Conrad Black has been on my mind recently. He pops to mind every so often when I read something about him, or by him. That’s been the case ever since I met the man, 16 years ago, when we spent two hours together in a small room.

Now that I’ve got your attention, let me tell you about it.

It was 1993, and Mr. Black’s autobiography, A Life In Progress, had just been published. A partner and I had a small television production business at the time producing something called “satellite media tours,” or SMTs. It sounds terribly complicated and impressive – but it was really a simple, beautiful idea that met with some success here in Canada largely because there was a need for the service. This was, after all, before the Internet age.

Some background

The way it worked was this: when people wanted to communicate with a large number of TV stations across the country in a short period of time, an SMT would allow them to do so. My partner and I would make the necessary arrangements. We’d hire a small studio at the Rogers Centre (in downtown Toronto – it was called the SkyDome in those days), and book a couple of hours time on a satellite. Then we’d call TV stations across the country and tell them, “On such and such a date, so and so is available for a one-on-one interview. Would you like to participate?” Each station that wanted an interview would get a ten minute window in which to conduct their own.

At the beginning of the “tour,” the guest would sit in the studio at the SkyDome with a little ear piece in their ear, listening to the questions from the interviewer at station #1, and would talk into the camera to give their answers. The good folks at Dome Productions would uplink the signal to the satellite. The station at the other end would downlink the signal and record their own 10-minute interview. Then we’d move on to the next station’s 10-minute interview and the next. And voila! In the span of an hour or two, you could reach as many stations as typically wanted to do interviews. It was a great little business. We did just about one SMT a month for a couple of years. We could put together a tour in three or four days; and it provided a nice little stream of income in those few days that enabled me to be the stay-at-home mom – all the other days of the month – that I wanted to be.

(I remember on more than one occasion feeding Cheerios one-by-one over my shoulder to my then one-year-old son Mark – who would be in the backpack – in an attempt to keep him happy and quiet, while I negotiated SMT details with participating TV stations from my office in the basement of our home. But that’s a whole other story.)

My partner and I had coffee mugs made up with our company name and logo on them, and the words, “I’ve been uplinked!” We gave them to each of our guests. Including Conrad Black. You see, a PR firm hired us to put together an SMT for Mr. Black to talk about his autobiography. Knowing I would be sitting in a tiny studio (it was not much bigger than a closet, really) with the man for a couple of hours, I decided to read his book, thinking it would give us something to chat about in between interviews.

Something in his book surprised me

Now I really don’t remember what it was, exactly, in his book that surprised me. But I remember reading one particular anecdote and wondering why he had chosen to share it. If I recall correctly, it was something relatively personal, and it struck me that he was making himself vulnerable in the revelation. Why would a person of his wealth and position want to make himself vulnerable like that?

So while in that tiny studio – in between interviews – I asked him why he’d told that particular tale. His response surprised me even more. “Do you think I shouldn’t have?” he asked. I have a mental image of him leaning forward in complete earnest. I was taken aback. What difference could it possibly make to Conrad Black what I thought about anything? Why should he care?

And yet – he seemed to care. Genuinely.

I remember stammering something (probably completely stupid and lame) in response. But I’ve never forgotten his question to me. “Do you think I shouldn’t have?”

I’ve thought of that brief episode – in which my life and his intersected – many times over the past 16 years. I thought of it often as I followed the news coverage of his trial. I’ve reflected on the fact that if he is indeed a person who cares as deeply as he seemed to that day – about what other people think of who he is, what he does and the choices he makes – how difficult it must be for him to be in the position he’s in today.

And often, as he’s come to mind, I’ve breathed a little prayer for the man, asking God to use this experience in his life for his ultimate good.

Infiltrated. Again.

Thus he infiltrated my thoughts and prayers again recently, when I read his Nov. 14, 2009 story in The National Post, Conrad Black on the rewards of teaching fellow inmates.

It’s a “tug-at-your-heart-strings” kind of piece in which Mr. Black makes himself vulnerable once again. “It has been my good fortune to be well-received in some learned and distinguished places,” he writes, “and I am always grateful for considered applause, but never more so than when complimented by my students on receipt of my advanced tutor’s certificate at our graduating ceremony here a couple of months ago.”

Concluding, he writes, “It pains me to verge on platitudes, but life’s rewards do sometimes come in strange ways and unexpected places.”

And as I thought about the once mighty man, typing away on his computer keyboard, all the while processing the lessons he’s learned while in prison, it occurred to me that God sometimes answers our prayers for our fellow men in strange ways and in unexpected places.

***

On another note, do you suppose he still has his “I’ve been uplinked!” coffee mug?

Prince Charles and his wife arrived in Newfoundland a few hours ago to begin their tour of Canada. Their arrival has re-started the debate about the future of the monarchy in Canada, with many columnists using the tour as an occasion to pontificate about what should be done. See here, here, and here. Lord Black of Crossharbour has published a lengthy article in the National Post on this issue.

Acting with impeccable timing, the CanWest newspapers have published the results of an Ipsos-Reid survey of Canadian attitudes to the monarchy. They show that a small majority Canadians want Canada to become republic.

Prince Charles in 2005, in White House Rose Garden

The tour of Canada has been billed as Charles’s last chance to convince Canadians that he should be allowed to become their king. I’m not certain whether he will win Canadians over. In fact, he appears to have already made a serious error, for his first speech of the tour loudly praised Canada for sending troops to fight in the Anglo-American War in Afghanistan. Unfortunately for the Prince, most Canadians oppose the presence of Canadian troops in that country. The Prince has given the appearance of trying to interfere in Canada’s internal politics— Canada has announced that it is pulling out of Afghanistan, whereas Britain and the United States are ramping up their efforts there. Most Canadians probably think that a sufficient number of Canadians died for King and Empire in the twentieth century and that we need no sequels.

The Prince, who is the honorary colonel of no less than eight Canadian regiments, will visit several military bases in Canada. By associating himself with a very unpopular cause, Charles is doing himself no favours. The Canadian military and its traditions are a reflection of Canada’s colonial past and the political culture of Atlantic Canada, the most ethnically British part of the country. The problem for the Prince is that Atlantic Canada and the military represent Canada’s past, not its future. Canadians of British ancestry are a dying breed, with a birthrate even lower than that of francophone Quebeckers. The traditions of the Canadian military, such as playing “Rule Britannia” whenever a ship enters port, are literally laughable to Canadians descended from the post-1945 waves of immigration and indeed anyone familiar with the course of world history since, say, 1897.

If Charles wishes to ingratiate himself to the multicultural Canada of the present, he needs to do a walkabout in the shopping centres of Toronto and Vancouver. While in Vancouver, he might apologize for the racist anti-Asian remarks made by his father. The Prince might also talk to the workforce of Calgary’s office towers or the scientists in Waterloo who are working on genetically modifying crops.  This would allow him to see the future being made. Unfortunately, the Prince doesn’t believe in shopping centres and office towers, preferring organic farmer markets and traditional cottage architecture to consumerism, freeways, GM foods, Blackberries, and modern buildings.

Poundbury, the experimental pseudo-medieval town recently built by Prince Charles in Dorset, represents his vision of the future: white people in Tudorbethan homes eating organic food. It has little resemblance to the world inhabited by most modern Britons. It is even more alien to the values of most Canadians.

Opposed as he is to so much of capitalist modernity, Prince Charles is reactionary in the deepest sense of the word. He is also represents the most pathetic last vestiges of British militarism. He would be a singularly inappropriate head of state for Canada, a country that values technology, consumerism, multiculturalism, and peace. His values are antithetical to our most fundamental values.

The long, painful and inevitable death throes of The National Post — at least in its present form — seem near an end.

In Toronto, a court spent most of Friday (October 30) mulling a request from CanWest Global Communications Corp. to roll The Post, along with its other newspapers, into a new corporation separate from CanWest TV holdings.

The accounting strategy is to free up the newspapers from the colossal debt of the company’s TV arm, now around $4 billion.

Grant Robertson has an engrossing story on the failures of debt-laden CanWest in the current ROB Magazine. You can read it here.

The papers, market leaders in major cities such as Vancouver, Edmonton, Ottawa and Montreal, are all money-makers although all are bearing wounds of the recession, and the fragmentation of media markets caused by the Internet.

But the National Post is a different animal. Launched by Conrad Black in 1998, it was meant to provide a Toronto outlet for his cross-country chain of former Southam newspapers.

It also shook up Canadian journalism. Espousing a frankly right-wing bias, it brought excellent analysis and features to readers at a time when the dominant Globe and Mail was about as dreary and predictable as a newspaper could get.

From day one, the advent of the Post forced the tired Globe to wake up and reinvent itself. To its credit, it has done so, brilliantly, and is now a far superior paper to what it was eleven years ago.

The Post has never turned a profit. It lost $60 million in 2001 and is said to now be losing a million and a half a month. It owes CanWest’s parent holding company $139 million.

The big mistake of the Asper family — first the late Izzy Asper and now son Leonard — was to fund their acquisitions via debt. Now, carrying a debt load that its reduced earnings can’t handle, CanWest’s future is bleak.

Will it get so bleak that there’ll be no solution but to stanch the losses of the National Post by killing it off? And would that be enough to save CanWest from a take-over by bottom-feeders? Probably not.

A solution short of shutting down the Post completely would be to resize it as business daily, like its predecessor the tabloid Financial Post. Some potential buyers are said to be weighing this possibility.

But a successful newspaper needs to find a multi-layered audience. The Toronto Sun has done it with a weird three-way mix of heavy sports, tons of ads from electronics retailers, and crazy right-wing columns and editorials. It’s worked for the Sun, because none of these three demographics gives a damn about what else is in the paper.

It seems to me Canada isn’t big enough — especially while we’re recession-ridden — to support two national newspapers. The Post has become what I call a “broadsheet tabloid” — a paper printed in the traditional large size format of a serious newspaper, but with big headlines and sensationalist content that is better suited to a tabloid. And the two don’t mix.

The Guardian has provided the long view on CanWest’s demise that I’ve been putting forward for some time: Conrad Black outfoxed Izzy Asper when he sold him the Southam chain of newspapers and The National Post. Too bad Tubby didn’t just take the money and run. Another five and a half years before he gets out of his Florida jail. But this story puts the whole sad story into perspective.

“Conrad sold him those papers at the very height of their value. It was almost the week, the day, when they peaked,” says journalist Peter Newman, author of a biography of Asper.

The Guardian, October 25 2009

Lord Black sums up everything you need to know about the current state of affairs in the United States, including Barack Obama’s complete inability to get anything accomplished. This is a brilliant piece of word play:

“This administration shows no will to pay down the debt accumulated by 15 years of borrowing trillions of dollars from China and Japan to buy trillions of dollars of non-essential goods from China and Japan, while outsourcing millions of jobs to China and Japan to produce these imports and admitting millions of unauthorized entrants who could have filled the vacated American mills and factories whose production was outsourced.”

The entire article is at the National Post. No self-promotion, just go read it.

The Supreme Court of the United States has granted Jeff Skillings petition for a writ of certiorari. (Source: Mark Sherman; AP)  Jeff Skillings, as you must be aware is the former CEO of Enron, and one of the charges for which he was convicted way back in the day was for “honest services fraud,” a term which is being addressed by the SCOTUS in another couple of cases: that of Lord (is he still a Lord, actually?) Conrad Black, and that of Bruce Weyhrauch, an Alaskan lawmaker.  (Source: Nathan Koppel; WSJ)

As the NY Times’ Adam Liptak notes, the statute itself is quite vague, and has been ripe for the SCOTUS to review it ever since Congress enacted it in the 1980s in direct response to an unfavorable SCOTUS decision.  It bears mentioning, despite the hopeful tone to some of the articles discussing the granting of the writs, that the Court has had the opportunity in the past to evaluate the honest services fraud statute, and hasn’t.  This suggests to me, that the Court will try to find some way to keep it alive while limiting some of its scope.

Shame on Conrad Black.  In a disgusting piece in The National Post, Conrad Black calls Ted Kennedy “unremarkable” and spends the rest of the article trashing the Kennedy family.

That Black would disparage a man who spent his life fighting for the common good, on the same day that he passes away,  shows a new level of depravity in Black. I would love to read a psychologist’s analysis of Blacks vile article. I suspect deep-rooted envy and jealously play a big role in Black’s sickening article. He knows that he will be remembered as a crook and a fraud, while Kennedy will be lauded as a champion of the people, and Black can’t stand it.

And why is a convicted felon given space in any paper, let alone a pseudo national paper? Shame on the Post for publishing Black’s screeds.

Richard Desmond proprietor of Express Newspapers lost his libel case against author and journalist Tom Bower today.  The result was not the most fascinating aspect of the trial, it was hardly an open and shut case.  What was more interesting was the outpouring of opinion on-line within minutes of the outcome.

The jury at the London’s high court returned a majority verdict rejecting Desmond’s claim against the allegation, made by Bower in his book about publisher and tycoon Conrad Black, that Desmond had been “ground into the dust” by Black when forced into apologising  for articles in the Sunday Express in 2002.  Desmond believed the allegation damaged his business reputation.  However this is a reputation that is far from unsullied, in fact the Guardian’s Janine Gibson opined “It may not be possible to defame him…..” 

One of the first to comment was journalist George Dearsley who tweeted “People like Desmond have helped to kill responsible journalism and made many journalists’ lives a total misery”. “How do you libel a porn baron exactly?” added Leeds based PR about town Debbie Hastie.  The comments came thick and fast sharing dsatisfaction, joy and amusement at the result.

The comments may not have the grace and consideration of a national newspaper leader but they are quicker and a welcome adjuct to free speech …and they do a pretty good job of telling it like it is.

Se faire dire ce qu’on a envie d’entendre. C’est bien différent de se faire dire ce qu’on a besoin d’entendre.

C’est souvent beaucoup plus réconfortant, et souvent, ça nous donne raison. C’est beaucoup mieux de se faire dire “Tu sais, c’est un con, oublie-le. Il sait pas ce qu’il manque”, que “Tu sais, si tu te plaignais moins et que tu te lavais de temps en temps, peut-être qu’il serait resté”. La vérité, quoi.

Très jeune, un peu après m’avoir appris à dire merci, on m’a inculqué que toute vérité n’est pas bonne à dire. C’est un mot d’ordre auquel je crois dur comme fer, et c’est ce qui freine souvent ma curiosité. Ce qui n’est pas bon à dire n’est en l’occurence pas toujours bon à savoir d’une autre façon que par l’aveu.

C’est le pourquoi des secrets de famille, des dossiers médicaux, des trous dans les arbres (2046? ou était-ce In the Mood for Love? Corrigez-moi quelqu’un!) et du confessionnal.

Mais taire une vérité, ce n’est pas nécessairement la cacher. Et taire une vérité, ce n’est pas nécessairement mentir. Le silence n’est pas toujours plus reluisant que le mensonge, mais il s’en distancie toutefois considérablement.

Mentir, c’est nier la vérité. Mentir, c’est inventer une vérité. Mentir implique une intention, et c’est ce à quoi je veux en venir aujourd’hui.

Beaucoup de mensonges dans l’actualité ces temps-ci, surtout du côté financier. Il y a eu Conrad Black, puis Vincent Lacroix, et maintenant Earl Jones. Parce que détourner de l’argent et tromper la confiance des gens, c’est un peu beaucoup mentir, oui.

Des humoristes ne se présentent pas au gala animé par Mike Ward, tel qu’annoncé. Semblerait-il qu’il y a des semaines de cela que leurs absences étaient prévues. Fausse représentation vous dites?

Se tromper par contre, je ne pense pas que c’est mentir. Du moins intentionnellement, d’où le bémol. La situation entourant les traitements erronés administrés à certaines femmes atteintes d’un cancer du sein par exemple. C’est très dommage comme situation, mais ce n’est pas un mensonge, c’est une erreur. Mentir aurait été de leur confirmer leur guérison alors qu’elles étaient encore malades.

Mais! Eh oh, je ne veux pas que blâmer les autres. Je ne suis pas blanche comme neige non plus! Je ne mens tout de même pas encore sur mon âge, mais le vrai résultat de la pesée, je le garde pour moi! Enfin.

C’est qu’aujourd’hui, voyez-vous, certaines personnes ont tenté d’aller à l’encontre d’une vérité inébranlable, soit le fait que mon père, c’est le meilleur. C’est vrai, mon père c’est le meilleur, bon. Aussi bien me faire croire que le ciel va finir par me tomber sur la tête, je ne démordrai pas. Des gens qui ne le connaissent pas tentent de ternir sa réputation et c’est injuste, c’est vil, c’est mesquin. Des gens qui ne vont pas bien dans leurs têtes en plus (je n’exagère pas, je suis polie), dont la crédibilité est douteuse.

C’est ainsi que j’ai été confrontée au mensonge. Le vrai mensonge, fruit du mal! Rien à voir avec le fait que “toute vérité n’est pas bonne à dire”. Vous comprenez ce que je veux dire? On ne peut pas s’en prendre aux faits comme ça, c’est absurde. Je m’insurge devant cette énormité. Les faits sont devant moi, je les connais, ils m’ont élevé.

Je comprends que les vérités varient d’une personne à l’autre. Par exemple, TON père, c’est le meilleur pour TOI. Ça ne change rien au fait que MON père, c’est le meilleur pour MOI. Et je ne partirai pas en croisade pour démolir les faits d’autrui. Pourtant, certaines personnes le font. Certaines personnes qui ont selon eux, LA vérité, LA réalité, LA science infuse.

Pourquoi imposer ses faits aux autres? Quelle importance que les autres ne pensent pas comme nous? La vie doit-elle être un débat d’idée constant? La vie ne peut-elle pas être conversation, échange d’idées plutôt qu’imposition? Ma vérité contre la tienne, tiens! Comme ça, pas de mensonge, que des opinions.

Si l’honnêteté occupait plus de place, peut-être serions-nous plus apte à nous faire dire ce que nous avons véritablement besoin d’entendre plutôt qu’envie. Mon humble opinion ici que j’avance avec réserve comme suggestion, aucun fait, ne vous y méprenez pas.

Quoiqu’avec tout ça, je crois néanmoins que toute vérité n’est pas bonne à dire. Et que mon père c’est le meilleur.

Au plaisir.

Keep on Keepin on

MS

Garth Drabinsky and Myron Gottlieb’s two-day sentencing hearing ended Tuesday, with Justice Mary Lou Benotto scheduled to sentence on August 5^th.

Drabinsky and Gottlieb were convicted of fraud and forgery in an Ontario court in March and have been awaiting their sentences both legal-wise and in the court of public opinion.

Former Livent executive, Garth Drabinsky

For anyone who wasn’t paying attention to professional musical theatre in Canada through most of the 90s, Drabinsky was the driving force behind the theatre production company Livent.  In its heyday, Livent produced multiple hit musicals and had its fingers in theatres in Toronto, Chicago, New York and Vancouver.

The 1995 construction of the then-Ford Centre for the Performing Arts in Vancouver was accompanied by a tidal wave of publicist-generated excitement.  Up until that point, our city had been temporary host to varying touring productions of Broadway shows, but the Ford Centre would ostensibly mean bigger-budget shows with longer runs that weren’t beholden to the economics and logistics of transporting sets.

I covered live theatre for a youth publication, at the time, and I reviewed most, if not all, of the Livent productions that came to town including Joseph, Phantom, Showboat and Sunset Boulevard.

The building formerly known as the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts, now just The Centre in Vancouver.

That was before it all came crashing down. In August of 1998, Drabinsky and Gottlieb were forcibly removed from their offices and found themselves facing a $225 million lawsuit from Livent’s new management.

Out came the allegations of cooked-books, financial mismanagement, corporate theft, and fraud.  Gottlieb and Drabinsky were investigated by American and Canadian authorities and were eventually indicted in New York, although they never showed up in the U.S. court to face the music.

Now that the duo has been convicted in Canada and are awaiting sentencing, some notable artistic luminaries have come out to have their say as well.  For a man who, by all accounts, defrauded investors of half a billion dollars, Drabinsky seems to have no shortage of famous friends defending him

Several of those filed letters with the court in support of Drabinsky:

Actor Martha Henry, Companion of the Order of Canada, compares him to such figures as Orson Wells [sic], Donald Trump, Oscar Wilde, Harry Houdini and Conrad Black (perhaps some artistic foreshadowing?). [emphasis mine]

She continues, “I hope it’s possible to take into account Mr. Drabinsky’s very real strengths (how much poorer our mythology would be without him) and consider leniency in his sentencing.  Garth will, and should, live to flourish again.  And again, and again.  We look forward to reading about his next adventure and in many ways, we admire him and wish we all had some of his intelligence, his showmanship and his bold, risk-taking vision.”

Emmy and Tony award-winning Actor Christopher Plummer writes, “. . . [T]his is the only side of Drabinsky that I know – Garth the Optimist, the Achiever, who, lest we forget, has never ceased to stimulate the Arts and contribute to the culture of his own country with such ferocity and such conviction.”

Ragtime author E.L. Doctorow contributes, “There is a life history here of someone raising himself by his own bootstraps to the pinnacle of his profession.  That he has, after years of visionary theatrical entrepreneurship, come to this, I cannot view as anything less than a personal tragedy.”

Livent’s productions did often win critical acclaim and amassed 19 Tony awards.  And, despite the terrible things Drabinsky has been accused and convicted of, I’ll always be grateful for his support of Ragtime, one of the first musicals that really inspired my interest in the genre.

I’m not questioning Drabinsky’s influence on Canadian theatre and the arts, but he and some of his supporters seem to be living in a different world than the rest of us.  People were defrauded of hundreds of millions of dollars, countless jobs were lost and who really knows how many lives were ruined by this man’s actions.

But, you wouldn’t know that from the almost hagiographic letters of support filed with the judge.  Based on those, you could be forgiven for thinking he was up for another prestigious award.

While the new revival of Ragtime (unaffiliated with Drabinsky) on Broadway is cause for celebration, where Drabinsky will be hanging his hat on its opening night in November, is still up in the air, at least until the 5^th of August.

Convicted newspaper baron Conrad Black leaves the federal building in Chicago Monday, Dec. 10, 2007, after sentencing in his racketeering and fraud trial.

In an unexpected turn of events, the U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it has agreed to review the fraud conviction of the fallen media baron Conrad Black.

The decision caught many legal experts who have followed the case by surprise.

“For the first time in a long time the stars are beginning to align, or there’s a potential that the stars will realign, in Conrad Black’s favour,” Jacob Frenkel, a former U.S. federal prosecutor said in an interview.

Mr. Frenkel, a Maryland-based lawyer who has followed Mr. Black’s case, said that with all the petitions that are filed with the U.S. Supreme Court, “it is rare that a petition is accepted.”

America’s highest court justices will hear arguments later this year over the convictions of Black, the former chairman and chief executive of the Hollinger International media company, and two other former executives in connection with payments of $5.5-million (U.S.) they received from a Hollinger subsidiary.

Mr. Black has so far served more than a year of his 6 1/2 year sentence at the federal prison in Coleman, Fla.

Mr. Black’s spectacular fall from a best-selling author, larger-than-life businessman and multi-millionaire media tycoon to convicted felon has fascinated many in Canada where his story has generated both support and condemnation.

Mr. Black gave up his Canadian citizenship in 2001 to accept an appointment to the British House of Lords.

Throughout his legal battles Black has maintained with characteristic defiance that he is innocent.

Mr. Black and former executives John Boultbee and Mark Kipnis argue that the $5.5-million actually represented management fees that the subsidiary owed to the executives.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago upheld the convictions, but the county’s appeals courts are divided on the central issue undergirding their convictions.

At issue is the reach of a federal fraud statute that was originally aimed at prosecuting public officials.

What the outcome of the Supreme Court’s review of the case will be is anyone’s guess.

“So far, all that has happened is that Conrad Black’s legal team requested that the Supreme Court review (the case), and now it has agreed to review,” Mr. Frenkel said.

“Now both sides need to brief the argument, and the Supreme Court will then hear arguments to consider the appeal.

“It is impossible to know where the Supreme Court will come out.”

Black had asked former U.S. president George W. Bush for a pardon before Bush left office in January. The request was denied.

Hollinger International once owned the Chicago Sun-Times, the Daily Telegraph of London, the Jerusalem Post and hundreds of community newspapers across this country and Canada.

The only large paper remaining is the Sun-Times, and the company has changed its name to Sun-Times Media Group.

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Full article and photo: http://business.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090518.wconradblackappeal0518/BNStory/Business/home

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See also:

Black Asks High Court for Release From Prison

Former media executive Conrad Black is seeking his release from prison, at least until the Supreme Court decides whether to uphold his fraud conviction.

Black has served nearly 15 months of a 6 1/2-year prison term following his conviction in July 2007. In early May, the high court agreed to hear an appeal from Black and two other former executives of the Hollinger International media company who were convicted in connection with payments of $5.5 million they received from a Hollinger subsidiary.

The court probably won’t hear arguments until late this year and a decision is unlikely before late winter. In the meantime, the judge who presided over the trial has said one of the men, John Boultbee, can be released on bond.

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Full article: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/05/29/us/politics/AP-US-Supreme-Court-Black-Appeal.html?ref=global-home

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See also:

U.S. Supreme Court turns down Black’s bail request

Bloomberg reports that the Supreme Court has agreed to review the conviction of Conrad Black, the former Hollinger Inc. chairman who is serving a 6 1/2-year prison sentence for mail fraud and obstruction of justice.

Black, 64, was convicted in 2007 of stealing $6.1 million from the newspaper publishing company, and a U.S. appeals court upheld the conviction. Black and two other onetime Hollinger executives say the appeals court improperly expanded the scope of the federal mail fraud law, allowing a conviction even though the company wasn’t at risk of losing money.

“The jury was permitted to return guilty verdicts on the fraud counts even if it rejected the government’s main theory — that petitioners stole money from Hollinger,” the appeal argued.

Jeff Skilling’s attorney, Dan Petrocelli, had something to say about this development:

The Supreme Court’s ruling in the case also may affect former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling, who earlier this month raised similar issues in asking the high court to review his conviction.

“We think it’s a significant development, not just for Jeff Skilling’s case, but frankly for our basic system of justice in this country,” the former Enron executive’s attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, said today in a phone interview.

I hope Mr. Petrocelli is correct and that the Black case has some positive effect on Skilling’s.

UPDATE
Tom Kirkendall examines the Honest Services issue as it relates to Black and Skilling on his blog. It’s a great read. Highly recommend.

Bloomberg reports that the Supreme Court has agreed to review the conviction of Conrad Black, the former Hollinger Inc. chairman who is serving a 6 1/2-year prison sentence for mail fraud and obstruction of justice.

Black, 64, was convicted in 2007 of stealing $6.1 million from the newspaper publishing company, and a U.S. appeals court upheld the conviction. Black and two other onetime Hollinger executives say the appeals court improperly expanded the scope of the federal mail fraud law, allowing a conviction even though the company wasn’t at risk of losing money.

“The jury was permitted to return guilty verdicts on the fraud counts even if it rejected the government’s main theory — that petitioners stole money from Hollinger,” the appeal argued.

Jeff Skilling’s attorney, Dan Petrocelli, had something to say about this development:

The Supreme Court’s ruling in the case also may affect former Enron Corp. Chief Executive Officer Jeffrey Skilling, who earlier this month raised similar issues in asking the high court to review his conviction.

“We think it’s a significant development, not just for Jeff Skilling’s case, but frankly for our basic system of justice in this country,” the former Enron executive’s attorney, Daniel Petrocelli, said today in a phone interview.

I hope Mr. Petrocelli is correct and that the Black case has some positive effect on Skilling’s.

UPDATE
Tom Kirkendall examines the Honest Services issue as it relates to Black and Skilling on his blog. It’s a great read. Highly recommend.

I have a big-ass pimple dying a slow death on / in my nose. It provides me with a slightly red tinged and slightly swollen outside of one nostril and what feels like a festering wound on the inside. It is a joyous experience I wish I could donate to one of my Enemies that I keep close as Friends.

I would have to say that my Friend and Nostril Invader, Mr. Zed, would probably be even more formidable if it were not for KB and KM.

I now have two Women around to take care of my best interests. KM provided a Zit Killer Acid-like Itch-Making Tube of Liquid that dries the Ick right out of Mr. Zed (and all the freaking skin around him…). KB nags me to use the stuff.

It is a Tag Team effort. Kind of like Theatrical Wrestling…

Even with Mr. Zed and with the Zit Killer Acid-like Itch-Making Tube of Liquid I am enjoying the continuing increase in Familiarity and Intimacy that the Triad is sharing. We Sleep together; we Pee together; and we help Kill each others Zits.

We are also starting to offer each other Mystical, Deep and Sage-like Advice on our most inner feelings of inadequacies and fears.

Ewwwwwww…

Over the past few weeks I have been struggling with work-related issues that have caused me to question some of my other life-related goals and my strong Desire and possible Need for Recognition, International Acclaim and Fame in the form of an Oscar, Governor General Award, Nobel Peace Prize and Hip Hop / Country / Polka Crossover Artist of the Year Award. None of these things, not even the Oscar, have happened as yet and I really am starting to feel like a Failure. And seeing as Sean Penn just won an Oscar, I can see no reason why I could not… I mean… really now… What is the hold up?

Well, in response to my Whining, KM sent me some excerpts from a book by Dr. Gabor Mate that talks about Lord Conrad Black:

“To compensate for a deep sense of worthlessness they develop a craving for power and an exaggerated self-evaluation that may itself become a focus of addiction, as it appears to have done for the person that needed to become “Lord” Black. His bluster and pomposity, derided by some and resented by many, are compensations for what he lacks in self-acceptance, and, deeper, in spiritual fulfillment.”

Well, the Familiarity and Intimacy of the Triad has now opened the door to Dr. Gabor and the extrapolated inference (in my Recovering Fucked-up Brain) that I am Lord Conrad Black’s long lost Son and am Addicted to the Pursuit of Power and Newspaper Companies. If so, then I really need to call Daddy-O up and get a loan to cover the money I have spent trying to buy that Oscar and then, once the debts are paid off, check myself into the Betty Ford Clinic to go into Drive for Success Rehab.

I hope Mrs. Ford and her Nurse Ratchets let me bring that Zit Killer Acid-like Itch-Making Tube of Liquid with me because I will definitely need to deal with more Mr. Zeds that will thrive off the Stress of trying to be a Better Man and Bacon Provider for the Triad and the Kids while being locked up with Sean Penn and that washed up guy from The Wrestler…

Roger Ebert and his wife Chaz Hammelsmith Ebert at the 2007 Gotham Awards (Courtesy: IFPIsIndieFilm)

When I heard that the Chicago Sun-Times was in financial straits, I was concerned about only one person. “Who’s going to help pay Roger Ebert’s medical bills?” Ebert, who I sometimes refer to as Roger “married to a sista” Ebert (I say that for any celebrity or successful white guy who is married to a black woman, from Robert DeNiro to Peter Norton), is still the film critic for the newspaper. He’s just as he was when he was on Sneak Previews (and its other incarnations) with the late Chicago Tribune film critic Gene Siskel.

Siskel and Ebert were my guides to films (hell, everyone who cared about film) from the late Seventies until Siskel died, and then Ebert went on alone with other critics to keep up the franchise. Frankly, it wasn’t the same, but I kept watching out of loyalty, sometimes wondering how the show might have gone if Siskel had said something different about a film and succeeded in making Ebert’s face turn puce. The pair had been funny and serious, and sometimes downright juvenile, like two brothers (Twins, anyone?) separated from birth. Even Robert Townsend spoofed them in his first film, Hollywood Shuffle, using two homies who liked to sneak onto the balcony and critique films. When they appeared on other programs like The Tonight Show, “the fat one” and “the thin one” sometimes upstaged the host.

Ebert’s physical voice is gone, that voice that used to lend itself to argument and put-down, felled by thyroid cancer. Last year’s operation to restore his speech failed; however, the man can still write, and his brain is just as clear and facile, and his affiliation as a liberal is just as solid. Take his response to Bill-O. When it was announced that the Sun-Times was having financial problems and had to drop some columns–Bill O’Reilly’s included–Bill-O took it as a personal affront, and bawled that he had decided to add the newspaper to some drawn-up list of shame–of liberal media that have broken faith with the people or something; you choose. Ebert decided to respond in kind. Take a look:

Thoughts on Bill O’Reilly and Squeaky the Chicago Mouse

By Roger Ebert /April 7, 2009

To: Bill O’Reilly
From: Roger Ebert

Dear Bill: Thanks for including the Chicago Sun-Times on your exclusive list of newspapers on your “Hall of Shame.” To be in an O’Reilly Hall of Fame would be a cruel blow to any newspaper. It would place us in the favor of a man who turns red and starts screaming when anyone disagrees with him. My grade-school teacher, wise Sister Nathan, would have called in your parents and recommended counseling with Father Hogben.

Yes, the Sun-Times is liberal, having recently endorsed our first Democrat for President since LBJ. We were founded by Marshall Field one week before Pearl Harbor to provide a liberal voice in Chicago to counter the Tribune, which opposed an American war against Hitler. I’m sure you would have sided with the Trib at the time.

I understand you believe one of the Sun-Times misdemeanors was dropping your syndicated column. My editor informs me that “very few” readers complained about the disappearance of your column, adding, “many more complained about Nancy.” I know I did. That was the famous Ernie Bushmiller comic strip in which Sluggo explained that “wow” was “mom” spelled upside-down.

Your column ran in our paper while it was owned by the right-wing polemicists Conrad Black (Baron Black of Coldharbour) and David Radler. We dropped it to save a little money after they looted the paper of millions. Now you call for an advertising boycott. It is unusual to observe a journalist cheering for a newspaper to fail. At present the Sun-Times has no bank debt, but labors under the weight of millions of dollars in tax penalties incurred by Lord Black, who is serving an eight-year stretch for mail fraud and obstruction of justice. We also had to pay for his legal expenses.

There is a major difference between Conrad Black and you: Lord Black is a much better writer and thinker, and authored a respected biography about Roosevelt, who we were founded to defend. That newspapers continue to run your column is a mystery to me, since it is composed of knee-jerk frothings and ravings. If I were an editor searching for a conservative, I wouldn’t choose a mad dog. My recommendation: The admirable Charles Krauthammer.

Bill, I am concerned that you have been losing touch with reality recently. Did you really say you are more powerful than any politician?

That reminds me of the famous story about Squeaky the Chicago Mouse. It seems that Squeaky was floating on his back along the Chicago River one day. Approaching the Michigan Avenue lift bridge, he called out: Raise the bridge! I have an erection!

Glorious…

I have read the words ten or more times today: “The Chicago Sun-Times this week filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.” I keep setting the article in my local paper aside, and then keep coming back to it. Somehow I think when I look again, the words might be gone, but what’s gone is the American journalistic institution, established in 1844, that was home at one time or another to such luminaries as: Mike Royko, Irv Kupcinet, Ann Landers, Roger Ebert, just to name a few.

The newspaper will still be published during the bankruptcy proceedings. The parent company Sun-Times Media Group, Inc. will be looking for a buyer. There is hope that the name will live on. But the paper hasn’t been the same as I remember it as a Chicago native for quite a while. The Rupert Murdoch era (starting in 1984) saw the paper turn to the sleazy and the sensational. Then the paper was turned over to Hollinger International, controlled indirectly by the infamous Conrad Black who is now behind bars for fraud and obstruction of justice.

Black left the legacy of a $608 million tax bill. More recently, the paper has tried to restore its working class roots, but alas, too little, too late.

Each newspaper in trouble has its own story, and a separate set of factors that may have brought each to their knees. For those on the “media death watch” there may be glee, for me, I’m still remembering being on the northbound commuter with the conveniently sized paper in my hands, turning pages.

For more on the “demise” of newspapers in general read my post:  http://communicatorsandcommunications.com/2009/03/16/a-jurassic-park-kind-of-world/

For more about a once great newspaper read the Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicago_Sun-Times

http://communicatorsandcommunications.com/2009/04/02/obituary-for-the-chicago-sun-times/