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Bring It On, Michael Wolff!
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Press baron and Rupert frenemy Conrad Black responds to Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff’s attacks.
Many thanks to Michael Wolff for his non-defense defense of his book about Rupert Murdoch against my review of it on The Daily Beast. I pointed out as many errors, inanities, and outbursts of implausible mind-reading as I could fit into a 900-word piece, in approximate order of their absurdity, and effectively declassified the book as a work of nonfiction. The usual recourse of writers caught in the dissemination of such pelagic incontinences of drivel as Wolff is to pretend to ignore the review. As I hoped and expected, he could not do that and responded without a word of demurral or argument on the merits.
Instead, this syntactically challenged, scatologically obsessed myth-maker swaddled himself in Victorian bourgeois priggishness and wrote that the fact that I am a convicted criminal (proudly) serving my (unjust) sentence in a US prison deprives me of any right to criticize him. Further, I am mad “in squalor [and] constantly mocked;" am illustrative of the worthlessness of the Internet (his chosen medium of reply), and have formed a triangle of Internet evil with Tina Brown and Eliot Spitzer.
If Wolff aspires to write history, he will have to do better than flimsy, boring, false potboilers. Even Murdoch deserves better than that.
Please keep in mind, as it is easy to forget, that Wolff is accusing me of being insane. Isn't this the point where gentle, white-clad bearers of butterfly nets are supposed to appear to conduct the Wolffs of the world to a nice, quiet place where they can exchange with each other coarse, verb-less sentences filled with fantasies and inexistent French phrases, in between sessions of heavy medication and gentle counseling?
His proof of my madness is that I believe I won the London broadsheet newspaper price and circulation war conducted against me by Murdoch from 1993 to 1997. Wolff parrots the Murdoch catechism that Rupert thrashed me in that war, causing me to rob my shareholders to sustain the cash flow that supported my luxurious life. (Anyone curious about the price war should note that Murdoch started it and deescalated it after losing hundreds of millions of dollars. We emerged as the market leader and went on to the greatest profitability in our history.) This is the rigor of Wolff's defense of his work: nolo contendere, and the accuser is a temporary resident of a prison.
I was initially accused of "a $500 million corporate kleptocracy," and at this point, as appeals continue, have been mistakenly found guilty of under-documented receipt of three-fifths of one percent of that amount, and acquitted of or not charged with all the rest. All of this could be established from primary sources in one hour of any business day, but that was an Everest of research that daunted investigative journalist Wolff.
And all of this is scarcely relevant to my review of his book, but it enables me to address what has become the real point of this exchange. It has undoubtedly been a challenge to go from 16 years as chairman of The Daily Telegraph (and I sincerely thank Wolff for quoting Murdoch's generous comments on my tenure there) and other fine newspapers, to prison. But imprisonment becomes a useful tool both to enhance credibility in arguing the case for vitally needed reforms and to understand the full consequence of what happens to those who are innocent and those whose punishment far exceeds their crime. This prison is strict and Spartan, as prisons generally should be, but not oppressive, dangerous, or even uninteresting. I am enjoying teaching English composition and US history, often to educationally disadvantaged fellow prisoners seeking to matriculate from secondary school. It is an honor, though of course an unsought one, to be even a small agent of reform of the US justice system.
The Right Dumps Carrie
Jacob Bernstein is a senior reporter at The Daily Beast. Previously, he was a features writer at WWD and W Magazine. He has also written for New York magazine, Paper, and The Huffington Post.
What's Joe's Problem?
Lloyd Grove is editor at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a frequent contributor to New York magazine and was a contributing editor for Condé Nast Portfolio. He wrote a gossip column for the New York Daily News from 2003 to 2006. Prior to that, he wrote the Reliable Source column for the Washington Post, where he spent 23 years covering politics, the media, and other subjects.
Geithner's Stock Plummeting
Jeff Madrick is a contributor to the New York Review of Books and a former economics columnist for the New York Times. He is editor of Challenge Magazine, visiting professor of humanities at Cooper Union, and senior fellow at the New School's Schwartz Center for Economic Policy Analysis. He is the author of Taking America, The End of Affluence (Random House) and The Case for Big Government.
Murdoch's Italian Offensive
Conrad Black is the author of biographies of Maurice Duplessis, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Richard M. Nixon, was the publisher of the London Telegraph newspapers and Spectator, and founded the National Post of Canada. He has been a life peer in the British House of Lords as Lord Black of Crossharbour since 2001.
I Was Right
Conrad Black is the author of biographies of Maurice Duplessis, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Richard M. Nixon, was the publisher of the London Telegraph newspapers and Spectator, and founded the National Post of Canada. He has been a life peer in the British House of Lords as Lord Black of Crossharbour since 2001.
My Trial With Blago's Lawyer
Conrad Black is the author of biographies of Maurice Duplessis, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Richard M. Nixon, was the publisher of the London Telegraph newspapers and Spectator, and founded the National Post of Canada. He has been a life peer in the British House of Lords as Lord Black of Crossharbour since 2001.
Oh, give it a rest, Your Lardship!
You never expressed any concerns about the American justice system when you were powerful and influential and probably thought it existed just to make people like you and your neocon cronies richer.
You have been a bully all your life, as your belligerent tone towards Mr. Wolff demonstrates, but you met your match when you came up against someone with the power and resources to put you in your place - which is where you now are. Well done, Mr. FitzGerald and his team of prosecutors. Remember, the ones you called Nazis. ROFLMAO
Mr. Wolff will only laugh at your frustration and blustering.
You did the crime - and it was a pretty stupid one, i.e. stealing from the rich in the USA - and now you ought to do your time without griping.
Get a grip on yourself - and hold tight to the soap.
This feud between people on the business side of publishing should give us all pause to reflect on the extent to which our basic news sources are affected by commercial considerations.
This is no simplistic matter, and there are no simplistic solutions to the dilemmas involved.
However, if we are to be responsible members of a democracy, it would behoove us to think seriously about it.
Conrad Black is the best that Murdoch has to defend him? That means something.
What a load of nonsense about your crimes and punishment! Perhaps people who haven't followed your case will buy your lies. Fortunately, there are many of us out here to counter your personal history revisionism.
>mistakenly found guilty of under-documented receipt
Mistakenly?? You had a very long trial with the best lawyers of your choice. You were given full opportunity to take the stand to give your side of the story and refused. What's up with that? Are you not able to give instructions to your lawyers? Were you afraid to be demolished when confronted with the truth?
Under-documented?? The jury found you guilty of bogus transactions in which you backdated documents and diverted millions that rightly belonged to shareholders. It only adds to the gravity that you managed to slip approvals past your hand-picked trophy directors. You knew the dozing fat cats would rubber stamp whatever you put in front of them. They didn't suspect you were self-dealing by selling newspapers to yourelf on the sly.
You forgot to mention the obstruction of justice conviction. That's where you sent your assistant to your office to pick up incriminating documents. When she was told that she was not allowed to remove them, you took a fit. After hours, you took matters in your own hands, physically handing the boxes out the back door to your chauffeur. While spiriting the boxes out of the building, you pointed to the security cameras that you thought were long-broken. Oops! You didn't know that those cameras had been repaired only hours before your arrival. You were caught red-handed.
Then, you had your assistant tell a story that she needed to take the boxes to her place so she could work from home on the files. Trouble is, you never delivered the boxes to her place. You made the poor woman look like a fool (or worse) on the witness stand. Again, you never testified under oath about the incident, preferring to make a "defence" outside of court where you couldn't face cross-examination.
You know full well that it was serendipitous that you were acquitted on many of the counts. Most of the jurors wanted to convict on *everything*. Unfortunately, one wayward juror refused to consider anything but "paper evidence" when judging your guilt. Verbal testimony meant nothing to her as she effectively applied her own judicial standard of guilty beyond *all* doubt. If you read her own accounts on the Toronto Life blog, she found the evidence she wanted by browsing documents in the boxes that you had spirited away and were forced to return. She dug in her heels to convict only on those counts. After several days of deadlock, the majority caved in just so they could go home.
BTW, just what was your defence? Was it that David Radler was the one who illegally siphoned off the money and you knew nothing? Or was it that there never was any crime and that everything you and he did was approved? You can't have it both ways. At any rate, nobody believes that you weren't fully aware of the ripoff. Your wife was desperately trying to keep up with the billionaire Kravitzes on your measly millionaire's income. You needed corporate cash to maintain your phony nobleman's lifestyle and found what you called "a splendid conveyance".
>becomes a useful tool both to enhance credibility
It's not working. All you're proving is that the U.S. prison system isn't giving you enough real work and you should have a job that involves physical labour. You spend your time browsing the Internet, sending email, writing blogs, and reading the news media instead of reflecting on your crimes and learning remorse.
>Make my day, Mr. Wolff, and try to reply: you are enriching American prison life
I'm so glad that you gave up your Canadian citizenship to ascend to the British House of Lords. It means that Canadians don't have to pay for your keep. It also means that you won't get out at one-third of your sentence like your buddy Radler did.
Connie, how can you claim any credibility in your quarrels with Woolff when you can't even report your own recent history with accuracy?
Oh dear. Is Tina Brown actually paying you for this? Sorry, Lord Black, your arguments don't hold up very well even with all the flowery prose. If you are teaching English to prisoners, I do hope they don't come out being as much of a prat as you. Bill Buckley could use big words and still be understood. Not so for you, sir.
Wolff v Black: It isnot diificult to predict the winner of this debate and it is amusing how upset it makes some people
Only 14 days to go before the war criminal Dubya fades from the scene. And 14 days to worry that he might pardon His Lardship. After ll, it would be only a bagatelle (as His Lardship can explain to his students, that means "a little thing) compared with the enormous crimes he has committed against his own people and many others.
I can't see Obama pardoning His Lardship if Dubya doesn't. In a column just before the election, His Lardship made some snide disparaging comments about Mrs. Obama's academic achievements and referred to her as "callipygian", in addition to endorsing that lover of gun-toting milfs, McCain. LOL
His Lardship had better not teach his students that word, either. It means that someone has a nice arse.
Let's hope no one in the Coleman institution for the morally and ethically challenged starts thinking that about His Lardship.
Bleeding heart liberals? It appears I may be one of the truest kind as the immaturity, hatred and bitterness directed towards Conrad Black is too much for me. I do not know the man or how he conducts himself on a personal level and it is none of my business. I suppose some may consider my young age to infer great naivite but even still, it's missing the point. Let us look at this logically for a moment. Scenario A: He is guilty and serving his sentence. Scenario B: He is not guilty and serving his sentence. In either scenario, and any other in between, there simply is no difference in how he should be treated or looked upon.
Why is it that this man is treated with such disdain while most other criminals receive so little public outrage? It is for the same reason we revere and detest celebrity culture. Some of us are jealous of wealth or we are simply misdirecting our anger and dissatisfaction with the state of the world. As a society we have somehow forgotten the purpose and reasoning of prison and the justice system as a whole. Criminals serve an indispensable role in society. They act as indicators, as a mirror of society, throwing back in our faces what we continually choose to ignore. In viewing prison as punishment we are simply oppressing social change. If it is through moral judgment that we continually seek revenge on a criminal than any other form of justice is rendered unnecessary. If, as a society, we cannot forgive Mr. Black for any crimes he may or may not have committed once he has served his time, why must he serve any time at all?
The nationalism is also wearing thin. I am Canadian. Should this make me hate any person more or less? Come to Canada, hell, live in the house next to me, or don't, it really does not matter. If someone does not like his writing, or mine, than do not read it. Hateful opinions are best kept to ones self. I am writing this not to express my own opinion, but to defend the dignity of humanity. If at a later time I were to meet Mr. Black and found him to be more despicable than any other living person, it would not make him less so in denying him joy, but only make me more so. I am genuinely proud and hopeful to see someone find some purpose and joy in imprisonment. I do not want to imagine myself being in a similar situation.
Dear Mr. Jones having walked the halls of prison, and stood heel to toe with some despicable people, I can tell you with confidence Mr. Blacks bloated sophistry, knowing no bounds wouldn't have a chance on the yard in general population.
Mr.Blacks skill and class is better served in protective custody, marshaling PR for Mr. Murdoch, dinning on what ever exotic morsels his kinfolk can stuff into a care package.
Humility is a quality Mr. black seldom if ever consorts with. To a lot of people Mr. Black, as with Judith Miller who was sufficiently pealed by the beast, an apology is in order for having broken a a bond of trust; she with her readers, and editors, Black with his share holders, and those who thought he had something unique to say.
The apology unfortunately like bacon grease will have to be sweated out of him, as he submits his pomposity to the frying pan of public opinion.
Mr. Jones I too am proud when some one finds anything resembling joy or a purpose in prison, it more often then not is being parceled there unfortunately, as thin as the shade of a tooth pick.
@Fintan: You'd like this one by Black where he slags U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and lawyer Eddie Genson while defending Rod Blagojevich!
http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fullcomment/archive/2009/01/10/ conrad-black-chicago-s-torquemada-claims-another-victim.aspx
As you will be in a USA Prison for the next 6 years or so, RESIGN your PEERAGE as you are doing nothing for the British at this time except embarrasing them. For you to accept One Pound while you are in Prison, is nothing more than WELFARE FOR THE RICH. The British deserve much better than you. All of us in Canada are glad you gave up your Canadian Citizenship, you are a British problem now!
Hey Lordy, now that George Bush has left office without granting your plea for clemency, is he a bad president? He must be awfully stupid not to see that you've been railroaded!
Hmmm, I'll bet he's now part of the great, vicious conspiracy against you that includes investigators, prosecutors, judges, and jurors.
You'd better transition your sucking up to Obama big time! I'd say your best chance with him is to give back the millions you took from shareholders to show some remorse.
I support you. I know you were set up because you are too brilliant to have lost so much for 6 million dollars. 6 million is a pretty keen number but I know people with 600 million and more... It just doesn't make sense. I believe you will get out early, reclaim your success and rebuild bigger than ever. You were a mentor to my mother at the beginning of her writing career and you should know you have more supporters than you might think. Though I don't always agree with the view, I look forward to and enjoy reading your articles. Keep up the good work.
FYI this is the Dark Lord of a Subway Stop's get out of jail free card if his lawyer Genson knows how to plaiy it .
the question i have is do you folks know what Obama and his lawyer Mr. Craig knows and if so will this comment stand the test of time?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/2718120/Integrity-Yea-Right
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9092510/Chicago
http://www.scribd.com/doc/9092344/Jesse-Jackson-Jr
http://www.archive.org/details/FedsUsTreasuryDeptRcmpEtc
http://www.archive.org/details/Part1WiretapTape143
http://www.archive.org/details/WiretapTape143
http://www.archive.org/details/PoliceSurveilanceWiretapTape139
For the record your bank did receive my documents years ago.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/10972857/Bankers
Cutler did receive this correspondence and my documents within his
former office in the SEC years ago.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/10973945/SEC
Furthermore I have no doubt whatsoever he was involved in getting his
fellow lawyers within the SEC to try to talk to me before they made a
quick settlement with Putnam Investments that spawned the following US
Senate Banking commiteee Hearings.
http://www.archive.org/details/SecTreasuryDeptEtc
Anyone can see byway of reading the Wall Street Journal's law blog
that the trancripts and webcast of these imporatnt hearing have
dissappeared.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/05/14/emperors-club-booker-pleads-guilty- to-counts-of-conspiracy/
http://banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&H earingID=102e41a1-f540-4ce5-a701-b6d09b7606b1
Cutler along with Spitzer certainly testified at this hearing.
http://banking.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?Fuseaction=Hearings.Detail&H earingID=90f8e691-9065-4f8c-a465-72722b47e7f2
http://www.scribd.com/doc/10979193/Securities-Commitee
And clearly I have my copy of the transcript of the hearing taht the
US Senate Banking committee has lost. EH?
http://www.scribd.com/doc/5362918/Senate-hearing
Veritas Vincit
David Raymond Amos
Thanx for posting my comment Beastie Boyz.
When you dudes delayed doing so last night I blogged elswhere as well. Here is just one example that should make Mikey Wollf reconsider many things.
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/11/24/conrad-blacks-notes-from-the-undergr ound/#comment-389153
Now I wonder if the Dark Lord of a Subway Stop or his old buddy from way down under even bother to read what lawyers write let alone the Wall Street Journal's law blog about their nonsense. If they did rest assured the Dark Lord would never have been prosecuted in the first place.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/5352212/Public-Sector-Integrity
or at the very least he would have been out of jail the instant his old buddy Eliot Sptizer got caught in DC with the wrong girl
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/05/14/emperors-club-booker-pleads-guilty- to-counts-of-conspiracy/
or when UBS got in hot water in the USA
.http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/10/07/aufhauser-former-ubs-gc-settles-ins ider-trading-allegations/
BTW Anybody heard of a dude named Sam Zell? the Beastie boyz should find this funny gossip about the near bankrupt corporate media EH?
http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2008/09/16/la-times-writers-sue-sam-zell/
Veritas Vincit
David Raymond Amos
Here is something you folks may enjoy listening to
http://podcast.gcnlive.com/podcast//nutri_med/0406093.mp3
http://podcast.gcnlive.com/podcast//nutri_med/0407093.mp3
Veritas Vincit
David Raymond Amos
Please continue to write - your voice is sincerely appreciated.
Thank you.
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