I like reading FrumForum in general, but why is every conservative sob story about a rich person?
Now that Conrad Black is released from prison, where does he go?
He’d like to go home, to the house his parents built and that he lovingly enlarged….
What follows is a long explanation of why Black should be reinstated as a Canadian citizen, even though he renounced Canadian citizenship in 2001 so that he could serve in the House of Lords in England. Otherwise, poor Black will have to live as a rich exile in back in England, assuming that his conviction is overturned so that he’s not sent back to jail.
What a sad story this is.
(Yes, I know the House of Lords does not actually meet on Downing Street, but close enough.)
licensed to kill time
__
Because they are the only ones worth sobbing over, duh.
Also:nobody was really sure if he was from the House of Lords
DougJ
@licensed to kill time:
Would have been better.
Mark
Speaking as a Canadian, Lord Black of Crossharbour can suck it. He was as pernicious a force as there ever was in Canada, and a criminal too. I’m glad the Prime Minister stood up to him.
Edit: David Frum is also on my Canadian shit list. I can’t believe we produced those two bastards.
Calvin Jones and the 13th Apostle
Did Jim Webb address this in his Murdoch Fish Wrapper op-ed yesterday? I know Webb doesn’t want to look in the mirror, but it is Democrats like him(Blue Dog types) and Republicans that have abandoned Appalachia. Because both groups put rich people, and corporations, first.
Yutsano
News to Frum: Canada doesn’t want him back either. From what I understand (and our resident Canuckistanis can confirm or deny this) once you give up rights as a Canadian citizen it’s VERY difficult to get that reinstated. It’s why my mom’s cousin who’s a realtor in Puyallup has a green card rather than full American citizenship even though she’s married to an American. I went back and forth over the citizenship issue when I got serious with a Canadian once, it can get a wee bit sticky. Conrad can just suck it up. He should be rotting in jail anyway, he’s a thief with a silk tie.
@Mark: Get in touch with me when you finally exile Mark Steyn. We’ll throw a party.
licensed to kill time
@DougJ:
Your title-fu remains unparalleled. That’s just what started looping in my brain.
cava
Just be glad you don’t live in Canada. Our entire media is convinced that the general public is on the edge of its seats waiting to see how the the saga of Lord Black the beleagured newspaper baron will unfold. Story after story in newspapers, magazines, TV news. Etc. Snore.
Brachiator
@licensed to kill time:
Hah! Very good.
Also, perhaps, Paint it Conrad Black.
QuaintIrene
Because to conservatives, poor people have only themselves to blame.
Mark
Ugh. I forgot about Mark Steyn. His website says he’s currently on hiatus. Is that good enough? At least Black’s mouthpiece the National Post is almost toast.
Shalimar
His parents built it personally or paid for it to be built? And how the hell do you “lovingly” enlarge a house? There’s a penile implant joke in there somewhere.
Steeplejack
@licensed to kill time:
LOL! Good one.
Martin
@licensed to kill time: Yes, in their fantasy world of a pure meritocracy where power and wealth are the measure of merit, only the rich and powerful have worked hard enough to earn our sympathy.
Corner Stone
If they wrote about Jack Bupkiss getting out of jail for meth distribution and not knowing if he could go back to his trailer in Oklahoma it probably wouldn’t get many eyeballs.
balconesfault
I frequent FrumForum, and they’ve been headlining the Black story for weeks. I don’t click on the links – seems wholly uninteresting to me when Frum obsesses over some issues. I imagine there must be some personal connection out there.
licensed to kill time
@Martin:
Conservatives exhibit a lack of empathy unless they think it’s something that might happen to them. They might be rich and fall on hard times, or they might get rich and fall on hard times, so…in that situation, they empathize.
The poor are just to be sneered at. Not possible that they can imagine themselves in the cruel shoes of poverty without a bootstrap to be found.
trollhattan
Today I shall make a special point of adding “loving enlarged” into every conversation. This should be fun.
Gordon Schumway
Sweet Black Angel?
El Cid
I think you can have sob stories about poor people if they’re screwed over by Democrats or if they’re whites hurt by colored people.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Might make a passable Lifetime movie, though. Or Spike, if you could work in some car chases, gunfights and hot, slutty ex-girlfriends.
scav
Fact it, the media’s weird because we’ll probably have more stories about how the oil spill is impacting people with pets than how it’s impacting people with children, and then there’s the entirely muted reaction to this Islamic Terrorist (eek!) in remote Alaska.
Besides, (really cheap joke follows) clearly this particular Lord has great importance because he’s clearly A) not a Red/Commie and B) for once, a Black they can sympathize with and thus prove their lack of racism.
Corner Stone
@Steeplejack:
Lifetime if he beat his girlfriend, possibly while pregnant, and she ended up learning to defend herself and eventually pulps him.
Spike if he was a disgraced ex-Marine, with a past as a master car thief who went into the service to avoid jailtime, came back a hero and has since been wrongly framed by the local sheriff for the meth rap because the sherriff is trying to steal his old high school sweetheart/prom queen girlfriend back from Jack the Marine.
Chad N Freude
@scav: Interesting article. Do you suppose Hannity will run non-stop screeds about Sarah Palin harboring Islamist terrorists while she was Governor ?
Chad N Freude
@Corner Stone: I count myself fortunate that I do not know the traditions of Lifetime and Spike, an ignorance gained from not watching them.
scav
@Chad N Freude: Funny how the arrest wasn’t grandstanded by the FBI too, no? Gives me at least a bit of hope that there is indeed a fair bit of institutional change going on in places in the govt, under the media-line.
Corner Stone
@Chad N Freude: With a little treatment I think I have the basics for something I could pitch to John Rogers and get TNT signed up for.
A couple car chases when he’s young, some battlefield footage where he’s a hero, some footage of the girlfriend waitressing at the only diner in town while the sherriff lustily makes his play, some Friday Night Lights footage for the flashback footage where Jack and Sherriff where rivals.
Meth explosions, Jack shanking some convict in the shower, then him getting released on a witness’ testimony.
Some scenes of Sherriff playing dirty, then Jack choking the Crooked Judge into admitting his guilt when he presided at Jack’s trial.
Man, this is good shit.
licensed to kill time
@scav: He was a Weatherman! eek x 2 !
@Chad N Freude:
Heh. Somebody should, but Gawd is not that merciful.
CanadaGoose
He may be a big story in the Canadian media but even there it’s clear that most people don’t want him back. And there are good reasons:
1. Convicted criminals cannot enter Canada.
2. Black is a convicted criminal.
If he is acquitted of all charges, he can then visit Canada. But he’ll NEVER get his citizenship back. His reason for renouncing his Canadian citizenship (so he could become Baron Black of Crossharbour) just put him beyond the pale for most Canadians — including me.
DougJ
@Gordon Schumway:
Good one.
Sasha
I have a friend who was born to parents who became naturalized Canadian citizens. She was actually born in the U.S. and her parents never took the necessary steps to get her Canadian citizenship. They did not realize that she was actually a US citizen until it was time for college. So she went school in the US and married an American and never really tried to establish Canadian citizenship.
Three years after she married, her husband died in a car accident. She and her toddler and her infant were not allowed to move back to Canada. She ended up living in Rochester, NY which was as close as she could get to her mom.
MaryRC
@Yutsano: Up until about a year ago if you had renounced your Canadian citizenship and wanted it to be re-instated, you had to get back in line and apply just like any other immigrant but there’s a new policy that makes the process much easier. However you have to be a permanent resident of Canada for a year before you can apply, you can’t have been convicted in a criminal case within the last 3 years and you can’t currently be in jail, on parole or on probation. So lots of luck with that one, Conrad.
@balconesfault: Frum has always been a Conrad fanboy (he’s a former employee). If you think he’s obsessed now, you should have seen him when Conrad was on trial. He’s not a stupid guy but on the subject of Conrad, he loses it:
It was hard not to, since he literally insulted Canada at the time (“this oppressive little world)”. It didn’t help that he gave up his Canadian citizenship to play dress-up.
Jim
What i want to know is why you get more comments than David…
fucen tarmal
fawkes them all.
Anne Laurie
@Mark:
Don’t forget Mark ‘The Human’ Steyn.
If I recall correctly, Frum was on Conrad Black’s payroll for a while. I’d guess Frum hopes that Lord Crosshairs might have more sympathy for a ‘disgraced’ refugee from the Teabaggers Media Mania than his ex-colleagues at whichever think tank just expelled Frum for wrongthink?
Comrade Mary
You guys have no idea how excruciatingly thoughtful and polite I have been about not jumping in and claiming every damn Canadian mentioned even in passing here.
(Ellen Page? “She’s Canadian, you know!” Michael Cera? “He’s Canadian, you know, as is Scott Pilgrim, you know!”)
I have never had the slightest impulse to claim Conrad as one of our own.
Now if his harpy wife would only renounce her citizenship, too, that would be lovely.
Number of words Amiel has ever written in her life about “the vulnerable, the powerless, the working-class people”: estimated at 0.
burnspbesq
I was spending a lot of time in Toronto for work during the Black trial. There is a lot of selective memory going on among Canadians right now where Black is concerned. They are holding their noses now, but you should have seen some of the shit that was being written about the fundamental unfairness of our criminal justice system during the trial. You would have thought Black was a bigger martyr than Maher Arar.
Yutsano
@burnspbesq:
That’s because American bashing is a cottage industry up north. There are quite a few quarters who will take any opportunity to swipe at the US for pretty much any reason. It’s not to say a lot of it isn’t warranted, we’ve made some stupid decisions as a country over the last thirty years. But it does get overhyped, especially since Canada should be closer to us than any other country.
aarrgghh
i first read that line as “conservative s.o.b. story” and wondered what dougj was complaining about. many rich folk certainly do qualify.
ohhh … “sob story”.
ok, i get it now.
JBerardi
I think it’s part of that whole “getting poor people to vote against their own self-interest” thing they’re so good at.
toujoursdan
Black renounced his Canadian citizenship because he wanted the prestige of a Lordship.
Former Prime Minister Jean Chrétien followed the Nickle Resolution which requests that foreign government not give Canadian citizens honorary titles. The British government did so anyway. Black’s comments were that Canada was a two-bit, no place country.
He can go fuck himself. And I am really tired of the rehabilitation act going on in the media. I nearly chucked my iPod across the room when the CBC podcast I was listening to talked about how prison changed him. “Ohhh he’s sooo different now. The bluster and arrogance is gone.” Right.
Fuck him.
ErinSiobhan
Black is the darling of the Canadian right wing media because of his attempts to make the National Post a national paper in response to the Globe and Mail which (apparently) skews left. Frum, Steyn, Wente, and others of their ilk brayed in horror at the injustice being done to Black but I think the vast majority of Canadians were indifferent or enjoyed the spectacle of “Lord” Black being brought down. I particularly enjoyed the video of him (illegally) removing boxes of files from his office.
Black committed the sin for which he will never be forgiven by Canadians – repudiating his citizenship so that he could be annointed Lord Black. The Americans can keep him. We don’t want him.
Bill Murray
@Chad N Freude: I think you gain ignorance by watching Lifetime and Spike
MaryRC
@burnspbesq: Nothing changed. The same people who were vilifying the American justice system when Conrad was on trial are the ones who are fluffing him now. The irony is that these are also the same people (Frum and Steyn included) who will normally criticise Canada for not being more like the U.S.
Tom Hilton
Given his background, wouldn’t it be Fleet Street?
toujoursdan
Black’s quip that Canada is “a third world dump run by raving socialists” probably won’t help.
Frank L
Tom Hilton – you beat me to it – “Exile on Fleet Street”
ErinSiobhan – The Globe and Mail skews left? That’s a funny one
Splitting Image
Just to clarify, the special hostility Canadians sometimes seem to have for Americans comes more from that special breed of Canadians who spend their lives fluffing up what they see as America’s best characteristics (e.g. support for torture, taser-prone cops, wider economic gap between rich and poor, bombing in the middle east etc.) than it does from Americans themselves.
Examples of that breed of Canadian include Conrad Black and David Frum. Not to mention Stephen Harper, who sent the Boy King a letter of apology when Chretien refused to commit troops to help the U.S. in Iraq. Those are the guys who provoke the American-bashing.
Which is another way of saying Black can fuck himself. Since he likes the U.S. so much he can stay there. Preferably in prison.
ErinSiobhan
@Frank L. – According to Harper and Co., it does :)
Watching Black fall and the demise of the Asper family empire has been a great pleasure over the last couple of years. On the negative side, the planned introduction of Fox-style news in Canada by Sun TV is disturbing. When Harper’s old spokesman heads a news network, the result will not be good
Comrade Mary
Oh, the fucking CHEEK of the man!
But … but … I thought America had the best health care in the world! Why would they want to come back to our oppressive little country when I sure there are temperate areas of the States they could stay in?
She’s quite sick, it seems. Even though I call her a harpy, I have some sympathy for her as a sick person. But this is sheer fucking nonsense. Bed. Made. Lie in it.
RedKitten
The two of them make Marie Antoinette look like Mother Frickin’ Teresa, basically. Canadians aren’t really big on people who are arrogant. And Black and his wife are just so obnoxiously, ostentatiously arrogant and self-serving that it causes a visceral reaction in most Canadians. Yeah, our country has it’s faults, but when you basically call it a shithole and renounce your citizenship so that you can obtain some social-climbing British title? And then you want to come BACK? No. Screw you, mister.
chris
35 Comrade Mary
Amen to that. Back in the 80s I used to get the Sunday Toronto Sun delivered because I knew that Amiel’s column would get my heart started. Grrr! She was my very first wingnut. (I hear echoes of her in Modo’s work. Ew.)
As to Lord Black – a couple hundred years in the hole isn’t enough for what he did to a lot of good little newspapers. But it wouldn’t dent his gargantuan self-esteem.
But, you know I do feel a tinge of remorse. I mean, how will they ever afford cosmetic surgery and unicorn blood for poor Babs? Sniff…
chris
Almost forgot this.
David Frum is just another grifter. Fuck him and the blog he rode in on.
DougJ
@Tom Hilton:
Yeah, that’s better, I was thinking of the House of Lords connection, which is near Downing St.
kommrade reproductive vigor
This little ditty by The Clash immediately springs to mind.
Steeplejack
@Corner Stone:
Damn, I think we can get that Spike one green-lighted on Monday. Just flesh it out a bit, give me two-three pages tops. Any chance for Mark Wahlberg in the lead? Check with Morty and get back to me.
Ecks
and next time try not to shit it as badly.
(note on Canadians bashing the USA: It’s mostly a little-sibling complex I think. Canadians bash the US for the same reason Americans bash New York, Kiwi’s bash Australia, and ganamedians no doubt bash Jupiter.
Death Panel Truck
That asshole deserves to be homeless after foisting upon the world that wretched Nixon hagiography. Lies and bullshit from cover to cover. I read it because I thought it might prove amusing; instead, it was infuriating. Every copy should be gathered up and burned. I’m a fierce defender of the First Amendment, but goddamnit, I have my limits.