Conrad Black's a Bully
The wordy pile-driving of Canadian lord-to-be Conrad Black into the Fendi snakeskin of Taki proves the reassuring violence of the London media. New York's journalistic arrivistes are way too absorbed with their own delusions and company credit cards to stand comparison. It is impossible to imagine the Bumble and bumble blow-dried directors of The New York Times publishing spurious personal venom against their leading lights.
The Right Honorable Conrad Black is a slightly demented Canadian who plays with toy soldiers, croquet mallets and Catholicism. His comatose autobiography, originally titled The Duracell Years, neatly filled the requirement for the long-life, Y2K-compliant doorstop we all desire. He hopes to extol the virtues of Margaret Thatcher in the House of Lords more than a decade after the rest of the navigable world realized she was stark-raving mad. He also owns the very posh London Daily Telegraph, The Spectator and, ahem, the Jerusalem Post.
Black is the Vatican's most exemplary apologist. He passionately believes the incumbent Polish war hero made comprehensive amends to the world's Jews when he apologized for organized anti-Semitic genocide and complicity by Rome. He knows who Cardinal Newman was. Black also has massive commercial interests in Israel, viz., the Jerusalem Post, and has the ear of every Labor and Likud poo-bah in that cursed desert. In trying to balance his commercial devotions and religious profitmaking, he attacks harmless millionaires. In the rough game of London newspapers, where a dozen titles compete for your interest every day, this is fun. Visiting American reporters and editors either last 10 seconds or become millionaire executives faster than they thought possible.
Esoteric this is not. It is quite impossible to envisage Rupert Murdoch defaming Steve Dunleavy. It would not be worth it?a coiffed lapdog who has vodka in only one in five of his vodka tonics, and a Japanese father-in-law's bullet in his head, is hardly a fair target. Further, Murdoch is comfortable with his Braveheart lineage, and need not prove his mettle against a bog-Irish booby. All anti-Rupert drivel to the contrary, he would never publicly attack the work of one of his staff. He has been in the paper game for nearly 50 years and has silently let every calumny and bit of nonsense see the ink of day. In London, where he owns the Times, Sunday Times (a different paper), Sun and News of the World, he dispatches editors to oblivion at a Marvin Gaye tempo. But in New York he keeps well away from the novelists and Oscar winners he employs at the Post and on Fox TV. Murdoch has emphatically not written an autobiography.
Taki should not run off and defend himself against the Canadian convert. He has?Greeks do everything very quickly except serve customers at their oily restaurants?but had the good sense not to resign his "High Life" column in The Spectator. If Bonaparte Black remains unconvinced that Taki is not anti-Semitic, then he should take his toy soldiers and model warships (mostly World War II Canadian escorts of the Battle of the Atlantic) off to his Palm Beach compound and let the grownups have their fun at his expense. He could do so in the full knowledge that Charles Moore, another anglo-Catholic convert who now reigns at the Daily Telegraph, is present to bully the Greek brute.
New York just does not have the guts or fun to turn the media into such a theme park. Earnest, sincere, hardworking and diligent, the New York reporter thinks clandestine Canadian codeine is a serious drug and would never ruffle the hair of a competitor or employee. If Conrad Black owned a paper here, Taki would never be allowed to be himself, which would not be much fun, would it?