Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories
While Canadians turn their attentions to the alleged misdeeds of Conrad Black’s old pal and confidant Brian Mulroney (see pages 654–656 of the former prime minister’s recently published memoir), the distant drums of Black’s date with American justice begin to pound. Letters of recommendation from the great and the good, aimed at staying Judge Amy’s retributive hand, are at the drafting stage. These missives are meant to catalogue evidence of his Lordship’s better qualities of character—acts of kindness and decency, small and large. There are rumours of a prosecutor in the case being trotted around to meet the Toronto Star’s editors like a ribbon-winning pony at the Royal Winter Fair, then announcing from a great height that Black is sure to get “10 to 12.”
Black himself is reported to have already completed a draft of a tome meant to consider the injustice of his fate. And in the midst of these various reports arrived yesterday afternoon the raw copy of Conrad’s infamous e-mail to Men’s Vogue reporter Nick Stein. Most of the juicy bits were drafted into the article. Still, I noted some interesting marginalia. What I had thought was one long e-mail was in fact two missives, separated in their delivery by almost a month (August 23 and September 19); the change in tone is startling. Whereas the earlier correspondence has the Gatling gun rat-a-tat-tat of a combatant still very much in the hurly-burly, the latter has the melancholy air of the veteran surveying the field of battle long after the fight. While his mood is more resigned than contrite, one wonders what might be brewing in the way of a final statement before sentencing.
Conrad Black’s email to Men’s Vogue: Source [Men’s Vogue]
A new tune Tipsville: Source [Chicago Sun-Times]
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