For Canadian lefties, this has to count as one of the all-time greatest schadenfreude-y highs.
Far-right newspaper baron Conrad Black has been dumped— sorry, has resigned — as Hollinger International’s CEO.
It doesn’t end there. David Radler — he of the infamous comment, “I am ultimately the publisher of all these papers, and if editors disagree with us, they should disagree with us when they’re no longer in our employ” — is no longer the company president. And a host of other hangers-on have also vanished from the corporate letterhead.
The issue, apparently, was $32 million in unauthorized payments to Black, Radler, Hollinger Inc. and two other executives.
Over the years, Black earned the enmity of just about anyone involved in Canadian politics who didn’t think that Generalissimo Franco got a bad rap. Venemous, vituperative and vindictive, he made himself the poster boy for the right-wing abuse of media power. U.K. journalist and media commentator Roy Gleenslade describes Black as “your typical verbose, bombastic megalomaniac.”
So seeing him go down is grimly satisfying. But it’s hard not to speculate on whether karma is finished with Lord Black of Crossharbour.
Remembering his incessant stream of hang-’em-high editorials on crime leads to idle daydreaming: Conrad being perp-walked into the back of a police van (forever after referred to as a Conrad Black Maria). Conrad breaking down in the interrogation room and offering to give up Barbara Amiel in exchange for a reduced sentence (“She’s the real Mister Big! I can give you names, dates, burial sites!”). Conrad’s publishing efforts being reduced to stamping out 10″x6″ license plates.
Mmm. Schadenfreude. It screws up your karma, but it tastes so damn good…
