This, of course, is the real question, the real angle on the Conrad Black trial – the Mrs.:
As the judge in Conrad M. Black’s fraud trial began reading through the verdict in the criminal fraud prosecution against him last Friday — finding Mr. Black guilty on four counts — Mr. Black’s wife, Barbara Amiel, was observed scribbling a note and passing it to her husband. It isn’t known what the note said, but someday it could be. Some Canadian publishing executives believe that Ms. Amiel might be willing to write a book dealing with the experience of being by her husband’s side during the unraveling of his storied career as a newspaper magnate.
The NYTs article does raise a couple of questions. First, why does the Globe call him “Lord Black” when that is not his name but a title given by another country? It’s not like you give up your name in the way that a nun does and it’s not like he was born to the title. Second, long before the criminal activity was in the news, when Black was a topic of gossip and CBC interviews of mutual contempt, Barbara Amiel was one of the bigger issues, apologist for the meanest of human causes though a few that were not, pal to the privileged that she, too, craved to join without any apparent entitlement – and something of a garbage mouth. And though she is now described as a journalist I can’t recall any reporting or news-breaking she took part in. And a columnist mainly for McLeans, playing the role the counter-point right-wing nut-bar.
The meanness in many of us watch to see what she will do should Conrad go to the Big House, should all the assets be seized in the end, the corporate veils pierced. Should we care? Or is that something of a corruption of the word “care”?