Praise the Lord

While the lawyers for the alleged co-conspiring defendants argue which of their clients is the wider-eyed innocent seduced and ravaged by Lord Voldemort, we find in the last day or two supporters of Lord and Lady Black weighing in against the tide of vilification. The most entertaining of the batch came from overseas. First, we have Hadley Freeman in yesterday’s Guardian praising—sort of—Barbara’s wardrobe at trial, concluding:

“Her first court appearance set the template: a simple trouser suit with a flashing gold necklace beneath. …Monday was a different tweed jacket with another bright piece of jewelry. Amiel is very much pulling a Martha Stewart: when the U.S. author and businesswoman was on trial for securities fraud in 2004, her outfits tried to make her look like a bland Everywoman. But Stewart couldn’t resist bringing her £3,000 Hermès Birkin bag. One can only keep one’s true nature at bay so long and so, although Amiel might have rationed herself to a brown suit, she just couldn’t get through the day without a bit of bling. Or slagging off a journalist.”

“Thanks,” Lady Black might have thought on reading this, “I guess.”

But the red ribbon for two-edged backhanded scribbling goes to Black protégé, former Spectator editor and current Brit MP Boris Johnson in Black’s beloved Telegraph. If there were a patron saint of the sardonic, this would be her day—complete with balloons and a parade. Under the headline “We Owe Conrad and Barbara Gratitude,” Johnson writes:

“Most of us lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity… yet from time to time we may behold some titanic figure… pushing past us at the airport to board his Lear jet… At that moment, a certain antsiness can descend, even upon the most equable… For those of us who will never be global big-shots, who despair of ever owning a Lear jet or a chateau, for those of us with status anxiety—and that is all of us, baby—the hubris and apparent nemesis of the Blacks is a chance to feel just that little bit better about our place in the order of things, and that behind every great fortune there is indeed, as alleged, a great crime.”

Now, with friends like that…

Image courtesy Reuters (Telegraph)