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SUNDAY SPECTATOR
January 25, 2004
Three men
Let us now praise slightly flawed men. There are certain characters demonized in our media and general conversation for whom I have a sneaking regard. Each is a sinner -- but aren't we all? Beyond this each has run afoul of some investigative authority -- one might almost suspect as payback for what he did well. Their enemies rejoice in their discomfiture and long for formal charges to be laid -- to prison! to prison! -- though one of my men is happily blessed with diplomatic immunity. In each case the outcry against my sort-of hero leaves the impression of a giant pulled down by numerous dwarves. (Nothing against dwarves individually; I just hate it when they gang up.) And in each case my praise is reserved not for the supposed sin but for the sinner. I place strict limits on my sneaking regards. I do not and will under no circumstances hold murderers and psychopaths up for celebration. I draw the line at vandals and thieves. But I do draw that line inclusively. Exhibit one. Conrad Black. He is or was a press baron in the heroic traditional mould. I have had some rather distant tenuous connexions with him. For instance I owe my present job to being hired by someone whom "Mr." Black hired (to give him his Canadian title). And the newspaper for which I write was immeasurably improved under his ownership -- not only in my own estimation but I should think by any objective criterion that could be applied to the evaluation of quality in a newspaper. This Mr. Black was often rumoured to have erred in the sight of what he calls "the corporate governance zealots" -- rolling rich old widows raiding pension funds things of that nature. He was as often vindicated in court. He had a reputation as something of a "robber baron" which immediately endeared him to me for we owe so much of our infrastructure and prosperity to the success of the great robber barons. (Though it should be said in balance that the money they amass is often later disbursed counter-productively through charities and foundations. It is one of the paradoxes of human life that evil is more often done by money given away than by money that is stolen.) As a publisher of newspapers Mr. Black should have been almost above criticism. He could hardly touch a media property without improving it. Everything he is now trying to unload -- Daily Telegraph Jerusalem Post Chicago Sun-Times -- was raised or restored to journalistic integrity under his command. And in Canada through the former Southam papers and his invention of the National Post he brought some brief shining respite from mediocrity -- from that "sleep of the just" in which Canadian journalists had snored through the decades. He was a real media baron held court and entourage. He went to the wall for his courtiers earning their fealty in generous showers of gifts and favours. It was part of his show a show entirely worth the production for it put fine intellect on the stage of high finance -- a civilizing gesture. The speed with which several of those courtiers abandoned Lord Black to cover their backsides at the first sign he might be in trouble filled my heart with disgust. A man who accomplished wonderful things -- and so far as I am able to follow by persisting in various corporate practices that were perfectly legal a few years ago and may well still be legal today. Indeed for all I know a man "no more guilty than Dreyfus". I pray he will rise again. Exhibit two. George Radwanski. I used to hate this guy but have learned to love him. He was like so many Liberal Party flaks in and out of public life. Adapted to power they tend to write the rules by which they are guided and rewrite as they go along. (This is inevitable in any one-party state.) A career of cynical self-promotion; but mixed in Mr. Radwanski's unique case with moments of actual public service. He wrote for example two commissions for the Ontario Liberal government of David Peterson (on services and on education) which were not entirely foolish and led to some minor improvements. His very arrogance was put to good use in his job as Canada's Privacy Commissioner for he had the guts to stand up to the government last year in the matter of a national biometric identity card. This card could be used to invade our privacy in numerous ways (by data-pooling in combination with communications and video surveillance) while in no credible way improving our defences against terrorism. Mr. Radwanski boldly rang the alarm that it was his duty to ring -- at the cost of becoming a traitor to his class. And now he is to be investigated by the RCMP for expense overruns and minor acts of corruption which can hardly impress a student of the coalition of interests that keeps our Liberal Party in power. Let everyone who received a good lunch from this man rise in his defence! My third exhibit is a kind of Zen consolidation of righteousness and infamy in a single act. The case is that of Zvi Mazel the Israeli ambassador to Sweden who publicly and literally trashed a "controversial" art installation at the Stockholm Historical Museum. (Most such installations are methodically controversial; this is part of the decadence of Western art.) The display showed a poster of the female suicide bomber who murdered 21 Israelis in Haifa several months ago floating as the sail of a little white boat in a pool of red liquid klieg-lighted under the title "Snow White and the Madness of Truth". The artist Dror Feiler himself Israeli-Russian explained that his installation was not meant to diminish Israel victims of suicide bombers but rather as a statement about "the futility of violence". That may well be in which case I am the more impressed by the Israeli ambassador's reaction. How better to respond artistically to an installation which asserts that violence is futile than by physically destroying it? All these three men did what was necessary to make a difference and perhaps a little more. But as William Blake wrote we cannot know what is enough until we know what is too much. Sins we all have but these men have virtues. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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