Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Whatever else one might say about Conrad Black (most of which must have been broadcast at one time or another by participants on this blog), I defy anyone to gainsay the man’s fluency. This morning Black engaged with BBC Radio’s John Humphrys for a quarter of an hour. No shrinking violet himself, Humphrys pulled few punches in carrying on an intense though entirely civil interview. Confronted by his current status as a convicted felon and all-around tragic figure “worthy of Shakespeare,” Black gave as good or better than he got:

“The British tabloids don’t really write the script for a U.S. federal court,” responded Black. “With respect, John…the conventional media wisdom in the U.K. is a kind of false bourgeois piety and priggishness that assumes that whatever American prosecutors say is true.”

Black said plenty more besides, which I commend to you (see link below). It’s easy to say (and I should know, since I’ve fallen to it myself) that Black is his own worst enemy in all this. Still, there is developing a rigorous and oftentimes compelling consistency in Black’s mien, mindful of the old saw “he was right, dead right, but just as dead as if he were wrong.” I leave the last word to the Guardian’s chief political correspondent Michael White, who, responding to the interview, wrote on his blog with typical Limey superciliousness, “For a Canadian, he’s certainly not boring.”

Michael White’s political blog – November 30: Source [The Guardian]

Conrad Black protests innocence: Source [BBC News]

Conrad Black vows: ‘I’ll be back’: Source [Telegraph]