Seven Oaks Magazine.

Grasping for a silver lining, one could speculate that George Bush’s election will prove to be a boon to a host of progressive publishing houses. Dozens of books on the administration’s handling of the war on Iraq, and (lack of) character sketches like John Nichols’ Dick, The Man Who Is President, have been given an extended lease on their shelf life.

There’s one title that’s only tangentially related to the bevy of anti-war, anti-Bush titles that’s well worth checking out, especially if one is looking to take solace in the demise of a right-wing icon. And in a world offering precious little consolation to the forces of peace and justice these days, the fall of Conrad Black fits the bill and then some. Wrong Way: The Fall of Conrad Black, written by Globe and Mail business reporters Jacquie McNish and Sinclair Stewart, traces the precipitous plunge of the media tycoon and his “Lady Black,” the appalling Barbara Amiel.

McNish and Stewart’s book outlines the rise and fall of Conrad Black. The quintessential example of a guy ‘born on third who thinks he hit a triple,’ Black’s ambition was only rivalled by his self-absorption, and sense of superiority and entitlement. So his first business misadventure, a scheme to sell stolen exam questions to students at the elite Upper Canada College which resulted in his expulsion in 1959, is dismissed by his Lordship as having “inconvenienced hundreds of unoffending people, students, and faculty.” (page 28)

And so it went for Conrad, acquiring ever more real estate – including his inherited estate near Toronto, mansions in both London and Palm Beach, and a lavish apartment in New York – and working on pet literary projects such as a massive biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, all in addition to expanding his media empire. In the 1990s, Conrad added two more “assets” to his stable, acquiring the far-right polemicist Barbara Amiel as his wife, and later founding the equally far-right National Post.

Much like the myriad anti-Bush tracts and documentaries, McNish and Stewart focus too much on the (admittedly loathsome) personalities of Black and his close associates at Hollinger Inc., such as the Vancouver-based David Radler. Not that a little “piling on” isn’t enjoyable to watch, especially given Black’s notoriously thin skin. MacLean’s magazine and Peter C. Newman, the publication’s former editor who gave Amiel her first big gig as a columnist with the Canadian journalistic flagship in the 1970s, joined the chorus last week, with a gossipy no-holds-barred excerpt from his upcoming memoir.

But such ad hominem attacks, however irresistible, can quickly overshadow the real issues at play. So we had the spectacle of the CBC’s overconfident yet often painfully shallow “man of letters” Evan Solomon asking Newman this question regarding his chapter on Conrad Black:

Evan and Peter never did delve into the really “great story” of our time, the ascendance of Black and his Hollinger Inc., its overtly far-right wing editorial stance and the impact that has had in pulling the political discourse in North America and beyond to the right over the past decades. Fully-integrated with the western political elite, Black was unabashed in using his media to advance strident foreign and domestic policy objectives. To illustrate, Hollinger’s senior international advisors as of 2000 included a former secretary general of NATO, a former president of France, Margaret Thatcher and two of the oldest and most hawkish of U.S. foreign policy-makers, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissenger.

The past few years have provided ample evidence that when it comes to corporate corruption, nepotism and graft, there’s a whole harvest of bad apples. In fact, far from these scandals reflecting the personal weaknesses of the Martha Stewarts and Ken Lays of the world, they in fact reveal to us the real functioning of the capitalist system. Wrong Way, then, goes awry by failing to question the overall corporate system, preferring to cast Black as a maverick, a throwback to the “bad old days” of larger-than-life barons of industry.

Indeed, as gleeful as some may have been to see Hollinger’s over-extension, and now its CEO’s demise, we are left with the reality that CanWest-Global and the Aspers have taken over from Black without missing a beat. In fact, the monopolization of the country’s daily newspapers is more advanced than ever, and the National Post remains a money-losing conduit of the most reactionary politics, subsidized by the rest of the Aspers’ vast holdings.

Rather than just seeing Conrad Black as a despicable character who took advantage of shareholders and the companies he oversaw, then, it’s important to look at the ways in which the very functioning of the corporate world encourages the worst elements of human nature, and elevates the worst people to the heights of power and influence.

That said, though, one should always be able to take a moment to enjoy life’s little pleasures. So, treat yourself, and take that moment to savour the ignominious downfall of Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel.