Convicted Criminal Conrad struggles to figure out why friends have thrown him under the bus

That's what I would have titled this column.

Has the National Post Entered a Death Spiral?

Red Tory has the goods on shrinking readership, paper-size, and markets. I can't say I'm surprised at this development, the National Post really doesn't have much to offer unless you already buy into its fairly narrow neoconservative view of foreign policy fused with so-con moral panic.

Also, the last time I checked, they stopped putting in editorial cartoons. How are we to swallow all the horror and bullshit if you don't offer up a smile or a laugh as a chaser? Conrad is a convicted criminal now, but at least he had the semblance of a vision for his flagship paper, I think the Aspers on the other hand have pretty much demonstrated their inability to comprehend the newspaper world.

Lord Black of The Federal Prison System

Conrad is guilty. Before you let any Oz fantasies run wild, I'm quite sure that he'll wind up in a minimum security "club fed" type of place.

While I have found much of what Mr. Black says to be disagreeable and while I have a suspicion that he's probably an insufferable asshole in person, I don't particularly feel like celebrating because he's likely going to jail. He got caught, he was tried, he was found guilty. If he had been found innocent it would not blunt any of my antipathy for his opinions on a variety of topic. By the same token, his guilt does not change my opinion of, uh, his opinions.

Black, Rumsfeld, and the "Ostrich" Defence

On the way into work this morning I heard on the radio that the judge in Conrad Black's trial has said that Conrad cannot use the Ostrich defence in his trial (i.e.: his lawyers can't plead that he had his head in the sand about this whole thing if he was deliberately ignorant).

Meanwhile it appears that Rumsfeld is attempting the very same thing when it comes to the issue of torture at Abu Ghraib. It now appears that he deliberately made a show of not looking at photographs of what had happened. Andrew Sullivan writes:

"The most plausible inference is obviously that he covered his tracks and feigned ignorance and did not look at the photographs to create a record of complete deniability. The incompetence comes from ordering torture at Abu Ghraib and not realizing that evidence of it would spread and disseminate through new media that Rumsfeld probably wasn't that familiar with."

One wonders whether Rumsfeld will get away with this defence for what amounts to a war crime when Black has been denied this defence in a white collar crime trial.

Mark Steyn: Armchair quarterback for school shootings

The Poor Man has a really great take on Mark Steyn's tasteless blame-the-victim approach to dealing with the VA Tech massacre.

Unfortunately we can't all be manly men like super hero Mark Steyn who would have totally rushed the guy and caught all the bullets in his mouth and spit them back at him. Look at Mark Steyn's manly visage, he has a beard, like Chuck Norris or Shipwreck from GI Joe.

As usual, any number of groups have piled on to turn VA Tech into a soapbox for their issues however tangentially they may be related. But for Steyn to harp on university kids for not being all manly and butch like him and other high school drop-outs is particularly odious. (Note: I am not intending to tar high school drop-outs by association with Mark Steyn, most of them do NOT become far-right columnists.)

Incidentally, right now Mark is preoccupying himself giving sympathetic coverage to Conrad Black at his trial. Black is so manly that he throws fancy parties where he dresses up as Cardinal Richelieu and other really macho characters. Thank you for pointing us to the pinnacle of manliness, Mark, I'll go buy a Richelieu outfit and start buying shoes for a crazy lady.

Hoisted by his own Petard?

Conrad Black has always loved big words. I mean really, alarmingly big words. He often comes off as an irritating university sophomore eager to show off. His word usage mixed with his name dropping gets irksome - and this is coming from someone who probably name-drops and deliberately uses flowery language way too much.

All this leads to this gem. Conrad-loving Mark Steyn points out that:

"[Prosecutor Jeffery Cramer] took the opportunity to reiterate to the jury over and over that “four men in this room stole 60 million dollars”, and to bolster it he produced some quotes from Conrad Black’s memos, unusually loquacious by corporate standards and at least potentially damaging for jurors unfamiliar with his ornate rhetorical style."

So outsiders might view this "ornate rhetorical style" might do what? Give jurors the impression that Conrad is an obfuscating asshole who is pleased to talk down to others? Gee, Mark Steyn, I wonder how anyone could get such a distorted view of this man?

Oh no he didn't!

Conrad tells the press to talk to the hand! What's next, Barbara doing the whole snap-snap-snap-head-bob thing with her fingers. Seriously, I see his daughter is his new fashion accessory. I didn't know he had kids until this trial. I suppose now he's trying to be Mr. Family Man so the jurors will be sympathetic. I don't know if Black will be convicted of any crimes, but we should never forget that he's an insufferable douche either way. He talks down to Canadians one minute and the next begs to have his citizenship back.