Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Lots of harrumphing and throat clearing as the fourth estate prepares to descend on Chicago for this Monday’s reckoning on Dearborn. The editorializing lacks a certain, how to say, rigour. Mark Bonokoski in the Toronto Sun argues a loopy syllogism amounting to:

Prisons are good. Conrad Black is going to prison.Therefore Conrad Black’s going to prison is good.

The invariably daft Diane Francis, writing in the National Post, affords us the following insight:

“Black, whose delusion knows no bounds, also recently compared himself to Martha Stewart, which means he thinks he will gallop back to success right after the slammer. Wrong. I admire Stewart because she handled everything better. For starters, she took it like a ‘man,’ pleaded guilty and, therefore, did not waste U.S. $107.7 million of shareholders’ money on legal fees. She also did not cost American taxpayers tens of millions in court and related costs. She also did not insult the case, court and judge.”

Well, no, actually. In point of fact, Stewart was found guilty and therefore took it no more like a “man” than Lord Black. But thanks for coming out.

Lord Black graces this week’s Maclean’s cover, which pronounces him “newsmaker of the year.” The accompanying essay by John Fraser, while a vast improvement on the above, still falls to a hoary class shibboleth in an effort to defend his subject against his critics.

“And they miss the depth of resolve to clear his name…which I suspect means more to him than life itself,” writes Fraser.

But isn’t that exactly Black’s most egregious failing? Pride, particularly pride born of privilege, is the most tedious and grinding of the sins, and anyone who falls to it is, at best, a pub bore. I’m not sure prison is the answer, but something had to be done…

Conrad Black: six to nine years’ jail: Source [National Post]

Conrad Black could be trading his mansions in Palm Beach and Toronto for a ‘white-collar country club’—if he’s really lucky: Source [Toronto Sun]