Whatever does Conrad Black have in mind? Since he got out of jail, he has come back to Canada and gone back to pontificating. He loves to show what an erudite writer he can be. He must still have some pull with the right-wing National Post. Last week he got a full page in the Post to lambaste New Democratic Leader Tommy Mulcair. It is what his intentions are that is not clear.
You would think that Stuffy Tommy Mulcair would be a lesser target for a wordsmith such as Lord Crossthepond, or whatever his title might be. The fact that Black is even back in Canada just goes to show you what nice people we Canucks can be. He gave us the finger to go play act at being a lord in England and we let him come back. It was the Americans who threw him in jail. Little did the Yankees care that a major piece of evidence came from his Toronto office where he and his chauffeur were taking the files out for a drive. Canadians just enjoyed the show. It was reality TV at its best.
But this does not explain why Lord Connie has a hard-on for Stuffy Tommy. Connie’s headline for his article in the National Post is: An insult to history’s REAL FEDERALISTS. (The mix of upper and lower case presented a nice two-line lead.)
Lord Connie, as usual, spends an inordinate amount of his 1000 words establishing his credentials as a writer and Quebec historian. While his book on Quebec Premier Maurice Duplessis was a snorer, it is still the definitive work on the subject. Those in the know, willingly acknowledge Lord Connie’s expertise in the subject area. It is just that he seems to lack a clear understanding of Canadians in general. He does not understand why some Canadians consider him an object of ridicule.
But as Lord Connie and his lady can explain, the very rich are very different from the rest of us. They only get in trouble because they can never be rich enough, never be honoured enough nor their wives thin enough.
While this might help understand Lord Connie, it is not clarifying why he should be defaming poor Tommy Mulcair. Tommy is really a Quebec Liberal and Quebec Liberals are not liberals in the normal sense. They are not liberal at all. Quebec Liberals have a direct linage from the political bleu through the Quebec Conservatives to the Union Nationale to today’s quasi-federalist, natural ruling Liberal Party in Quebec.
Lord Connie actually accuses Tommy Mulcair’s party of enticing Bloc Québécois separatists to vote NDP in the last federal election by being some sort of closet destroyer of Canadian unity. This, knowing Jack Layton, who led the NDP at the time, is a very strange claim. It is positively ridiculous. Maybe our Connie was in jail too long?
But that does not answer the question as to where Lord Connie is going with this. If by some chance he could renounce his lordshipness and get his Canadian citizenship back, will he then run for parliament? This question must be explored in more detail.
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Copyright 2013 © Peter Lowry
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