The Unsinkable Tubby Black
Publish Date: Wednesday, 7th of December 2011
by Arthur Black
This column is about
Conrad Moffat Black, OK, KCSG, PC. AKA Lord
Black of Crossharbour, not to mention Mogul, Tycoon, Poobah,
Master of the Universe and Convicted Felon. This man
is no relation to A. Black, Esq. The
scribbler of this column is perfectly okay with that.
I do not
care for Conrad Black for a multitude of reasons but chief among
them stems from a conversation I had years ago with a Quebec
Conrad
Black is easy to dislike. He is
arrogant, boastful, pompous and utterly contemptuous of all
lesser beings, which is pretty well everyone this side of the
Pope. As
a newspaper proprietor he even sneered at newspaper people. In a
submission to a Canadian Senate committee, Black,
characteristically employing the royal ‘we’, sniffed:
“We must
express the view, based on our empirical observations, that a
substantial number of journalists are ignorant, lazy,
opinionated, and intellectually dishonest. The profession is
heavily cluttered with aged hacks toiling through a miasma of
mounting decrepitude and often alcoholism, and even more so with
arrogant and abrasive youngsters who substitute 'commitment' for
insight." So
much for his colleagues. His
enemies fared worse. He called
the Bishop of Calgary ‘a jumped up twerp’, and his business
partner David Ratner ‘the rat’. He
dismissed the U.S. Vice President as a ‘mendacious hypocrite’. He
belittled his own investors as “a bunch of self-righteous
hypocrites and ingrates”
Mister
Black is fond of calling people hypocrites. Interesting,
coming from a man who tossed off his Canadian citizenship like a
used Kleenex when a British knighthood winked in his direction.
Not
surprisingly, Conrad Black became a giant neocon pinata for
legions of journalists who didn’t have to work for him – and for
many who did. The
now-defunct Canadian satirical magazine Frank dubbed him ‘Tubby’
after Tubby Tompkins, a character in the Little Lulu comic
strip. Tubby
Tompkins was a rotund and nasty, scheming child of privilege who
often became a victim of his own shortcomings. The
analogy stuck.
Not that
Conrad ever gave a rap. He was
mega-bright, he was filthy rich and he was utterly impervious to
the pot-shots and putdowns that percolated up from the little
people. He
had money, fame and fortune.
And then
the roof fell in.
Lord Black
of Crossharbour ended up swatting mosquitoes in a cell in a
Florida jail. Never
in my lifetime has any mortal fallen so far and so utterly.
But here’s
the thing.
Conrad
Black was not beaten. He served
his time like a pro. He never
cried the blues or begged for mercy or murmured contrition. He spent
$100 million on his defence; still faces over $1 billion in
civil suits -- and yet the man is unbowed.
Is he
magnificent -- Or deluded?
Maybe he
just has sisu in spades. Sisu is a
Finnish word that means, roughly, extraordinary bravery and
tenacity. The
Finns showed sisu when they fought the militarily superior
Russians to a standstill in World War ll. I once
asked a Finlander to explain sisu to me. “It means
having the hide of a rhinoceros,” he told me. Then,
after a pause he added:
“And
perhaps the brain of one too.”
Posted with the expressed permission of Arthur Black
Posted with the expressed permission of Arthur Black