Delusionally Grand

What a wonderful quote from someone's keenly cute observation of Lord and Lady Black: "They are millionaires who aspire to live like billionaires". Or some such pithy summing up. Clever, wouldn't you agree? Wish I could come up with zingers like that. Makes me wonder what percentage of their vast fortune they couldn't squander quickly enough with all those multi-million-dollar homes and parties and trips they offered to charitable enterprises. Other than their very own, that is.

The thing of it is, in so many ways Conrad Black is a bemusedly admirable personality. Highly intelligent, almost academic in a way. Well read, and more than capable of expressing ideas and opinions in a cogent and convincing manner. A lover of the English language; who could find fault with that? Well, sometimes it seems a trifle obnoxious when someone studiously and deliberately uses language in such a stilted manner as to exclude the recognition of riff-raff.

Lord Black, formerly media mogul of note (not that he wouldn't prefer to be referred to as a media baron, given his predilection for titles) had the highest respect for news gathering and distribution. From all I could ascertain he appeared, unlike so many others involved in media dissemination, to have a hands-off policy with his newspapers. While his holdings were definitely conservative in nature, he wasn't averse to having liberal-minded reporters on staff to balance the picture.

Nor did he have a tendency to dictate to his editors. They wrote what they saw fit to write, unalloyed news reportage and editorial deliverances often enough in direct opposition to what Lord Black himself believed. His recourse was a delight, actually. He would write his rebuttal, send it along to the offending editor, and it would be published so the reading public could avail itself of his opinion, not necessarily that of the newspaper.

Give credit where it's due to a good mind, a keen intelligence, someone imbued with a proclivity to write sound prose, assemble a good argument, distill data from various sources to present a coherent study. He is an excellent writer. Like his conclusions, his perspective or not. His historical biographical publications place him in a heady sphere of excellent authors. He hasn't been averse to putting himself out there on the advertising/sales circuit, like any other author, to flog the results of his enterprise.

So he's a scholar of sorts, a meticulous researcher (quite aside from the fact that he's in the position to hire scads of research assistants; but they don't do the writing, he does), distilling facts to provide eminently readable products. He enjoys history, he admires personages of power, prestige and authority who illuminated our past and moved civil society through the tempest of their times.

Ain't he grand?

Pity there's so much of the other side; his insatiable need for personal power, prestige, wealth, admiration, recognition, celebrity, influence and political power. Achievements there were many. Satisfactions too, one assumes. But nothing, it would appear, was ever quite enough. Aspirations to the highest social order and public recognition, nothing less. Ah, and a peerage.

The man adored hob-nobbing with crusty old wealth. He loved the trappings of power. He was inspired by the world of letters. He had no time for fools, but they might be accommodated if they were sufficiently in awe of his presence. His wealth enabled him to live grandly, but because he lived somewhat too grandly, he was always stretched for cash flow. The Blacks existed expansively and expensively. Above all, he truly believed that whatever he did was right, and he was entitled to everything and anything.

For he is such an exceptional personage in and of himself. Those unpleasant stories about his business dealings? Trifles. So besotted with himself he truly appears to believe he can do no wrong. He could be seen to be modestly self-effacing, despite - or perhaps because of - his overweening ego. A charming man. Leading a charmed life. Until he pushed and shoved a bit too much and overstepped himself.

When I was a child there was one of those old obscure little stories written for children, one with a moral which likely originally was written during the Middle Ages in Germany. Nothing like Little Red Riding Hood or Snow White and Rose Red, or even Bluebeard. No, this was about a man who was offered three wishes. He wished for wealth and it was granted him. He wished to become an emperor, and his wish was granted.

But then, he went a little too far. He insisted for this third wish that he be granted the position of Pope. The genie was scandalized and struck that intellectual misfit dead on the spot. And I, a little Jewish girl, was left confused and wondering what exactly was it about a "Pope" that was so outrageously denied and why couldn't the poor man be satisfied with being, after all, an emperor?