Fact Sheet From Peter C. Newman's Canadian Establishment Series, Part 2

This second installment is a look at Conrad Black through the lens of Peter C. Newman's entire Establishment series: The Canadian Establishment; The Acquisitors; Titans. I'm omitting Mr. Newman's 1982 biography of Conrad Black, which was reviewed here. The first fact sheet in this series looked at the new Canadian Establishment. The third and final one will be a look at mentor Bud Macdougald.

Conrad Black rated hardly a mention in Volume 1, published in 1975; he was only noted as one of the "The New Boys" on p. 220 of the hardcover edition. (It's in chapter 7, "Working the System." "The New Boys" is a subchapter.) His name appears much more frequently in Volume 2, published in 1981, as an Inheritor who has come into his own. Volume 1 notes him simply as being in "newspapers," but Volume 2 presents a scattered portrait of a businessman-socialite, who is confortably finding himself as Canada's chief corporate power-broker. His Hollinger Annual Dinner is mentioned as a big début for Canada's new Establishmentarians. (pp. 397-8, hc.)

Interestingly enough, David Radler is profiled in one paragraph of Volume 2, p. 57 hc., as one of the "most impressive newcomers" to the Canadian Establishment. Mr. Radler is described as an "[a]gaitator by temperament" who seems like a "strident antithesis to Black," but Mr. Newman further descibed Mr. Radler as "tough all right, but he's fair too, has never reneged on a deal, and possesses the finely tuned intellect of a frontier Rothschild." Mr. Newman also makes the point that Mr. Radler would be "damned if he's going to let anybody put one over on him." Mr Newman also descibed him as acting as a "Western agent-in-residence for Conrad Black's Argus Empire." (Reminder: Volume 2 was published in 1981.)

Volume 3 was published at the time when Hollinger was establishing the National Post - just before the "American Trucker transaction" (the earliest one the falls under the scope of the indictment) took place. It has an entire chapter devoted to Conrad Black: "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Being Black," chapter 13. The bulk of it contains a capsule biography of Mr. Black, which highlights his oft-described ego. It also describes him as a self-invented man (p. 272, hc.) who is very remote (p. 252.) With regard to the latter, Mr. Newman describes him as giving "off an aura similar to that which encircles Hollywood stars, Himalayan princes and Mafia bosses, having mastered the theatrical trick of creating space around himself." (Ibid.)

(I note in passing that anyone who has to stick to a script, even in his/her private life, has that same aura, even if it's generally ignored or laughed at. More quotidian practitioners of this art in the corporate world tend to be fingered as "sleazes," "plastic people," distinguished members of the 'lonely crowd', "canks," "hopelessly insincere," etc. There's so many of them, we hardly notice them except as members of one of those categories - not unfittingly, because following a self-imposed life script makes such a person easy to categorize. It's only when such people become powerful that they're really noticed, and/or feared for their dearth of emotional spontaneity.)

The picture of Conrad Black that emerges from Titans is one of a preternatural Titan, mainly because of his business success at that time. Another reason he fitted in so well is that he was the old Establishment's status lender for the new, as mentioned above. Portentously, Mr. Newman also quotes one of Mr. Black's opponents at Southam, Ron Cliff: "Conrad is a very brilliant guy,... but he's as ruthless as they come, and doesn't believe in corporate governance." (p. 271)