for its Media Talk podcast, Davies put in blunt terms what he sees as the near terminal decline in standards at every level of the British media:

Welcome to Spectator

Posted on February 26, 2008 by

A little over half an hour into Citizen Kane, Charles Foster Kane takes control of the moribund New York Inquirer and fires the editor. On completing his fourth draft of the front page of his maiden edition, Kane turns to his soulmate and dramatic critic Jedediah Leland and reads to him a prospective declaration of principles for the paper: “I’ll provide the people of this city with a daily paper that will tell all the news honestly. I will also provide them…with a fighting and tireless champion of their rights as citizens and as human beings.”