I’ll Be There For You

“News” regarding Baron Black of Crossharbour having been reduced for the moment to sightings at the Palm Beach Kwik-E-Mart, I thought I might reflect briefly on those of his friends in the media who, over the course of the trial, sought to defend his honour and pillory his tormentors. Here’s a question: wha’ happened? One minute they (and by “they,” I mean Peter Worthington, Christie Blatchford, Mark Steyn, Ken Whyte and—oh, you know who I mean) are throwing haymakers at the government and the court, and the next…nothing. Nada. Silencio. Even Mark Steyn, who, more than anyone, deserves the Jake La Motta Prize for his journalistic iron jaw, has fallen completely shtumm on the subject of his obsession. Still, it has only been a month.

The most queasy-making of these no-shows, however, is Christie Blatchford, who, after one last kick at the can in mid-May—wherein she told Black bashers to “get a life”—quit the scene entirely, reportedly claiming the trial bored her. (She returned to her usual subjects: bizarre and violent criminality, and fetishizing the military.) What’s particularly galling is that this is the same woman who wrote on Black’s exit from the National Post: “I hugged Mr. Black, too, and thanked him. He said he hoped he would still be invited to my parties.” Forget the parties—faced with a decade in the clink, Black hasn’t received so much as a by-your-leave from his dear friend. But that’s the thing about Christie; it’s a black and white world, where dead soldiers are always “fallen comrades” and felons are always, well, felons. On those terms, loyalty and/or complexity are only ever spanners in the works.