A Black New Year for the Good Conrad
New Year’s Eve parties cannot be described in lyrical terms, recalling perhaps the elegance of poetry by, say, Beaudelaire, Oscar Wilde’s decadence being more like it. I am not among those who hate New Year’s parties, in fact to the contrary. Let’s start with the bad news. The worse New Year’s ever was December 31, 1984, in Pentonville. Now that was a real downer. Talk about a party that never took off. On that particular night it never even got started. Everyone was locked up by 7 pm, and most of the jailbirds were asleep
by the time the clock struck twelve. I stayed up by force of habit, but all it did was make me more miserable. Looking back at my description of that night in the immortal jail memoir “Nothing To Declare,” I see that particular New Year’s Eve was the first time I felt the worst was over. From then on it was only a matter of time and patience. There are certain psychological barriers while one’s doing bird, the obvious ones being birthdays of loved ones, holidays and so on. For me that night was the penultimate barrier to the countdown, which begins after the half-way point has been reached.
I went to Palm Beach about one month ago to visit Conrad and Barbara Black with other friends of theirs but was advised not to write about it until after the sentencing. As Andrew Roberts wrote in the Notebook, “It was a masterclass in displaying dignity, good humour and charm under pressure.” If only the bums who so eagerly cast stones possessed a scintilla of Conrad’s courage, I might even force myself to consider their argument. But none of them even comes close. I wonder why that is? The idea that a rat like Radler can give state evidence and plea bargain a tiny sentence in a country club shows how wrong the law is. I suppose the Bible knows best. It’s always the Judases among us who betray. My old man never broke any laws but at the same time picked executives who were stand-up guys. Rats will always sell one out, starting with people like Richard Perle, who parlayed Conrad’s munificence into a small fortune and was the first to turn against him. A new book on this grotesque rodent includes the following terrifying sentence: “There is no middle way for Americans: it is either victory or holocaust.” Talk about cheapening the latter. Perle blames disloyalty and ineptitude of the Bush administration for the catastrophe in Iraq. I had written about this, that the rats would blame the captain once the shipgot stuck, almost five years ago. Although not the greatest geopolitical thinker of my generation, I knew my man Perle. He wanted Uncle Sam to attack Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran after Iraq, and following that North Korea.
And he’s walking around free while Lord Black is about to do a Taki. For six and one half long years. But this is 2008 and a new year always brings hope. The first smart thing I did was to give my annual New Year’s Eve party not in my chalet, but in a restaurant-inn of the old style. The reason for this is my children’s friends. They are young, tend to get drunk and spill red wine all over the place. After last year’s debacle I said basta. The members of the band were no better. They actually put ciggies out on the carpet. But not to worry. This year it was someone else who had to sweep up. Mind you, for the first time since the Peloponnesian War, Gstaad is covered in snow, powder skiing to make Canadians drool with envy, but with the added advantage that there are very few Canadians
around. This, of course, is because of global warming. That’s what a friend of mine, who believes most of the bs being put out by those who might benefit from a state of emergency, told me. The fact that his wife left him for an ape, at least I think it’s an ape, and his children advertise the fact they’re orphans, has not made a dent in his belief that he’s absolutely correct. The world is finished unless private jets are grounded. I will go along with that, as long as all airplanes are grounded, and all Detroit models are turned into
hybrids, or whatever they’re called, and as long as we stop being blackmailed by the towelheads down south. Give me rail travel, trans-Atlantic liners, and electric cars and you will have Taki on your side. Oh yes, and no more super-yachts, only sailboats. But I will not stop using my private little airplane as long as Brown and Bush and the rest of the Ali Babas continue to travel in the style they were never accustomed to. Barbara Tuchman once wrote that mankind makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. That other great historian-philosopher, Taki, says that mankind has proved to be the biggest jerk ever for allowing liars and phoneys to renege on every promise they made before election time. The refusal to hold a referendum about the revised EU constitution proves the Greek philosopher’s point.
Otherwise everything is honky-dory as they say. I am looking forward to defending my world Judo 70 and over title come June, in Brussels of all places, hoping against hope it will no longer be called Belgium by then, but Flanders, because my friends the Vlaams Belang will be rooting for me. And if the lower back continues on its course, I sure will need the support, pun not intended. Happy New Year!
Comments
The current state of plea bargaining represents nothing less than suborning perjury on the part of prosecutors. But the foxes are never investigated.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“Give me rail travel, trans-Atlantic liners, and electric cars and you will have Taki on your side.”
As a long ago employee of the late, great New York Central System, I am cheering your words, and I hope the late Alfred Perlman is beating his breast in shame somewhere for presiding over the disastrous 1968 merger with the Pennsy. The Central’s previous president, Robert Young, committed suicide in 1958 when he fully realized what Dwight Eisenhower and the oil companies had done to his beloved industry. Give him his due, Perlman was an innovator. The gravity-powered Selkirk, NY yard with its computerized switching and speed retarders was his brainchild, as was containerized shipping (called piggie back), although ahead of its time, but in the end he sold out to the Pennsy, which proceeded to loot Commodore Vanderbilt’s empire. In the Gilded Age, men like the Astors and Vanderbilts, and Carnegie and Frick, duked it out by playing oneupmanship with their opulent homes, magnificent transportation palaces and office buildings. Penn Station, for example, built by the Astors as an affront to the Vanderbilts, was designed to last more than 800 years before it would need significant structural repairs. Today our corporate “giants” hide in their ugly, chintzy skyscrapers and send real men and women of the working class to their deaths in countries they themselves avoid like the plague. If and when it is ever built, will the Cheney Building last a decade before it is condemned and razed for being structurally weak and aesthetically challenged?
I worked in the Central’s General Claims Attorney’s office at 466 Lexington Avenue in 1967 and 1968 and had enormous respect for my boss, Mr. J.T. Lynch, a fine man and World War II veteran. I learned first hand about sleazy lawyers and outrageous lawsuits, my favorite being the one brought by a woman who tried to commit suicide by jumping off a moving train, then, having failed, sued the railroad for not keeping the coach doors locked.
After work on Friday nights it was off to The Cattleman with friends for a small glass of brandy on the house (if one had to wait too long to be seated), a steak, and last a cigar, again on the house, then to the Railroad Enthusiasts club, which had its own room in Grand Central Terminal, in perpetuity due to the generosity of the railroad. Later some of us would head over to the Oyster Bar for a late night cocktail and hors d’oeuvres ( I hope I didn’t shock Taki with that one.), the latter courtesy of the excellent manager Mr. Drummond.
Ah, memories.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“There is no middle way for Americans: it is either victory or holocaust.” =Perle
Another ‘eternal war is mankinds salvation’
fraud spouting idiotic philosophy. Eternal war indebts the revolutionists and the nation they revolt against while enriching the rodents he shills for thereby making serfs of both the revolutionist and the state.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Dear Taki: I assume that you consider it “an added advantage that there are very few Canadians around” Gstaad because you lump most of my countrymen with the PC collectivists who make up Canada’s chattering classes. Certainly they are no fun to be around the chalet while sipping a hot rum. Rest assured that there are still Canadians in existence who know the difference between real freedom and pseudo-pluralism , although they are more likely skiiing the slopes of Whistler than Gstaad.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
@Roland Maruska
Gee, and to think the railroads used to be the Big Bad Guys before the oil companies...talk about rehabilitation!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I think Conrad Black was enamored of the neocons faux intellectualism and it destroyed him.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Pearle was on the board of directors of Hollinger, the company Conrad Black was convicted of stealing from. Conrad Black’s actions were approved by Pearle. Why was he not prosecuted along with Black’s 3 co-defendants?
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Good point Jake I would love seeing Perle doing 10 hard ones at Levenworth, but he has too much big shot protection.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
‘“it is either victory or holocaust.”
And there you have it. Pathological paranoia that the next jewish holocaust (nevermind the current ones in Africa or the Palestinian situation) is just around the corner...’
Posted by Jack Rich on Dec 20, 2007.
I think the problem is that today’s generation of Jews, who never proved to themselves their ability to survive catastrophe, are many more times as paranoid as the ones who came out of the camps alive. Perhaps they have heard too many bedtime horror stories from their parents and grandparents. Keeping the memory of the Jewish holocaust alive is good fundraising technique but may be bad psychology.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
A return to rail and ship travel sounds glorious, but there will be difficulties. The American railroad system is in need of massive upgrading to handle its current freight load, much less additional passenger traffic. Nobody wants to invest in boring old slow-payoff infrastructure. So we’ll have to wait for a really nasty oil crisis - it’s just a question of when - for our enlightened leadership to proclaim a crisis and start muddling with it.
Also there’s the problem of ocean travel. I understand that a modern jet can actually carry a passenger across the Atlantic by burning less oil than a reasonably fast ship uses. Nuclear-powered liners built as efficient transports and not extravagant floating theme casino hotels are feasible, but again who will invest?
Taki has the right idea, but don’t hold your breaths. By the way, it’s hunky dory, not honky.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
@Roland Maruska
Gee, and to think the railroads used to be the Big Bad Guys before the oil companies...talk about rehabilitation!
Posted by Robert Burch on Dec 20, 2007.
Rehabilitation or retribution? Well, I still rate visiting the Frick mansion (museum) on Fifth Avenue over hanging around my nearest Exxon station. If your taste doesn’t run to painting and sculpture, I assure you that at least the restrooms at the Frick are clean, whereas at the average gas station… But perhaps we can ask Senator Craig about that.
By the way, when Frick was staying at his Pittsburgh digs, his favorite place to relax was in the main salon in front of Bellini’s masterpiece St. Francis in the Desert, at which he would gaze for hours. Conscience? After all, it was Frick who sent a message to Andrew Carnegie via an intermediary, saying, “Tell Andy that I will see him in Hell, where no doubt we are both going.” Dick Cheney prefers getting drunk, blasting friends in the face, and poring over Iraq’s oil maps. I’d rather have Mr. Frick’s company to ol’ Dead Eye’s. I don’t think the spilt blood of Iraqis nor even Americans causes that one to lose much sleep.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I am now moved to go to the local book dealer and purchase Lord Black’s biography of President Nixon (who was, after all, my commander in chief--as well as John McCain’s--in the late Southeast Asian unpleasantness).
Click to flag this comment as abusive
“but with the added advantage that there are very few Canadians”
If I wasn’t in agreement, I’d be offended.
Merry Christmas to all!
Kala Xristougena Megale!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Happy New Year Sir Taki!
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Kala Xristougena & Eytyxismeno 2008
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Take what we spend in Iraq in five days and put it to the rail system, presto! T
Click to flag this comment as abusive
As a Roman Catholic who happens to live in Canada, I have been following the Conrad Black debacle for many years. I have heard that this man is supposed to be a co-religionist, but I see no evidence of it in his public behaviour whatsoever.
Christ’s message was essentially one of peace; peace with God, and peace with our neighbours. “Peace be with you,” he said on more than one occasion in the Gospels.
Our Lord did not concoct so-called ‘just war’ theories, as eminent Church fathers have done for their own worldly reasons in the past. He chastised Peter when that man cut off the ear of the centurion in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Conrad Black is a worldy and hawkish war-monger if ever there was one. While he is never likely to admit it, his thinking on matters geopolitical has obviously been influenced by his second wife, an angry agnostic cultural Jewess.
He supports the maintenance of the stooge dictator of Pakistan by the Americans, as evidenced in his most recent opinion piece in the National Post, wherein he identified the duplicitous general as ‘our son-of-a-bitch,’ taking his cue from Dr. Strangelove himself.
It seems strange indeed that Monsieur Taki is trying to defend Conrad at this time of his complete and utterly deserved disgrace. Ditto for Conrad’s priest friend, Father Raymond de Souza, who also writes defending the indefensible in the same war-mongering rag.
It may be very loyal of Taki and Father de Souza to say nice things about this convicted felon and embarrassment to the Church, assuredly, and for a few more weeks might guarantee them future invitations to pretentious bye-bye parties at the Blacks’ Palm Beach manse, but this kind of sycophantism tends to disappoint those of us who thought that this website was a haven for clear thinking on these issues.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Nice to know that Taki’s finally found a rat hole to attract fellow Jew-haters like Jack Rich, Roland Maruska and Gregory Hartnell ("Jewess"?).
Then Speccie publisher Conrad Black, of course, famously rebuked “The Poor Little Greek Boy” for just such sliminess.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
I do not know Jack Rich, Roland Maruska nor Morgan Randall Kane, nor I am familiar with their writing. I reject being arbitrarily lumped with the former two if they are indeed anti-semites as Mr. Kane seems to suggest, as I am sure Mr. Kane would object to being lumped with them in the sentence above. I am not suggesting that Mr. Kane is himself an anti-semite, but trying to show how easy it is to defame a person simply by lumping them together with other supposed pariahs.
As for my use of the word ‘Jewess,’ I am not going to apologize to Mr. Kane or anybody else for living on an island in a province in a country that is not yet completely infected by holier-than-thou political correctness. Speaking French, Spanish and Italian, I find English impoverished in its usual rigid neutering of all sexual distinction in the use of descriptive nouns.
The few usages still allowed in English, although perhaps thought quaint and archaic by some like Mr. Kane, are still useful in certain instances, and I submit that describing Barbara Amiel Black as ‘an angry agnostic cultural Jewess’ is completely apropos.
She has only recently shown the faintest glimmer of interest in the Jewish faith of her ancestors in her column in Maclean’s magazine. She has advocated never-ending pre-emptive warmaking for the Empire, like her husband, for many years.
If the good and faithful Jewish women at the website
“JEWESS” are comfortable designating themselves as such, I humbly submit that the word is good enough for me or any other courageous writer to use, whether Gentile, Jew or Jewess....
Described as ‘The Tribe’s Better Half,’ a blog about Jewish women’s issues, [it] is part of the Canonist network of religion blogs. The website is found here:
http//jewess.canonist.com/
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Mr. Black, a Canadian-born Englishman, endorses Mr. McCain for President of the United States of America, in the National Post today, confirming my assertion above that he is a warmonger. In that piece he also somehow manages to make completely irrelevant and sexist remarks about Barack Obama’s wife.
Mr. McCain recently suggested that, should he become President, he would be prepared to stay in Iraq for a hundred years, or more...thus trumping Rudy as the most unsuitable and reckless of the Republican candidates.
As they reach the age when most people have the good sense to bow gracefully, and remove themselves from the world stage, these two angry delusional old white men advocate war without end, macho posturing that seems frankly ridiculous, if their dangerous ideas weren’t so absolutely terrifying.
Click to flag this comment as abusive
Post a Comment
By submitting this form, you give Taki's Magazine permission to publish this comment. Comments will be published at our discretion, and may be edited for clarity and length. Personal attacks, ethnic slurs, the riding of hobby horses and the beating of dead ones will be deleted as soon as they are detected by our small but alert staff. Repeat abusers of this policy will be barred from leaving comments. All comments reflect only the views of those posting them and not necessarily those of this website, its editors, or authors. For best formatting, please limit your response to one paragraph and don't hit "enter" to force line breaks.
Commenting is not available in this section entry.