Lord Black and his lady: 'Outrageous Fortune' delivers a banner story -- flaws and all

Nonfiction

Outrageous Fortune

The Rise and Ruin of Conrad and Lady Black

By Tom Bower

HarperCollins, 413 pages, $29.95

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'Joe, baby, a great story has three elements," my first mentor inChicago journalism once told me. "Money, power and sex. Get one, andyou have a story. Get two, and you have a good story. Get all three,and you have a banner headline!"

My mentor, the great Sun-Times City Hall reporter Harry GoldenJr., has probably been turning over in his grave as Canadian pressbaron Conrad Black allegedly looted the company that owns hisbeloved newspaper to finance an outrageously lavish lifestyle.

But even Harry would have to admit: It's a story that's got itall.

Outrageous Fortune tells how Black, with cunning audacity,created an empire that included the Sun-Times, the London Telegraphand the Jerusalem Post, only to lose it through breathtakingavarice, hubris and miscalculation.

The British journalist Tom Bower has written a flawed book, butone that, to paraphrase W. H. Auden, is "marred by irritatingly goodfeatures."

He portrays Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel, as the Bonnie andClyde of publishing. "I have an extravagance," Amiel famously said,"that knows no bounds." They charge through these pages greedy,needy and flamboyantly evil. Bower reports it gleefully, with a keeneye for detail.

Black is bombastic, pugnacious and cynical. He adopts hisfather's sneering view of life: "Most people are bastards andeverything is bullsh--." Bower's account of how Black conned twoelderly widows out of their voting rights during his first takeoverbattle could make Jeffrey Skilling blush.

It establishes his business model: "The Black Factor" -- takeover a company, install an unquestioning board of directors, thenslash expenses and plunder assets. If anyone objects, shout themdown or sue.

Enter the lusty "Queen of Excess," Barbara Amiel. She is acelebrated Canadian writer -- a smart, irreverent, conservativescold -- when she snares Black at the apex of his wealth and power.

She is renowned for her beauty and notorious for her campy sexualstyle. She arrives at work "in open trench coat, under which couldbe seen a black bustier, garter belt and fishnet stockings."

One of her famous pieces of journalism, "Marrying Up," defines asuccessful match: "her looks for his money -- his power as her mealticket."

Behind their backs, they're mocked as Mister Money and Attila theHoney. "By understanding his vanities," Bower writes, "she enabledhis ambitions." He is "smitten by her sex . . . a man enslaved byhis wife's worship of him."

They enable each other's worst flaws, spending their way up the A-list, lavishing outlandish amounts on homes, clothes, planes andparties in an insatiable quest for acceptance by high society.

Their vanity is unquenchable. Black renounces his Canadiancitizenship and campaigns for a British title. "His Lardship," thewags joke.

Amiel presides over a household of garish excess with imperiousscorn. Her butler takes employees to the roof of the London mansionand warns them to "make sure the landing lights are on at all timesbecause Madame takes off from here on her broomstick. She needslights to guide her return."

The vast sums it takes to fuel this quest lead Black to thereckless financial schemes that end in his indictment. Bowerexplains the shenanigans clearly and describes Black's fall fromgrace in fascinating detail.

But there are problems. The portrait of the Blacks includesspecific quotes from specific people on specific days. But there arefew attributions. Bower says he interviewed 150 people. But it'simpossible to assess their credibility because we don't know theirnames.

Knowledgeable Chicagoans will wonder whether David Radler, theformer Sun-Times publisher who has pleaded guilty and will testifyagainst Black, is an unnamed source.

Radler is a "ratty, uncouth hypochondriac obsessed by fantasiesabout germs." Black's partner in larceny from the beginning, Radleris the cheapskate who docks an employee for taking off to bury herhusband, closes the escalator at the Sun-Times to save money and isknown as "The Chainsaw" for his coldly calculating firings --"Radler's gospel never changed. 'Count the chairs,' he habituallyordered."

But that is all we get of Radler, and nothing of the damage the"Black Factor" caused the Sun-Times.

Nor is there much about former Gov. James Thompson, the auditcommittee chairman who fiddled while Black allegedly fleeced hisshareholders.

The book's organization is clumsy, and the language is hackneyed.For example: "Historic acclaim, he argued, excused treachery.Eventual vindication after widespread hatred was the qualificationfor his worship. He preferred to forget that the rest of mankindlived by other rules -- namely contemporaneous judgement." Whew!

In the end, one wonders whether the Blacks have any redeemingqualities. Bower suggests they are clinically sick. He citestraumatic parental suicides and crippling childhood insecurities,implying their behavior is an overcompensation to shore up brittleselves. But he refers to borderline and narcissistic personalitydisorders without defining them. And while there's evidence tosupport this interpretation, Bower never makes the argumentpersuasively.

Perhaps Barbara Amiel is more perceptive. By mid-2005, ConradBlack has lost his empire. Their jet-set friends abandon them.Despite the humiliation, Amiel is defiant and unapologetic in aninterview with the Toronto Sun.

"I hoped I was shocking," she tells the paper. "I hoped I wasn'tboring. I hoped I was attractive and sexy. It's a combination ofmoney, power and glamor that is irresistible. You play for all it'sworth if you can."

Joe Kolina, senior executive producer at NBC-5 News, is a veteranChicago journalist, or as embattled Conrad Black puts it, a memberof a "degenerate group . . . temperamental, tiresome, nauseatinglyeccentric and simply obnoxious."