Rob Ford and Conrad Black

Everybody knows that Rob Ford is a dick, but it’s entirely possible that non-Canadians have yet to learn that Conrad Black is also a dick.

Black was once a Canadian media tycoon. Nauseatingly epicurean, he employs the most ornate, complex vocabulary available. He does this as if it was the side effect of some medication, like a spasm he can’t control. It drives most people crazy, but Black seems unable to temper it, always hopeful that his erudition and verbal mastery will intimidate and dazzle anybody caught in its bright glare. Really, every time he speaks, you just want to start swinging a lead pipe.

Further, back in 2001 Black got in a spat with the Canadian government over whether he could accept a UK peerage in the British House of Lords that would confer upon him the title Baron Black. He renounced his citizenship over this. Canada was simply too small-minded and parochial for his talents and ambitions so he would leave, soon after getting convicted of fraud in the US where he served nearly four years in prison. Now, at 69, he’s back in Canada co-hosting a TV show on a network called the Zoomer.

Anyway, on Monday he interviewed Rob Ford on the show. It turns out that as they both hate big government and the law, they got on like a publicity hungry house on fire. They were practically combing one another’s hair by the time it was done. The union has been made, and from now on Conrad Black has pledged to serve as Rob Ford’s official mouthpiece, translating whatever our multi-tasking mayor happens to spit out.

This is a sample of some recent Ford quotes and their subsequent reinterpretation by Conrad Black:

Ford Quote: “I’ll rip his fucking throat out, I’ll poke his eyes out … I’ll make sure that motherfucker’s dead! I need ten minutes to make sure he’s dead.”

Blackification: “The villain had best protect his vital regions for my rage is just and unlimited. If I have but 10 minutes with that blackguard, he will know he has encountered a true gentleman, and et factum est in morte.”

Ford Quote: “That is not a crack house.  Have you visited the house? Have you walked in the house? No you haven’t.”

Blackification: “ That is not a freebase domicile in which certain elements, those that are distressing to civil society, avail themselves, as they say in the vernacular, to crack, base, rock, iron, cavvy, or any other terms of address. Have you been to this commorancy? Have you navigated through its corridors and rooms? No, you have not, so what right do you have to call it, as you so vulgarly do, “a crack house?”

Ford Quote: “Oh, and the last thing, was Olivia Gondek, it says, I wanted to eat her pussy… have never said that in my life to her.”

Blackification: “ It has been asserted by certain agencies that I told a young woman named Olivia Gondek, pulchritudinous, I am sure, that I wished to stimulate her in a particular fashion, and although I am very adept at such stimulations, I can assure you that no such offer was made.”