I recently posted about our national embarrassment known as Conrad Black, sycophant extraordinaire.
The following, by editorial cartoonist Michael de Adder, was tweeted by Neil MacDonald, who observes.
And a grateful Black is now vigorously pushing back against any idea that the attack on the Capitol was violent. Just high spirited patriots.
While we can take some comfort that the kind of madness that grips the United States is absent in Canada, we would be wrong to think there aren't seeds of it here:
Toronto police have arrested three participants in two separate anti-lockdown protests downtown Saturday afternoon, the same day the province saw 3,056 new COVID-19 cases and a record number of 420 patients in intensive care units.
Videos surfacing on social media show hundreds of protestors gathered at Nathan Phillips Square and Yonge-Dundas Square defying public health measures and denouncing the provincial stay-at-home mandate.
Below is one sample of the insensate crowd, mostly unmasked and gathered closely together to protest the abrogation of their 'freedom' to spread disease.
Standard operating procedure in Trumpland.
But Canadians envious of the dark comic relief afforded by the hapless Giuliani need not despair. As Bob Hepburn writes, we have our own version in Canada: Conrad Black.
Not to be outdone by Giuliani, Black has in recent weeks kicked up his loud, long-held support for Trump and now ranks among the president’s most fawning loyalists.
Like Giuliani, the former Canadian business mogul and ex-U.S. convict has appeared on American talk shows spreading the same conspiracy theories and misinformation about the election, including discredited allegations of widespread voter fraud on the part of Democrats.
Stunningly, in the aftermath of last week’s riots on Capitol Hill, Black continues to heap praise on Trump.
He insists on conservative talk shows that Trump did nothing wrong in the lead-up to the Capitol Hill insurrection, that the rioters “were not Trump supporters” and that top Republicans who are now distancing themselves from Trump are “repulsive” and “disgraceful.”
For years, Black has stuck with Trump, from sex scandals to dog whistle appeals to white supremacists. He capped it with a 2018 book titled “Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other.”
And Black has reaped a rich reward for his sycophantic servitude.
Trump pardoned him in 2019. Black was convicted in 2007 of fraud and obstruction of justice and served 3½ years in a Florida prison before being released and deported to Canada.
In 2020, Black continued to fawn over Trump, writing last month in The Hill, a top U.S. political website, that Trump’s record in office “has been a tour de force.”
Shamelessly, and without any apparent moral or intellectual (despite his propensity for pretentious language designed to hide his paucity of real thought) compass, Black has supported the risible Trump fantasy that he lost the election, and even worse, mocks the seditious events last week at the Capitol building.
On Jan. 6, the day of the riots, Black retweeted a Twitter post that appeared to mock the damage and frightened lawmakers. “The damage to the Capitol was really quite shocking,” the retweeted comment read. “Very disturbing picture below showing that plastic water bottles were littered on floor of Capitol, rather than being properly placed in recycling. One can hardly blame congressmen for abandoning premises.”
Trump has had a series of lapdogs before and during his presidency. It is to our shame that some of them (are you listening, Brian Mulroney?) have been Canadian in origin.
The following was sent to me by a friend:
No American president has been more incendiary than Donald Trump. He has been the subject in recent years of 28 DER SPIEGEL cover stories. Many featured the work of illustrator Edel Rodriguez. The covers were often criticized as being exaggerated. Here are the most important ones.
As you will see, each of the covers represent an aspect of Trump that the world, much to its dismay, has come to know. You can see the full array of them, with links to cover stories, by going to their website:
DER SPIEGEL, Issue 45/16 (Nov. 5, 2016)
"The Next President: The Script of a Tragedy"
All of which goes to show that a picture is indeed worth a thousand words.
Thanks to the salamander for alerting me to the following story.
Randal Lane, the chief content officer and editor of Forbes has a warning for all companies: Be careful who you hire. Avoid anyone who worked for Trump, especially his many press secretaries:
In this time of transition – and pain – reinvigorating democracy requires a reckoning. A truth reckoning. Starting with the people paid by the People to inform the People.
From Day One at the Trump White House, up has been down, yes has been no, failure has been success. Sean Spicer set the tone with the inauguration crowd size – the worst kind of whopper, as it demanded that people disbelieve their own eyes. The next day, Kellyanne Conway defended Spicer’s lie with a new term, “alternative facts.” Spicer’s successor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders lied at scale, from smearing those who accused Trump of sexual harassment to conjuring jobs statistics. Her successor, Stephanie Grisham, over the course of a year, never even held a press conference, though the BS continued unabated across friendly outlets. And finally, Kayleigh McEnany, Harvard Law graduate, a propaganda prodigy at 32 who makes smiling falsehood an art form. All of this magnified by journalists too often following an old playbook ill-prepared for an Orwellian communication era.
Lane's message is a simple but powerful one: Reward egregious dishonesty at your peril:
Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.
Lane ends his editorial with a timely reminder about healthy democracies:
… as Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, in a thriving democracy, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. Our national reset starts there.
It is an observation that all of us would do well to always remember.
