Conrad Black on "Star Values"

The following are a few paragraphs from Conrad Black's piece at the National Post.  I burst into a loud HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH  at what I have highlighted below.  Priceless !!  The article has generated more than 2000 comments since yesterday and still going strong.

On a more serious note, I wonder why Black and his billionaire friends don't take over the Toronto Star.  The infra-structure of the paper is not bad but can be improved on and after firing about 90% of the staff and replacing them with people who can actually write about relevant matters,  the paper might do a turnaround and start making money for its shareholders.

......In a demonstration of what has  become the imperious arrogance of the Star’s editor, my former protégé Michael Cooke, he asked to see footage of my conversation with the Mayor before it was approved for telecasting. (Naturally, he was turned down, as no outsider screens what we choose to telecast). As the show was being aired, Star spokespeople accused the mayor of implying that Mr. Dale was a pedophile. He did not, and none of us at the program interpreted his remarks in that way.

Mr. Ford’s exact phrasing was: “I have little kids, and when a guy’s taking pictures of little kids, I don’t want to say that word, but you start thinking, you know, what’s this guy all about?” The plainest meaning that can be ascribed to these words is that Mr. Ford was explaining his thoughts at the time, before he found out that the person lurking about his property line was a reporter, not a predator.

Anyone who has had small children knows the concerns of lurking strangers, and all of us who have been hounded unmercifully in our homes by the media know how unutterably provoking it is. The notion that the mayor had insinuated that Dale was a pervert was a confection uniquely of his colleagues at the Star, and he has his colleagues to thank for whatever stigmatization he feels he has suffered......

..........On Wednesday, Cooke unleashed his most fiercely braying columnist, Rosie DiManno — a feminoid who is so disconcerted by my wife’s timeless appearance that she refers to the frequent praise of her as a form of “necrophilia.”

In her column, DiManno called me “a fool,” “disgraced,” (Brace yourself for salacity from the Star, that guardian of prudery) “ fart-catching,” a “shameless felon,” “crooked” and a “Great Blovarian”: Star values at their most eloquent current expression, from a coarse, vapid blunderbuss, complaining of imagined slurs on her colleague Daniel Dale. (The emissions from this malignant orifice were accompanied by a fatuous editorial and cartoon.)........