Thanks again for your support.

I want to thank, in no particular order, the lawyer (Howard Winkler), the researcher (the essential Veronica Maddocks), the editors (Kelly Pullen, Carley Fortune and Matthew Fox—patience personified) and the copy editor (Amy Harkness, with an able assist from Lisa Fielding), whose life I’m sure I made a living hell. They all did exemplary work, and this blog would have been a good deal less than it was without them. Thanks also to the guy who hired me, John Macfarlane, who’s taking over on an interim basis at The Walrus. John is that rare editor who elevates the job. He creates a graceful, exciting work environment. He cares about developing his writers’ voices and reportorial skills, and assists them in communicating with the reader. He metes out, kicks in the ass and pats on the back with equal care. And he’s honest. In short, a gent.

And, of course, thanks to the readers and participants of both Spectator and The Trial of Conrad Black. You have been at once incisive, funny, brawling, mad, bad and dangerous to know. I’m quite certain we’ll meet again.

In closing, an observation on the general media climate hereabouts: At every level—from the Prime Minister’s Office to the courts to the halls of government and business—we need greater transparency and candour from our public officials and elites. While covering Conrad Black’s trial in Chicago, I was astonished at the relative congeniality of the lawyers and court officials (high and low) in seeking to clarify or at least promulgate their side of the story. This as opposed to the superior courts in Toronto, where public disclosure is treated as a sort of lewd and furtive act of indulgence. As one of my fellow scribblers on the Livent beat pointed out, if you ask a clerk at the superior court in Toronto for a peek at an exhibit in what is meant to be a public trial, he or she will regard you as if you’ve requested pornography.

Open expression isn’t about what the statutes allow, it’s what we as free people can bear. The more candid and self-aware we are, the better. And that goes most especially for the chattering classes who, from time to time, take themselves rather too seriously (including, from time to time, yours truly).

À bientôt.

• Save the Press [New York Times]

Well, that’s certainly no mean feat for a former editor at Flare.

The rest of the piece is riddled with exactly the sort of backhanded compliments and bitch slaps you’d expect:

Given the kinds of professional lengths she is willing to traverse, she isn’t exactly an empath when it comes to those around her. Her underlings have exacted a brutal price, lashing back by dishing at every turn in the blogs and on the gossip pages. In one particularly memorable bit, her former employees told Vanity Fair that they did disgusting things to her food as payback for long hours and unreasonable expectations.

The answer to the why-does-this-matter-now? query turns on Ms. Fuller’s latest venture. Having burned just about every available corporate bridge in the magazine world, the woman is launching herself onto those briny seas under her own flag:

Russ Pillar, an investor and a former head of the interactive division of Viacom…says his company, the 5850 Group, is seeking to raise “tens of millions” to back Ms. Fuller as a brand: she has created a company called Bonnie Fuller Media, based in New York. He says the start-up will be heavily digital and offer a variety of femme-friendly products that will include, but not be limited to, gossip, fashion and romance.

Mr. Pillar sees Ms. Fuller as a reliable cash register. “Everyone who ever did business with her got paid and got paid very well,” he says.

Good lord. Can you imagine any of Toronto’s earnestly pearled and pant-suited distaff editors and/or publishers convincing some master of this universe to part with her majesty’s coin? Mind, I don’t suppose being described as a “reliable cash register” is any great hell, either.

As for Bonnie’s prospects in the digital world, I’m not sure that the marketorial formulas that worked for her at Cosmo and Us Weekly have much purchase on the Web. It’s a wilder and woollier place here, where half-lives are measured in fractions of seconds and page views. TMZ makes Star magazine look like The Paris Review. Hilariously, Bonnie may be too polite—too Canadian—to make it work. Consider this bit of earnest motherhood: “There has been a group of young women that readers have wanted to know about—Britney, Lindsay, Nicole, Paris—and I truly believe most of our readers were worried about them. They wanted them to get better, to go to rehab or whatever needed to be done to get them better.”

That kind of soporific self-delusion isn’t likely to get her very far in a world where, as Carr put it, “the public would be satisfied only if Britney Spears lit herself on fire.”

• 101 Secrets (and 9 Lives) of a Magazine Star [New York Times]• One New World, Two Big Ideas [New York Times] • Marni Soupcoff on Google’s Canada Day snub [National Post]

Still, I would say that, wouldn’t I?

• Former Toronto Life editor Macfarlane headed to The Walrus on interim basis [CP]

The innovative part involves the distribution plan. Google will syndicate the program using its AdSense advertising system to thousands of Web sites that are predetermined to be gathering spots for Mr. MacFarlane’s target audience, typically young men. Instead of placing a static ad on a Web page, Google will place a “Cavalcade” video clip.

Advertising will be incorporated into the clips in varying ways. In some cases, there will be “preroll” ads, which ask viewers to sit through a TV-style commercial before getting to the video. Some advertisers may opt for a banner to be placed at the bottom of the video clip or a simple “brought to you by” note at the beginning.

Mr. MacFarlane, who will receive a percentage of the ad revenue, has created a stable of new characters to star in the series, which will be served up in 50 two-minute episodes.

In an interview, he described the instalments as “animated versions of the one-frame cartoons you might see in The New Yorker, only edgier.”

Whoa, now there’s a thought: New Yorker–style cartoons migrating to the Web, “only edgier.” All of which suggests that, on the Web, there’s no such thing as received wisdom.

• Google and Creator of ‘Family Guy’ Strike a Deal [New York Times]

We live in a free country where people have as much right to express outrageous and ridiculous opinions as moderate ones…

In my respectful view, the addition of a qualitative standard such as “fair-minded” should be resisted. “Fair-mindedness” often lies in the eye of the beholder. Political partisans are constantly astonished at the sheer “unfairness” of criticisms made by their opponents. Trenchant criticism which otherwise meets the “honest belief” criterion ought not to be actionable because, in the opinion of a court, it crosses some ill-defined line of “fair-mindedness.” The trier of fact is not required to assess whether the comment is a reasonable and proportional response to the stated or understood facts…

In much modern media, personalities such as Rafe Mair are as much entertainers as journalists. The media regularly match up assailants who attack each other on a set topic. The audience understands that the combatants, like lawyers or a devil’s advocate, are arguing a brief…

Of course the law must accommodate commentators such as the satirist or the cartoonist who seizes on a point of view, which may be quite peripheral to the public debate, and blows it into an outlandish caricature for public edification or merriment. Their function is not so much to advance public debate as it is to exercise a democratic right to poke fun at those who huff and puff in the public arena. This is well understood by the public to be their function.

In light of all this, magazines, blogs and newspapers that stretch the limits of what counts as fair comment in this country (I’m thinking particularly of the scalding satirists that produce Frank magazine—50 per cent wrong and 50 per cent funny) can breathe a little easier today. Praise the lord and pass the ammunition!

• WIC Radio Ltd. v. Simpson, 2008 SCC 40 [Supreme Court of Canada]• Free speech has limits [Ottawa Citizen]• Finally, good news on ‘human rights’ [National Post]• The right to offend [Globe and Mail]• Human rights complaint against Maclean’s dismissed [Globe and Mail]• Supreme Court ruling modernizes defence of fair comment [Globe and Mail]

On a day when North Korea more or less gave up her nukes and the axis of evil was reduced to the axle of evil (and what with the surge going as well as it is, soon Iran will stand apart: a lone beacon of general depravity), there is much to celebrate. And yet somehow the Globe’s Margaret Wente tortures me still. Her subject yesterday: gay pride. Her lead, written in a “mocking” style, proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that sarcasm really is the lowest form of humour: “Yes, folks, it’s that time of year again. Time to get out the feathers and the leathers and the nipple rings, and celebrate the wonderful diversity that is Pride Day.” Isn’t that clever? By suggesting that gay people—men and women alike—only wear leathers and nipple rings on Pride Day, “folks” like us can safely ridicule them and their “wonderful diversity.” Why? Because deep down inside, they know themselves how silly they all are? Why else would they only dress like that once a year? One thing you can safely say about Wente is that she is clearly unafraid of being either ignorant or stupid. Hell, she embraces it.

She goes on to say that in “an age of limitless individualism, nothing is out of bounds any more. Everybody feels that he or she has an equal right to self-expression, no matter how bizarre. Nothing wrong with that, I guess. But what’s wrong with restraint? Does everyone have to go on Oprah?”

What’s so fabulously lower-middlebrow about Wente is that “I guess.” It suggests that whatever craziness “some people” get up to, at least we all share equally in the right of self-expression. The idea that gays are entitled to that right as a Croix de Guerre born of hard-fought victories over ignorance and stupidity is, for Wente, a little much. In her words, radical expression of any kind is “faintly vulgar.” It doesn’t fit with the common sense of “folks” like her.

Fifteen years ago, I wrote a profile of the overtly gay Kid in the Hall Scott Thompson. I found Thompson got on my nerves, since he was mostly pissed off and, I thought, a little less funny than he might otherwise have been. I was wrong. This was at a time when it was common currency among the American Christian right to refer to AIDS as the “gay plague.” Thompson wasn’t “angry”; he was resolute in the face of abject prejudice. Fast-forward to today and Frau Wente:

Many (actually, most) of my gay friends think it’s all become a bit nuts. They’re not transgressive—they’re bourgeois. They’re weary of the Pride Parade’s tired clichés—the campy drag queens, the naughty costumes, the celebration of sex, sex, sex.

Amazing! If only everyone were as smug and superior as me, then all this lisping madness would just fade away. Oh, and by the way, don’t get me wrong—some of my best friends are gay!

Replace the word “gay” with “black” or “Jewish” and see how you feel about Wente’s common sense then.

• Pride’s just busting out all over [Globe and Mail]

Hollinger had a subsidiary called APC, which owned a number of newspapers that it was in the process of selling. When it had only one left—a weekly community newspaper in Mammoth Lake, California (population 7,093 in 2000, the year before the fraud)—defendant Kipnis, Hollinger’s general counsel, prepared and signed on behalf of APC an agreement to pay the other defendants, plus David Radler, another Hollinger executive and a major shareholder in Ravelston, a total of $5.5 million in exchange for their promising not to compete with APC for three years after they stopped working for Hollinger. The money was paid… That Black and the others would start a newspaper in Mammoth Lake to compete with APC’s tiny newspaper there was ridiculous.

Later, in shooting down the defendants’ argument that the crime was essentially victimless (because the non-competes were management fees re-characterized to take advantage of a Canadian tax holiday), Posner writes that:

They are making a no harm–no foul argument, and such arguments usually fare badly in criminal cases. Suppose your employer owes you $100 but balks at paying, so you help yourself to the money from the cash register. That is theft…even though if the employer really owes you the money you have not harmed him. You are punishable because you are not entitled to take the law into your own hands.

Harmlessness is rarely a defence to a criminal charge; if you embezzle money from your employer and replace it (with interest!) before the embezzlement is detected, you still are guilty of embezzlement.

Later still, giving free rein to what Posner himself terms his undomesticated attitude to judicial propriety, he prefaced his dismissal of the defendants’ arguments concerning the so-called “ostrich instruction” with a whimsical defence of the bird’s honour in the face of certain legends concerning its instinctive behaviour.

The reference of course is to the legend that ostriches when frightened bury their head in the sand. It is pure legend and a canard on a very distinguished bird. Zoological Society of San Diego… (“When an ostrich senses danger and cannot run away, it flops to the ground and remains still, with its head and neck flat on the ground in front of it. Because the head and neck are lightly colored, they blend in with the color of the soil. From a distance, it just looks like the ostrich has buried its head in the sand, because only the body is visible”). It is too late, however, to correct this injustice.

This last line is classic Posner arch, and is full of portent. You can almost hear the judge’s high-pitched wheeze pushing it out with a smidgen of derisive laughter for good measure. Its intended audience might well fail to see the humour.

One odd footnote: former prosecutor Eric Sussman—whose relationship with certain members of the press corps during the trial was, how to say, collegial—was all over several stories yesterday, cheerleading the decision. At one point, he personally chastised Black himself, telling The Globe and Mail:

I think at some point in time Mr. Black needs to take a hard look in the mirror and ask who it is that really doesn’t understand the conduct that took place in this case…You’ve got 16 people who have taken a look at the facts and the law in a very detailed and time-consuming way, and they have all reached the same conclusion, which is that he stole money from this company and he tried to obstruct the investigation.

All of which is fair comment—after all, his Lordship took liberties with Sussman et al., calling them “pygmies” and “Nazis.” Thing is, in the months since Black’s conviction, sentencing and incarceration, Sussman crossed the street. He now heads up the white-collar litigation sector at Chicago firm Kaye Scholer. All that righteousness on behalf of the government might lead some to question his loyalties.

• 07-4080: USA v. Black, Conrad [Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals]• Conrad Black fraud conviction is upheld [The Independent] • Appeal court says Black must remain in US jail [The Guardian]• Black’s Conviction for Theft From Hollinger Affirmed [Bloomberg]• Appeal court rejects all arguments for Black [Globe and Mail]• Parental Warning: Obscene David Broder video follows [Harper's]• Black has one card left to play [Toronto Star]• Black loses appeals court ‘long shot’ [National Post] • Conrad Black’s Sentence Upheld; 7th Circuit OKs Ostrich Instruction [Wall Street Journal]

Given this opportunity, Eddie is leaving little in the tank. In suggesting to Ms. Messina that her self-professed status as a benign whistle-blower was little more than an exercise in self-preservation, Eddie was in a full flight of mockery: “Were you thinking Walt Disney thoughts?…Do you view yourself as a saviour of the whole world?…What I’m talking about is the real world, what you are doing is make-believe.”

“Eddie’s being Eddie,” said one visiting legalist in evident admiration. “But let’s face it, he’s got a tough row to hoe.” This latter observation refers to the mountain of documentary evidence that the Crown has piled up, to which they direct their witnesses viva voce, and to which Eddie’s made scant reference to date. Still, it’s Eddie’s time and he’s making the most of it.

• Livent ex-CFO’s position called ‘preposterous’ [Globe and Mail]• Accountant only ’fessed up when jig up, lawyer says [Toronto Star]

The reference to Sybil came from Messina’s earlier testimony that Eckstein had multiple personalities—that his mood could change in an instant from affable to enraged.

At the break, Crown Bob Hubbard wondered aloud to a gathering of reporters whether in the afternoon session Eddie might introduce the three faces of Eve. Offered one wag: “Eve run amok just doesn’t have the same ring as Sybil run amok.”

• Defence calls former Livent CFO an ‘outright liar’ [Globe and Mail]• Livent whistleblower blasted at fraud trial [Toronto Star]

As my fellow attendees pass me by, I get quizzical looks that are 95 per cent “Why aren’t you wearing a giant badge with your name on it so that we can relate to each other as equals?” and five per cent fear that I might be somebody famous that they don’t recognize. I try hard to return their glances with a cool affability, suggesting that I forgive them for not knowing who I am because this is a conference about ideas, after all, not about me.

As the party whirls around, my head begins to swirl at the sight of all the people I recognize and whose names I write down on a piece of paper so I can remind myself who they are. There’s Richard Rohmer and Harry Stinson. There’s Ezra Levant sipping wine with a baby attached to his chest. And there’s Dan Aykroyd. And there’s Ezra Levant and the baby again. No, wait: Dan Aykroyd’s not here, but every bottle of wine served at this swell affair has his name on it. That may be why I’m so confused.

At the end of the evening I stand waiting for a cab that never comes while several couples beside me argue various points of an idea clearly stimulated by their experience over the past three days.

“Did you say goodbye to Moses?”“No. Did you?”“One of us should. You go.”“No, you go.”“No way, you go.”

And on into the night.

• ideaCity 08• The Prophet [Toronto Life]

Tim Russert, who died Friday at the age of fifty-eight, was a gifted and cunning Sunday-morning interrogator who, while never quite disturbing his genuine persona or television’s conventions, used his outsized position on Meet the Press to rattle many more politicians than any of his on-air rivals did.

One exception was the Globe’s Rick Salutin, who took a mighty dump on the festival of hagiography:

There was nostalgia. Someone called Tim Russert “an Irish cop on a corner in a neighbourhood called America.” In the impending era of Obama, it sounded like a longing for an all-white America that never was. The U.S. of Going My Way, with Bing Crosby and Barry Fitzgerald as Irish priests. The latter could have played Tim, too, and vice versa—before all the changes now being called for by blacks, Hispanics or this Obama guy, whatever he is.

That last crack pretty much defines the difference between a skeptic and a cynic. Still, if that’s what it takes to get over the general swoon, so be it. Tim Russert was famous for being on television, full stop. Even some efforts to put the whole schmear in context valiantly miss the point. Julia Keller, the culture critic for the Chicago Tribune, writes that:

I tend to believe that the Russert grief-o-thon emanated as much from the books he wrote as from the TV show he ran. Books such as Big Russ and Me (2004) and Wisdom of Our Fathers: Lessons and Letters From Daughters and Sons (2006) weren’t just vanity projects by a guy with high name recognition; they were heartfelt meditations on the importance of work and family in a world that sometimes forgets about the gratification of physical labor and the powerful bonds that link parents and children.

Nice try. Russert’s populist persona—Homo Americanus—was bound up with the boob tube as inextricably as The Fonz and Simon Cowell. Much like the mass media ululation at his death, Russert’s books are merely an outgrowth of the constellation of qualities that made him good TV.

• Tim Russert Doesn’t Want You to Read This [Huffington Post]• Tim Russert [New Yorker]• The man they called Tim [Globe and Mail]• The tempest over Tim: Did the media overplay Russert’s death? [Chicago Tribune]

As a straight news story, though, Livent reigns. Yesterday, following Eddie Greenspan’s day one cross-examination of Maria Messina, journos, broadsheeters and bloggers stood in a happy circle and chewed over the best quotes. Greenspan’s barb that Messina was in the “Stikeman Elliott witness protection program” made every story. We also prognosticated on Messina’s prospects in the coming days. One wag offered an anteroom critique of Eddie’s performance: “What on earth did any of it have to do with countering the Crown’s case?”

There were a few half-hearted, mostly satiric efforts at standing up for Eddie’s evolving theory that Garth and Myron are the victims of a grand bean counter conspiracy, followed hard on the heels by further recounting of the great man’s histrionics. Say what you like, but for the scribbling class, Eddie Greenspan is heaven sent.

• Cross-examination gets testy [Montreal Gazette]• Livent ex-CFO called ‘a liar’ at trial [Toronto Star]• Livent witness ripped [Toronto Sun]• As BCE ruling nears, stakes have never been higher [Globe and Mail]• Ex-Nortel execs face fraud charges [Globe and Mail]• Action is good but speed would be better [Globe and Mail]• Royal Group founder ‘stunned’ by charges [Globe and Mail]

• Livent ex-CFO called ‘a liar’ at trial [Toronto Star]

How Eddie Greenspan will tear down this carefully constructed edifice of innocence and incredulity is the trial’s newest $64,000 question. Greenspan recently subpoenaed and received all of Messina’s papers pertaining to Livent since she started working as a consultant to law firm Stikeman Elliott. If there are any skeletons in that closet, no doubt Eddie will commence rattling them today.