Toronto Life: The Trial of Conrad Black

October 2007 Archive

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on October 31, 2007 by Douglas Bell

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 Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on October 29, 2007 by Douglas Bell

This morning’s coverage features a relentlessly snide and obvious piece in the arts section of the Globe, taking as its hook the publication of Black’s Nixon bio in the States. So blatant is James Adams’ sarcasm he might as well have provided at selected intervals the instruction “roll eyes here.”

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on October 26, 2007 by Douglas Bell

In the first of what is certain to be an avalanche of like-minded stories leading up to Black’s sentencing, Steve Brearton wrote a piece in the Globe’s Report on Business magazine comparing Radler’s and Black’s likely prison digs. Needless to say, Radler’s prospects are somewhat sunnier both in terms of his sentence and the nature of his accommodations. Brearton reports that the William Head Institution (Radler’s likely destination) sits on 8o oceanfront acres on Vancouver Island. Radler will likely get a private room in what is described as a “five-bedroom townhouse.” Black, on the other hand, looks as though he’ll be ensconced at the Oxford Federal Correctional Institution amid Wisconsin farm country. “Inmates sleep four or more to a room, in barracks-style buildings,” writes Brearton. Still, both Radler and Black will have to suffer a drastic cut in remuneration. Black will have to make do with 12 to 40 cents per hour. Radler will do somewhat better, raking in between $5.80 and $6.90 a day (Canadian).

Not Exactly 12 Angry Men

Posted on October 25, 2007 by Douglas Bell

If you have a taste for grinding clichés and soap opera storylines, then you probably enjoyed Mark Kelley’s debriefing of jurors Jean Kelly and Tina Kadisak on CBC’s The National last evening. Me? I found it all a bit much. Kelley’s peewee hockey coach approach to journalism is a nauseating mix of condescension and hick smarm. You could feel the nation wince with embarrassment when in seeking to establish Kadisak’s Middle American bona fides, he described her as “a Brownie leader, no less.” More’s the point, Kelley’s storyline as laid out in his incessant overwrought narration butchered the facts. The most egregious distortion was his assertion that the jury was deadlocked after seven days of deliberation: that at that point, nine of the 12 jurors believed Black guilty of all 13 charges against him, and that this, in turn, led to the July 10 note to St. Eve stating that they were deadlocked on one or more of the charges. In keeping with his Procrustean method, Kelley referred to this as a “cry for help.” In point of fact, as Jean Kelly confirmed for me in an e-mail last night, at that stage the jury was only “deadlocked” on two charges, both of which Black was subsequently acquitted on.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Douglas Bell

All sorts of reports on the doings and proceedings of Lord Black today, what with juror Jean Kelly’s two-night star turn on CBC’s The National, and Black’s own words being pored over like tea leaves, courtesy of his 1,400-word missive ably transcribed by Nick Stein in Men’s Vogue. There’s a report of a new book on the trial coming from Black himself, and news of Black’s various Warhol portraits, all, as it turns out, of… Conrad Black.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Goodness but British journalists can be arch—mean, even. After all that goodwill generated by Crossharbour’s contribution to the Post this weekend—about Canada, a former British colony, finally finding her sea legs and behaving like a proper great power—how do our colonial masters repay him (or us, depending on how you look at it)? Why, with nothing but snide, sniggering sarcasm, that’s how. Listen to what that awful Andrew Clark, picking up on Nick Stein’s article, had to say in the Guardian yesterday:

Look Who’s Talking II

Posted on October 19, 2007 by Douglas Bell

While the Canadian press snoozed through an excellent opportunity to confront his Lordship Monday eve, Men’s Vogue arrived on local shelves complete with a cover line that reads, “Exclusive interview inside the trial of Conrad Black: ‘I’ll survive it all.’” Flipping to page 150, we find an eight-page feature by Nicholas Stein (a recently repatriated Torontonian who’s spent the better part of his journalistic career in NYC) that incorporates a 1,400-word e-mail Black sent to Stein following the trial. In the article, Stein describes Black’s correspondence as “written in the bombastic, abstruse style for which he is famous” and “[displaying] the fierce intellect responsible for his extraordinary rise—but also [suggesting] the qualities responsible for his sudden, devastating fall.”

Blacked Out

Posted on October 18, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Adding to the generally strange atmosphere surrounding Conrad Black’s LongPen event Monday evening was the absence of just about anybody who’d made a serious effort at covering Black’s recent travails in Chicago. No Mary Vallis, no Theresa Tedesco. No Rick Westhead or Paul Waldie. I could go on. Continue...

Why the Long Pen?

Posted on October 17, 2007 by Douglas Bell

You couldn’t make it up. Monday evening, in a dingy warehouse-like book store in downtown Toronto, Conrad Black, under virtual house arrest in Florida, made use of a virtual technology called the LongPen to sign copies of his Nixon bio. He was introduced by the LongPen’s inventor, Margaret Atwood, and subsequently interviewed by CTV’s Seamus O’Regan before “signing” dozens of books for a mostly sympathetic audience. The LongPen allows Black to both sign the book more or less in real time (using a device so precisely calibrated that it replicates the exact pressure exerted by the writer’s hand at the other end) and carry on a two-way videoconference with his interlocutors.

One for the Books

Posted on October 15, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Among all the queer happenings dotting the ongoing Barnum & Bailey tour that is the trial of Conrad Black, tonight’s event at the World’s Biggest Bookstore in downtown Toronto should top them all. Imprisoned in his Xanadu by the Florida sea, Black will sit for a “book signing” using a device called a LongPen, which allows an author to autograph books (in this instance Black’s Nixon bio) using some sort of video-teleconferencing/signing machine doohickey. Adding to the general air of lunacy, the machine’s inventor, author and aspiring Rube Goldberg Margaret Atwood, will be on hand to introduce the convicted felon and receive the first signed copy. Then, ever-smarmy CTV morning host Seamus O’Regan will interview Black via video-link, after which the great man will “sign” the tome for his public.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on October 12, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Bloomberg reported yesterday that Peter Atkinson got a pass from Judge Amy St. Eve allowing him to accompany his wife, a nutritional scientist, on a six-day visit to Rome to attend a clinical workshop. The prosecution didn’t oppose the request. One wonders what Lord Black must make of all this, having been restricted to Palm Beach and Chicago for four months while he awaits sentencing. Black’s been the subject of a prosecutorial fatwa in which the judge joined the government in divining that Black’s propensity to “fight” inside the court and out reflected some elemental aspect of his “character” that suggests he would fight extradition from Canada should he be allowed to travel there. And yet one of his co-defendants convicted of exactly the same crimes (save obstruction) gets to travel on his Canadian passport to the Eternal City, while Black’s passport remains in St. Eve’s office. It all points to the inherently political nature of this case. Black is trophy antlers for Patrick Fitzgerald and his prosecutorial hunting party. Fairness be damned.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on October 10, 2007 by Douglas Bell

On a day when it is reported authoritatively that Tom Bower and Andrew Lloyd Webber are working hand in glove on a musical based on the rise and fall of Conrad Black, comment of any kind seems superfluous. Still, I lately came upon a long interview with Lady de Rothschild (née Lynn Forester, Oradell, New Jersey, 1954) on the Portfolio magazine Web site, which I thought I might share.

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on October 9, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Besides a few blithe comments to the Canadian Press confirming that, in his mind at least, the endless summer continues, long-weekend coverage revealed (yet again) Lord Black’s peculiar relationship with the concept of free speech. In his National Post column, Black pilloried Columbia University and its president, Lee Bollinger, for providing Iranian president and all-around whack job Mahmoud Ahmedinejad a forum for his toxic views on Israel, the Holocaust, homosexuals, you name it. But Black’s misgivings didn’t end there. Commenting on Bollinger’s infamous introductory remarks, Black writes:

Black Watch: Today’s Top Stories

Posted on October 5, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Elements of the American press lit into Conrad Black this morning, reflecting the worst aspects of that nation’s dull-normal puritanism. Andrew Harris from Bloomberg’s led the charge of the bland brigade, digging up former federal prosecutor and first-class pedant Steven A. Miller (what is with professional Americans and their impossibly pompous middle initials?), who warns anyone who would do other than tremble in humiliated fear before the mighty power of “the people.” “Book signings and comedy shows are not likely to net a low sentence for anyone. Criminal defence lawyers usually advise clients who have been convicted and are awaiting sentencing to do charitable work and engage in activities that benefit the community.”

Miller’s comments are in keeping with a self-righteous, unself-conscious literalism that has suffused the judicial proceedings against Black from the start. Whether it’s Amy St. Eve’s sanctimonious Oprah-like divining of Conrad’s “character” in keeping him from returning to Canada while awaiting sentence, or the sniffy private horror (masked by haughty public indifference) that prosecutors evince at Black’s combative utterings, the puritan aspect is all of a piece. Let’s, as Americans are wont to say, “get real.” Conrad Black committed a crime for which he should and will be punished. After that, the entire performance is a Mayan sacrifice. What earthly good is achieved by putting Black in prison for 10 years, other than to reassure the great American rube that the people still rule and the game isn’t rigged? What other nation on earth would look down its nose at a man (however strayed from the path of righteousness) who writes a book or makes a joke and tries to sell it? Shame.

Call Him Connie

Posted on October 3, 2007 by Douglas Bell

Conrad Black’s appearance on CBC last night, while not exactly a match for the Pythons, was a respectable, sporting effort at satire and self-deprecation. Moreover, the short plug that ran just before the show—during which Black announced “Cannonball!” just as Mercer leaped into his Palm Beach pool—was genuinely hilarious and zany.

Celebrity Tips

Posted on October 2, 2007 by Douglas Bell

While we await the comedy styling of Crossharbour this evening on CBC’s Rick Mercer Report, here are a few more reflections on the life and times of Richard Nixon as they pertain to the life and times of his biographer. As I suggested at the end of last week, tonight’s star turn is part of an ongoing campaign to establish in the public mind an image of Black as the plucky, puckish survivor. The obvious model is the post-Watergate Nixon, who, from 1974 to 1994, through sheer force of will and a refusal to admit criminal culpability, established his reputation as America’s elder statesman. Perhaps a less obvious model but just as pertinent for Black’s purposes is Nixon’s progress between 1960 and 1968. After a narrow loss to JFK in the presidential election of 1960, Nixon’s political fortunes fell off a cliff two years later when he lost the California gubernatorial race to Pat Brown, a relative nonentity. He then had to endure the near annihilation of his party in the subsequent presidential election, wherein Lyndon Johnson pulverized Barry Goldwater. In consecutive chapters titled “Defeat and Endurance” and “The Triumph of Survival,” Black lays out the strategic and tactical road map Nixon followed in ascending from near oblivion back to the White House, this time as president. Among other things, notes Black, Nixon wrote a newspaper column, took JFK’s advice that he should write books (for “mental discipline” and to “acquire a reputation as an intellectual”) and, thanks to hired speech writers Patrick Buchanan and William Safire, managed to appear “relaxed, confident, and…often amusing.” Throughout this period, Nixon was underestimated by his enemies and thought to be a spent force. Of course, Nixon never stared down the business end of a felony conviction. Yet to whatever degree the Nixon family (daughter Julie particularly, who publicly praised Black’s biography of her father) still holds sway over their ancient allies in the Bush clan, there resides one of Black’s chief hopes for mitigation at sentencing.

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