Another, Juicier Perspective On Lord Black #
Yes: I have been bored to tears by the Lord Black/Hollinger scandal. But when a reader writes it all up like this, it makes me kind of hot and bothered:
You cannot deny the harrowing yet mesmerizing fascination of a man who refers to his corporate shareholders as "hypocrites and ingrates," while describing himself as a "beleagured proprietor."
He has a terrifying wife with a shoe shopping fetish and a yen for extreme right wing politics that would make Ann Coulter consider voting for Dean, he spent several thrilling years as Canada's bigger media baron, appointing wild-eyed libertarians and neo-conservatives to act as ideological hatchet men within his empire of newspapers, many of which were transformed literally overnight from sleepy, centre-liberal city papers to footsoldiers in his battle against the Liberal federal government of the day (that day, and, as it happens this), while treating unwary long-time subscribers to a sudden increase in longwinded essays on Churchill, Napoleon and whoever else struck Black's fantasy.
He also ordered his papers to run his wife's unintentionally hilarious weekly political column, where she mused, Ayn Rand-like, on the unrivalled majesty of the stiletto heel, and the need for caning of uppity youth not enthused about the prospect of national service.
It all came to a head in 2000, when the then Prime Minister took revenge against Black for years of editorial savaging, and blocked his peerage, whereupon the redoubtable Lord-in-Waiting threw his passport back in disgust and decamped to London, where he and Barbara have been spending their way up the social ladder until this latest scandal hit earlier, which has now seen him attempt to hand over his remaining stock in the company that is suing *him* for pilfering $200 million in cash to billionaire twin brothers who own their own country in the Channel Island (see picture -- they issue stamps and fight over whether the neighbouring micronation has the right to tax them).
While most of the Canadian media are covering the story with ill-disguised glee, only just failing to restrain from singing "Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead" as the story's official Stirring Theme Song (cf CNN and the OJ trial, etc. at infinitum), it's always entertaining to read the National Post -- even abandoned by Black when he fled Canada for the mother country, it's still absurdly loyal to its former despot.