It may be impossible to buy friendship. But you can certainly rent it:
Friendship and Business Blur in the World of a Media Baron: ...Though the conversations at the traveling advisory meetings could be illuminating, Mr. Buckley said he was hard pressed to find an example of how the sessions were of assistance to Hollinger. But sometimes having such good friends helped burnish Lord Black's public image. In a column syndicated by The Washington Post Writers Group in March, Mr. Will recounted observations Mr. Black had made in a London speech defending the Bush administration's stance on Iraq. In a rebuttal to Mr. Bush's critics, Mr. Will wrote, "Into this welter of foolishness has waded Conrad Black, a British citizen and member of the House of Lords who is a proprietor of many newspapers."
Asked in the interview if he should have told his readers of the payments he had received from Hollinger, Mr. Will said he saw no reason to do so. "My business is my business," he said. "Got it?" Alan Shearer, editorial director and general manager of The Washington Post Writers Group, said he was unaware of Mr. Will's affiliation with Hollinger or the money he received. "I think I would have liked to have known," Mr. Shearer said.
Similarly, in a column published in The National Review in 2002, Mr. Buckley, the magazine's editor at large, wrote of attending a dinner at Lord Black's home in London. In an effort "to divulge all my personal conflicts in talking about the subject," Mr. Buckley wrote in the column that Lord Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel, were among his "five closest friends in the entire world." Asked later why he had not mentioned his payments from Hollinger, Mr. Buckley said, "I didn't think that had any bearing whatsoever."
To underscore that he did not feel beholden to Lord Black -- "Giscard d'Estaing and I don't bribe very easily," he said -- Mr. Buckley mentioned a "withering review" of the Roosevelt book that The National Review published on Nov. 24. And yet, Mr. Buckley dashed off a letter to the editor of The New York Observer after the newspaper published a front-page profile of Lord Black last week that interspersed criticism of his business with criticism of his book. "Your editorial on Conrad Black was febrile with hate which one has to assume is personal," he wrote. "You are entitled to ask how I presume to write with ostensible authority," Mr. Buckley added. "I write because I have known Conrad Black for 15 years." He concluded: "Since your mind inclines in that direction, hear this: he has never donated a nickel to any of my enterprises."
You can hear William F. Buckley chuckle: "I said he had never donated a nickel to any of my enterprises. I never said that he had never donated a nickel to me."
Posted by DeLong at December 22, 2003 09:40 PM
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Wow! I always knew George Will was a bastard. Now he admits being a whore:
> In a rebuttal to Mr. Bush's critics, Mr. Will wrote, "Into this welter of foolishness has waded Conrad Black, a British citizen and member of the House of Lords who is a proprietor of many newspapers."
> Asked in the interview if he should have told his readers of the payments he had received from Hollinger, Mr. Will said he saw no reason to do so.
> "My business is my business," he said. "Got it?"
How is George Will keeping his job? If I was the editor of the Post, he'd be on the sidewalk.
Posted by: Chuck Nolan on December 23, 2003 04:56 AMChuck, in today's media world, that's a disqualification for being an editor - you would have passed the ethics test (which is flunking it, from their point of view).
Posted by: Barry on December 23, 2003 06:28 AMI worked for a firm that helped Black take Hollinger public in the mid-1990s. Within twelve months of going public with a clearly-defined strategic plan very attractive to U.S. investors, Black & Hollinger began to engage in self-dealing transactions taking the newspaper concern in a completely different direction.
The company probably could not have obtained financing to go public if it had honestly and accurately described its true strategic plan. Black is a bastard of the highest order; and shame on those such as Will and Buckley who associated with such ethics-compromised bastards.
Posted by: Anarchus on December 23, 2003 07:26 AMAnarchus,
Hollinger has been a public company since 1985.
My frisky friends' Conrad's and Barbara's politics are not to my taste, nor his economics for that matter. (I stopped reading his Duplessis book at the point where the St. Lawrence Seaway could not be built during the Depression because it could not be afforded then, the very time when the resources were most conspicuously available.)
It is, however, ignorant to claim that the Argus/Hollinger/Etc. setup has ever been for any purpose but serving as his plaything, and conspicuously advertised as such.
David L-J.
You are technically correct. Hollinger shares did not trade in the United States market until approximately 1994-95, when they did a large IPO in the U.S. market, which was poised to become a more significant if not the most significant part of the media company with the purchase and revival of the Chicago Sun-Times by Hollinger.
The mathematics of reviving the Chicago Sun-Times were financially compelling, and Hollinger management (ex-your-friend Black) told a the story impressively - lying through their teeth, as it were, but impressively nonetheless.
It's one thing to run a company somewhat selfishly (Loews Corp. under Larry Tisch comes to mind), but entirely another thing to intentionally mislead and eventually defraud investors.
Posted by: Anarchus on December 23, 2003 07:46 AM"Giscard d'Estaing and I don't bribe very easily"
Is this a blatant attempt to ride on someone else's credibility, or what?
Posted by: Jon H on December 23, 2003 08:23 AM