The Conrad Black Book Club: A Matter of Principle, Chapter 2 (wherein Black drops a lot of names)
We already knew Conrad Black was well connected, but we didn’t know just how well until we read this week’s chapter. Black is as casual about his dinners with the Pope and Princess Diana as we are about a Sunday nosh at the Pickle Barrel. No big.
For example, French ambassador Daniel Bernard apparently called Israel a “shitty little country” over dinner, while Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) catalogued Europe’s woes. Of course, no social calendar is complete without dates with the Royal Family, and according to Black, the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Anne are the smartest of the bunch, with the Queen in tow (although she lacks imagination, apparently). For good measure, the Baron also lists off the names that populated Hollinger’s advisory board, a regular boys’ club that included the likes of Newt Gingrich, Henry Kissinger, Gianni Agnelli of Fiat, William F. Buckley, former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and David Brinkley.
However, the high society life did take its toll on Conrad and Barbara. He laments the public image of Amiel leading Black into a web of ostentatious profligacy, symbolized by the photos of the pair dressed as Marie Antoinette and Cardinal Richelieu. But really, he insists, Barbara leads a simple, nocturnal life, and only has about six friends. Um, sure.
In between tales of caviar and bubbly with the world’s richest humans, Black also makes sure to offer—wait for it—his opinions on world affairs. (Shocking, we know.) For example, the Irish question (hooligans, the lot of them), the dawn of the EU (Western Europe is basically a pathetic excuse for a continent), and Israel (the land never belonged to the Arabs to begin with, and for good measure, contrary to popular lore, Barbara is not such a “peppy Zionist”).
Conrad ends the chapter by insisting that despite his sphere of influence, the only public policy request he’s ever made is to ask Mike Harris’s government to impose mandatory helmet laws for cycling in the park. A true man of the people.
In the words of the Lord:
• On Irish protesters: “I have always found it difficult to understand the appeal of a political movement whose raison d’être is to stage provocative and insulting marches through the residential neighbourhoods of other religious groups. This is perverse even by Irish standards.”
• On the Royal Family: “It would be an exaggeration to say that the hereditary principle has endowed the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth with a super-abundantly gifted first family. Their intelligences vary, but they work hard.”
• On his friendship with the iconoclastic Clermont Set: “From my earliest days as a resident of London, I became something of a habitué of these people…Though I was not prepared to join them in their unholy apostasy, I loved them in a way. They were more loyal to me than much of London’s orthodox society.”
• On his and Barbara’s public image: “The legend created by my opponents in the media that features Barbara and me as latter dissolute Caesars, lolling and social climbing in palaces brought from my pilferage of public companies, is unfounded in all respects.”
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CONRAD BLACK BOOK CLUBChapter 2
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We already knew Conrad Black was well connected, but we didn’t know just how well until we read this week’s chapter. Black is as casual about his dinners with the Pope and Princess Diana as we are about a Sunday nosh at the Pickle Barrel. No big.
For example, French ambassador Daniel Bernard apparently called Israel a “shitty little country” over dinner, while Pope Benedict XVI (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) catalogued Europe’s woes. Of course, no social calendar is complete without dates with the Royal Family, and according to Black, the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Anne are the smartest of the bunch, with the Queen in tow (although she lacks imagination, apparently). For good measure, the Baron also lists off the names that populated Hollinger’s advisory board, a regular boys’ club that included the likes of Newt Gingrich, Henry Kissinger, Gianni Agnelli of Fiat, William F. Buckley, former Israeli president Chaim Herzog, former French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing and David Brinkley.
However, the high society life did take its toll on Conrad and Barbara. He laments the public image of Amiel leading Black into a web of ostentatious profligacy, symbolized by the photos of the pair dressed as Marie Antoinette and Cardinal Richelieu. But really, he insists, Barbara leads a simple, nocturnal life, and only has about six friends. Um, sure.
In between tales of caviar and bubbly with the world’s richest humans, Black also makes sure to offer—wait for it—his opinions on world affairs. (Shocking, we know.) For example, the Irish question (hooligans, the lot of them), the dawn of the EU (Western Europe is basically a pathetic excuse for a continent), and Israel (the land never belonged to the Arabs to begin with, and for good measure, contrary to popular lore, Barbara is not such a “peppy Zionist”).
Conrad ends the chapter by insisting that despite his sphere of influence, the only public policy request he’s ever made is to ask Mike Harris’s government to impose mandatory helmet laws for cycling in the park. A true man of the people.
In the words of the Lord:
• On Irish protesters: “I have always found it difficult to understand the appeal of a political movement whose raison d’être is to stage provocative and insulting marches through the residential neighbourhoods of other religious groups. This is perverse even by Irish standards.”
• On the Royal Family: “It would be an exaggeration to say that the hereditary principle has endowed the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth with a super-abundantly gifted first family. Their intelligences vary, but they work hard.”
• On his friendship with the iconoclastic Clermont Set: “From my earliest days as a resident of London, I became something of a habitué of these people…Though I was not prepared to join them in their unholy apostasy, I loved them in a way. They were more loyal to me than much of London’s orthodox society.”
• On his and Barbara’s public image: “The legend created by my opponents in the media that features Barbara and me as latter dissolute Caesars, lolling and social climbing in palaces brought from my pilferage of public companies, is unfounded in all respects.”){kind=link}
I am not going to ask you go out and waste your money buying Black’s “A Life In Progress”.
I give you here, in his own words, passages from pages 14 and 15.
“I was aware of the disruptive potential of covert operations.
I conceived and unleashed a systematic campaign of harassment and clerical sabotage against the regime (Upper Canada College). The school had been structurally condemned and largely devolved to portable classrooms while the main building was replaced. This facilitated my insurrection. First I picked the lock of the portable classroom that held the records of the cadet corps, the schools battalion. I removed my card so I became a non-person and subtly altered various other cards to bring inconvenience and unjust charges of AWOL down on various people who I disliked or found ludicrous. My tampering was not so blatant that the authorities realized that there had been a violation, and I happily bedeviled their “paramilitary foolishness” as I called it, for the balance of the year.
For good measure I lifted my card from the files of the athletic director, thus escaping the obligatory sports program and its sweaty locker room sequels.
Next I struck more brazenly at the chief disciplinarian’s headquarters, picked his lock in the dead of the night (after my confirmation class, conducted by the school’s principal), rifled his desk, and selectively altered some of his records. I managed to have a couple of friends exonerated by removing the denunciations of them and even inculpated one person with whom I had clashed by inciting some denunciation for some truancy. As the end of the scholastic year approached, I prepared my coup de maitre (not to say coup de grace).
The demolition and reconstruction of the main school building necessitated serving lunch in two shifts, and for the first shift, the school’s central office was left entirely deserted, but the papers and that were frequently handled were left very accessibly in the locked room where three or four of the secretaries worked. I recruited three accomplices, one of whom had a wide range if keys and locks, and he quickly found a key that opened the office door. The moment that the door sprang open, I had a powerful sensation that unfathomable opportunities and dangers were opening also. Whatever happened to me I knew I had humbled the oppressive system. We removed a large number of the upcoming final examination question papers. As I had already, for my own curiosity and amusement, taken a copy of the academic records of every student in the upper school, I could easily identify those who would be prepared to pay most dearly for them. A brisk high-margin commerce ensued (a margin of 100%, as I had no cost of sales).
I was going to reduce the school’s whole academic system, except for the senior matriculation class, to utter chaos while achieving a spectacular mark for myself having done virtually no work. I am neither proud nor ashamed of what happened. It was an awful system whose odiousness was compounded by banality and pretension, but I was becoming somewhat fiendish and in the end inconvenienced hundreds of unofending people, students and faculty.
One supplicant actually knelt before me, begging for an examination paper. My research in the school’s purloined records revealed that he had scored only 12 percent in the subject in question at Easter and I recognized that if I acceded to his request and his mark jumped to 90 percent, it would be too much for the dunciad who administered, so I affected not to know what my importune confrere was talking about.
By the last week of the school year, I had almost completely undermined the system. Like the principal character in King Rat, I had more power than our jailers. I penetrated the Masters common Room and reassigned the faculty to supervisory tasks by typing up and substituting my own assignment sheet, assuring among other things that our examinations were presided by the least vigilant people available, the music and printing teachers, as I recall.
It all ended abruptly on June 9, 1959. One of those to whom I had sold a paper was too slow-witted to memorize the answers or even write up a crib sheet that had nothing on it but the answers. When he was caught, it was obvious that he had prior knowledge of the questionnaire and when interrogated he sang like a canary flying backwards at three o’clock in the morning.”
This is not rumor or speculation. This is Black himself bragging about his multiple illegal acts, that he acknowledges affected many innocent people.
You must not honour him by shilling for his latest tome. The man is an inveterate crook who has practiced his nefarious behavior from an early age.
A criminal rarely starts in mid-life, and this clearly shows he is as regular as it gets. Quel surprise Cardinal Richelieu!
The photo of Conrad dressed in the skirts of Cardinal Richelieu suggests less “Lord Black of Crossharbour” and more “Lord Black Of Crossdressing.”
such a pompous turd.
Having always felt that the trial of Conrad Black was an absolute miscarriage of justice, I purchased and read “A Matter of Principle”. An excellent read as to the inner workings of corporate America and the “justice” system. I have always admired his amazing use of the English language, thus being the reason for my continuing subscription to the National Post. Barbara Amiel is amazing, a strong woman who has stood alongside her husband through many a storm.
I don’t have a lot of faith in the author(s) of this article.
For one, the only public policy request he claims to have ever made was to ask Mike Harris’s government NOT to impose mandatory helmet laws for cycling in the park. In context, he wasn’t claiming to have been committing some selfless act but, quite the opposite, was confessing that he had taken advantage of his political connections on that occasion.
Second, you’ve quoted his comments on “our irish protesters” without providing enough background to give the reader context. He is not referring to the citizens or supporters of the Republic of Ireland but the denizens of the Protestant neighbourhoods of Belfast, Northern Ireland who stage a yearly celebration of William the Orange’s historical defeat of Catholic forces in Ireland by parading ostentatiously through Catholic neighborhoods. As history has shown, it is much less an act of celebration but an act of brazen provocation of the Catholic residents of Belfast, who traditionally identify with Irish republicans.
Without context, the quote appears to be a dismissive comment about Irish protesters, which I suspect most people associate with Irish republicans, while in fact his dismissive comments are about their political/ideological opponents.
What a bunch of jealous bastards and bitches all of you are. What a total disgrace to civilization. Aside from eating with your hands and using the toes of your feet to handle the vegetables, what would all of you talk about at one of these dinners. Why you wouldn’t know what to say. Maybe something like “how’s the weather where you are, dearie”. That would be the start and end of it. Conrad Black is class guy and so is his wife Barbara. Each and every one of you bums whose only claim to existence is how many insults you can hand out in a 24 hour day are nothing by comparison to him.
BACK TO THE VOID WITH YOU ALL.