Toronto Life: Spectator

Spectator

Posts with category ‘Across the Ocean’


Conrad Black looking to teach, rewrite history

He haunts us still. Conrad Black—newly minted instructor of American history at Coleman Federal Correctional Institute—takes his case before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals this Thursday, with the help of his able appeals lawyer, Andrew Frey. Oral arguments are limited to a half-hour on both sides, with yellow and red lights aflashin’ to ensure a timely disposal of the arguments. Steve Skurka has a piece on the National Post’s Web site that neatly summarizes the case on both sides.

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When it comes to the ethics of embedding journalists, Christie Blatchford misses the big picture (again)

I spent last week working in L.A.—an experience like no other, one that could make even the most deluded dreamer crave Toronto’s low-ceilinged ambitions. On Monday, seeking to inoculate myself against the general lunacy abroad in the land, I attended a sober Memorial Day ceremony at the Los Angeles National Cemetery. And while even this event had its share of native nuttiness (among the colour guard was an outfit called the Sons of Confederate Veterans, complete with period costume and a confederate flag), I was still struck by the unironic and severe atmosphere that is central to such American commemorations. During the Pledge of Allegiance, every person present (save the odd interloper) enunciated the national creed loudly and clearly, right hand draped over heart: “I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

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Montrealer Autumn Kelly marries into the royal family tomorrow, and the press’s reaction is as classy as ringette

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What is it about the Anglo-Canadian fascination with aristocracy that puts everyone in a flap at the first sign of pretense? When Conrad Lord Black of Crossharbour was sent down for thievery, Canadian and British papers hadn’t spilled that much ink on a single story since D-Day. And this morning arrives an e-mail from the reliably snarky Andrew Clark, The Guardian’s business correspondent in NYC. He begins in typically deadpan prose: “I am rejoicing at the new link between our two nations which will be forged at tomorrow’s royal wedding. No doubt you will be glued to the BBC World Service.”

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Day two of Her Majesty the Queen vs. Drabinsky and Gottlieb

What started as a tedious prologue transformed, in a flash, into a testy rough-and-tumble drama. The shift in tone was undeniably due to today’s introduction of Peter Kofman, Livent’s contractor, whose job throughout the ’90s was to renovate and build the theatrical palazzos that housed various Phantoms, Showboats and Sunset Boulevards. In a mood that might best be described as somewhere between abysmal and exasperated, Kofman testified on the Crown’s behalf regarding Livent’s accounting practices—practices that would have put a blush on even Max Bialystock’s face.

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Commission and refute: The National Post celebrates Israel’s 60th by taking on its own writer

My pal Jeet Heer wrote me last week to point out the strange treatment the National Post gave his op-ed on Israel, a piece the editors of the Post commissioned to help mark the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state. Knowing his views, Post editors specifically asked Heer to write a piece that would run contrary to the paper’s oft-stated position that Israel can do no (or very little) wrong. Jeet agreed—“reluctantly”—to write it in his own words. The op-ed came out last Tuesday, with preludes announcing that the “National Post editorial board” would be running an accompanying unsigned editorial “refuting Mr. Heer’s conclusions.”

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Conrad Black’s spirits downgraded from ‘happy’ to ‘healthy’ despite attending prison seminars on American politics

A smattering of news on the Conrad Black front this morning. Last evening, Patrick Fitzgerald et al. responded to Andrew Frey’s pleading that the Hollinger four’s conviction be set aside in a 127-page brief. June 5 has been set as the date for oral arguments before the 7th Circuit with a final decision expected in the fall.

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Requiem for a newspaper: The Wall Street Journal falls into the Murdoch trap

Flipping the Rolodex of descriptors this morning, I pause at P for “plus ça change” and W for “waddya think was going to happen?” Rupert Murdoch has pulled the wool yet again. The Times and the Journal have been full of stories this week suggesting that the WSJ’s new owner is interfering with his newspaper’s editorial independence—first by foisting changes so that it might compete more directly with The New York Times (more politics, shorter stories), then by firing the ancien régime editor Marcus Brauchli, who wasn’t moving fast enough to make those changes. And this time, Rupe’s chinless, coupon-clipping victims (the Bancroft family) are so thoroughly bumfuzzled that it barely merits the usual blah blah blah about history repeating itself first as tragedy, then…oh, you know the drill.

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Is Martin Newland’s freshly launched paper The Guardian or Pravda? They report, you decide

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Martin Newland, Ken Whyte’s former deputy honcho at the National Post and head honcho at The Daily Telegraph during the reign of Lord Black of Coleman FCI, is starting up the latest thing: a big-time daily newspaper financed by United Arab Emirates petro-dollars. The Times of London reports that:

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The Rezko affair resurfaces after testimony about Obama and Auchi

You may remember that, five weeks ago, I wondered out loud why one of Rupert Murdoch’s lead investigative reporters, The Times of London’s James Bone, was sniffing around the Chicago corruption trial of Obama fundraiser Tony Rezko. Moreover, I linked Rezko to the Iraqi-born British billionaire/Bond villain Nadhmi Auchi. Murdoch had, at one time, thrown in his lot with Hillary Clinton and I put two and two together. Now, you may also remember that hard on the heels of that post came not one but two missives from Bone asserting that, in linking his reporting to Murdoch’s political interests, your loyal correspondent was full of shit.

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What does Mosley’s Nazi sex video say about The Globe and Mail (and vice versa)?

The Globe and Mail, good grey lady that she is, has always had a difficult time reconciling the earnest, sober-sided aspect of its news coverage with the more tabloid aspect of its soft commentary and features. Regarding the latter, the Globe’s take invariably aspires to be cleverer than thou, which is to say that even while they examine the salacious undersides of life they do so with a “jaundiced” eye. But sometimes it’s difficult to keep all those balls in the air.

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Defining Darfur: Is it genocide?

Writing in yesterday’s Globe, the always engaging Jennifer Wells discussed the other politically charged movement of the moment that may disrupt Beijing ’08: Darfur. Wells interviewed Ellen Freudenheim, a consultant for a non-profit called Dream for Darfur that is dedicated to holding corporations sponsoring the Olympics accountable in light of China’s decidedly sinister involvement in Sudan.

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Stephen Brunt and The Globe and Mail unwittingly adhere to Godwin’s Law

Page A13 of today’s Globe and Mail contains the most odious, egregious example of Godwin’s Law I’ve seen this side of the bathroom wall. Devised by Wikimedia’s current in-house counsel Mike Godwin, Godwin’s Law, in case you forgot, posits that “as a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

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Gaffe of the week: Harriet Harman fails to make friends, meat pies

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On the spectrum of completely absurd utterances by clearly addled politicians, this one’s off the charts. Caught on camera wandering around her constituency surrounded by cops (right in front of the police station) and wearing a stab-proof vest (thereby indicating to her South London constituents that they are in fact living in Beirut circa 1985), the deputy leader of the Labour Party, Harriet Harman, offers the following to the BBC:

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Jonathan Black rear-ends celebrity status

Well, it’s not exactly Britney Spears shaving her head, but when Jonathan Black allegedly bounced his vehicle—what the Toronto Star characterized as his “luxury” car—off the back of a GMC Safari van last Thursday, he verged, however briefly, into the tawdry world of Lindsay Lohan, celebutantes, the paparazzi and whatever else it is that fuels the 24/7 not-so-beau monde of TMZ, Perez Hilton and X17online. Jonathan hasn’t hit Brangelina status quite yet, but the reach of the story should give the Canadian media pause. The story has made it all the way to The Sydney Morning Herald and the Malaysia Star.

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British invasion: Can The Guardian and the BBC win over American readers?

One of the hoarier shibboleths dug up by the fuss over the NAFTA leaks is the inevitable palaver over the asymmetrical relationship between “them” (Americans) and “us” (Canadians). We all know that song—they don’t pay enough attention to us, they take us for granted, and when they do pay attention, it’s only to patronize us and/or dismiss us (Gawker defines Canada as “the large mass of semi-arable land blocking Montana’s view of the Arctic”). We all know it’s much worse than that: they simply don’t think about us except to do and say all of the above.

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Journalism 101: Tucker Carlson thinks he knows when the record is on

Surprisingly, electoral politics is not the most interesting thing about the hullabaloo surrounding Samantha Power’s resignation from the Obama campaign over her “off the record” comments describing Hillary Clinton as a “monster.” For Spectator, the real issue concerns the rights and responsibilities governing reporters and their subjects. In an interview on MSNBC last Friday, right-wing weenie Tucker Carlson confronted Scotsman reporter Gerri Peev on his now-cancelled show, asking her why she wouldn’t have honoured Ms. Power’s after-the-fact request that her remarks be treated as “off the record”:

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Is Rupert Murdoch’s reporter sniffing out Obama pal Tony Rezko?

Filed under “W” for “what a weird coincidence,” a reporter close to the scene at the Tony Rezko trial (overseen by the same judge who handled the Conrad Black matter, Amy St. Eve) told me last week:

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The glitzy Toronto event that linked Bill Clinton, Shakira and Eugene Levy

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The skybox on the front page of yesterday’s Toronto Star featured a bunch of gold stars with the faces of famous people: Tom Cruise, Robin Williams, John Travolta, Shakira and Elton John. The bold, all-caps display copy reads “STAR STUDDED,” and the underline pitched a story on the front page of the business section: “Bill Clinton fundraiser in Toronto draws big names.” The piece itself was a slavering paean to the fundraising abilities of the former president and his Canadian partner, mining billionaire Frank Giustra. To wit:

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Character assassin–cum–biographer Tom Bower weighs in on Black

Among the more grinding ironies that his Lordship had to endure on that inauspicious yesterday was the appearance at 2:19 p.m. EST of a piece on the Web site of his former flagship, The Daily Telegraph. In it, and without the riposte, Black’s most ferocious tormentor, the character assassin–cum–biographer Tom Bower, puts the boot in without fear of contradiction:

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Conrad Black goes to jail, writes book about it

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“Under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison.” And with those words from Thoreau, Conrad Black enters that “true place” today accompanied by a cacophony of media hoo-ha, some of it sensible, some sickening, some silly. A photograph of his house in Palm Beach is splashed across the front page of the Globe. A quote from his final address to the troops—published simultaneously in The New York Sun, natch—covers a third of the Post’s front page.

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Shifting sands (and ethics) at The Globe and Mail

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:

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