Conrad Black, the one and only, was a guest in my undergrad half-course on media and culture at the University of Toronto last month. The topic was bias in the media. When I said he was coming, you could hear 100 student jaws hit the floor. When he actually appeared, unaccompanied, a few weeks later, there was a sharp collective gasp. As if the simulacrum had entered the room.

I don’t know if anyone else would have had that effect. We aren’t used to the images that pervade our lives, and often overshadow them, taking corporeal form. Or if they do, they’ll be framed as images: on a stage, with a spotlight, handlers etc. There were no news media in the room, just him and us (well, one student writes for The Varsity campus paper).

He stood at the front looking a bit more subdued than “Conrad Black,” almost seeming nervous, a hand stuffed in a jacket pocket. Still, he did a good enough version of the familiar character, like most people playing themselves.

I felt there was more to the odd sense in the room than just a famous person, in person. It was as if it somehow proved to the students that they live in a society that really exists because he, who’s been at the pinnacle of its wealth and power, was in the same physical space at the same time as they were.

So society is not a fiction, in contradiction to the claim by a Black heroine, Margaret Thatcher, that there is no such thing as society.

A story did appear in The Varsity, and a number of students posted replies including, “Put the fucker in jail and throw away the keys.” Conrad (he said we could call him anything) replied to each post, e.g. “The Red Queen said it better . . .: the sentence, followed by the verdict, followed by the charge, followed by the evidence (if any). I am relieved that he thinks life imprisonment would be adequate. . . . I want to thank . . . all who attended for receiving me very hospitably. Best wishes to all, even the lugubrious ___, whatever the source of his disturbance. Sincerely, CONRAD BLACK.”

Frank magazine recently ran a hilarious prank based on a fake Support Conrad Black website, including an On-to-Chicago Caravan. Michael Bate, Frank‘s editor (or proprietor, in Conradese, which is weirdly hard not to slip into when you write about the guy), sounded muted, even impressed, by how “gracious” Conrad Black, who smelled a rat at the last minute, was about the hoax. I said he seemed to make a better victim than a bully — and he’d been a damn good bully. “He missed his calling,” said the savage satirist from Frank.

In an ave atque vale in Saturday’s National Post, Conrad Black voiced some unexpected views. He seemed pleased that global economic forces have “enabled Canada to keep its generous social benefits.” In the past, he called those programs a “hammock,” “institutionalized compassion,” a “dragnet for the aggrieved,” and “endowed martyrdom,” that “will require repeal of universality and retrenchment.”

He also said, in the Post, “I have never been happier to be Canadian.” No mention of the “plain vanilla place” this once was (he has high praise for Toronto’s new opera house) or “the pandemic Canadian spirit of envy,” he described back then through clenched jaw.

I am absolutely not against anyone changing his mind. I see flip-flopping as a sign of adulthood. If you don’t flip-flop, you’re either perfect or you’ve stopped growing (statistically more likely). A dose of misfortune sometimes, but not always, gives people a different focus along with more compassion for others, including those who must go into court without a lot of money for legal support. It would be nice to hear people acknowledge it when they shift even partially, but few do; that seems even rarer than change itself.

I talked to my 94-year-old friend Jack Seeley, in L.A., just after Conrad came to class. Jack is the wisest, most principled person I know. He still practises psychoanalysis, mostly with kids. I said I always felt Conrad Black was one person who could have been on either side, politically. Jack said he thought that was true of most of us, a notion I think I’d shied away from, because it’s disconcerting, but soon as he spoke it, it sounded utterly true.

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Rick Salutin

Rick Salutin is a Canadian novelist, playwright and critic. He is a strong advocate of left wing causes and writes a regular column in the Toronto Star.