Real History and kicking friends when they are down

The International Campaign for Real History

Posted Thursday, January 8, 2004

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Thursday, Jan. 8, 2004

Conrad Black Things look black for the Lord and Lady

By Margaret Wente

ONE evening last year, before their troubles began, Lord and Lady Black were guests at one of the great social events of the season. The guests were royalty, billionaires and intellectuals from several countries. Some acquaintances of Barbara [Amiel]'s from the old days were there, too. When they went up to her and said hello, she looked right through them, as if they were invisible, then turned away to seek out someone more important.

As one of them explained it later, "We are her past."

Now that their reputation has fallen on hard times, the Blacks are discovering who their true friends are. The process is invariably painful. Who will return your calls when you're in disgrace? Who will beg for the pleasure of your company? Who will come to your parties and hang on your every word when everyone is gossiping meanly?

"It's odd how fast grandeur becomes gloomy when the miasma of misfortune sets in," wrote Tina Brown in The New York Sun. She went to the publishing party at the Four Seasons for Mr. Black's monumental biography of FDR, which was meant to be a dazzling gathering of luminaries. Instead, it was a bust. Despite widespread acclaim for the book, only the hardiest of loyalists (including an aging Henry Kissinger) showed up. Ms. Brown called the event "a wake for a reputation."

Friends tend to keep a distance when they read the papers and see words like looting adjacent to your name. And Lord and Lady Black have done themselves no favours with their épater les bourgeois remarks. "I made 50 million bucks yesterday," Conrad said belligerently, before his high-priced new lawyer told him to shut up. And just a few weeks ago, Barbara wrote an article in a glossy magazine about a certain "fantastic natural-pearl and diamond brooch" she owns, which languishes in her safety-deposit box because it's simply too big to wear.

Just in time for Christmas, The New York Times dumped a ton more of bad ink on their heads. First came a front-page story with an especially snarly photo of Mr. Black. "Friendship and Business Blur In the World of a Media Baron," said the headline. The story chronicled his habit of stacking his various boards with the rich and influential, who returned the favour by toting water for him. (Both William F. Buckley and George Will wrote flatteringly about him without revealing that he'd written them big cheques.) The next day, Paul Krugman, the Times's wildly popular op-ed columnist, called "Citizen Conrad" the leading villain of the new gilded age. To top it off, they trashed his book. "It gives off the familiar air of vanity publishing," the book reviewer sneered.

Oh well. When these things start to unravel, they unravel in a hurry. Since then, Mr. Black has failed to make an $850,000 payment to Hollinger and taken the Fifth. He's looking less and less like a tycoon and more and more like a bunko artist every day. He and his wife spent Christmas lying low in Toronto, where Barbara told friends that the whole story (the one that presumably would vindicate her husband) has yet to come out.

There's lots of speculation that Barbara might have to hock her brooch (although my guess is that her main privation to date is having to fly commercial). And there's already catty talk about her well-known history of trading in old partners (four so far, and that's just the husbands) for better ones. Will history repeat itself?

Barbara Amiel "It is about time we dismissed those ugly words of criticism (like 'meal ticket' and 'gold digger') that accompany a good marriage," she once wrote, in an article called, Why Women Marry Up. "It is what society has always expected a woman to do." She opined that every woman should marry a man who makes at least twice as much as she does. That was some time during her third marriage, to a charming, handsome cable entrepreneur who was also rich, though not nearly as rich as Mr. Black.

And yet, it wasn't simply Conrad's money that she liked. "He understands power," she once wrote, many years before they fell into each other's arms. And we all know what Mr. Kissinger said about power. What happens when Conrad loses it?

I last saw the Blacks perhaps ten years ago, shortly after they were married. A friend of mine took me along to lunch with them at a restaurant in Toronto. Barbara complained bitterly about how disliked she was in Canada, and how petty and small-minded Canadians are. She had by then acquired, or reacquired, I'm not sure which, a refined English accent. After lunch, they got into their chauffeur-driven limousine and drove away.

"They took a limousine to lunch?" said someone else I knew then. He used to be on one of the Hollinger boards, but quit after he concluded that Mr. Black's companies, too, were a vanity project. He is even richer than Mr. Black, but when he goes to lunch, he takes a cab.

As for Mrs. Black, I wonder if she's sorry for snubbing her old friends. I have a hunch she might be needing them.