The FT has secured the marvellous coup of getting Conrad Black to write a column on Rupert Murdoch. Despite having nothing to do with it, Black comes out rather well from this scandal. He was a media tycoon of the old school: swaggering, colourful, extravagant. Corrupt too, assuming he has been rightfully convicted. But he ran his newspapers, including the Daily Telegraph, very well, without interference and with respect for the instincts and integrity of his journalists. All his flaws were on the surface, rather than in the shadows. He didn't have much of a record of bullying and intimidation. He didn't stoop to anything so crude as tabloids.
He is also just a more interesting character than Murdoch. Murdoch fascinates because of how he operates and what he's achieved. But in dramatic or novelistic terms, he's somewhat thin, because so one-dimensional: all business. And which would you rather read - Murdoch on Black or Black on Murdoch? No contest. In this magisterial, pretentious, grandiloquent, utterly brilliant piece, Black doesn't disappoint us.
He begins by crooking an ironic eyebrow at the terrible fuss we're making about what he clearly thinks a trivial affair (he may be in a prison cell but he writes like it's at the top of Mount Olympus):
No one should begrudge the Guardian, the BBC, CNN, the New York Times and others their fun at his expense, nor take it too seriously. He is, as Clarendon said of Cromwell and the British historian David Chandler updated to Napoleon “a great bad man”. It is as wrong to dispute his greatness as his badness.
He continues to make a fairly devastating assessment of said badness:
Although his personality is generally quite agreeable, Mr Murdoch has no loyalty to anyone or anything except his company. He has difficulty keeping friendships; rarely keeps his word for long; is an exploiter of the discomfort of others; and has betrayed every political leader who ever helped him in any country, except Ronald Reagan and perhaps Tony Blair. All his instincts are downmarket; he is not only a tabloid sensationalist; he is a malicious myth-maker, an assassin of the dignity of others and of respected institutions, all in the guise of anti-elitism. He masquerades as a pillar of contemporary, enlightened populism in Britain and sensible conservatism in the US, though he has been assiduously kissing the undercarriage of the rulers of Beijing for years. His notions of public entertainment and civic values are enshrined in the cartoon television series The Simpsons: all public officials are crooks and the public is an ignorant lumpenproletariat. There is nothing illegal in this, and it has amusing aspects, but it is unbecoming someone who has been the subject of such widespread deference and official preferments.
You can always count on a fraudster for a fancy prose style. Anyway - read the whole thing.
Free the Crossharbour One!
Thanks for that, definitely a coup for the FT! Have you read any of Black's books? I've read one, enjoyed it enormously.
Posted by: ejoch | July 14, 2011 at 02:08 PM
"You can always count on a fraudster for a fancy prose style".
Typical English anti-intellectualism.
Posted by: asd | July 14, 2011 at 10:22 PM
I meant it as a compliment, just as Humbert did.
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