I wish Americans had the ability to truly understand Barbara Amiel and Conrad Black and the role they play in Canadian hate reads. https://thestreetjournal.org/2020/09/barbara-amiel-takes-revenge-on-the-elite-who-spurned-her/

I would like @michelledean and @BrandyLJensen and @imbobswaget to weigh in on this extraordinary essay.

I don’t think there is a precise American analog to this couple, especially since few modern Americans willingly give up their citizenship to accept the title of Baron Black of Crossharbor from the Queen, when Crossharbor is the name of your mansion.

I AM aware I will buy her memoir when it drops in October, sadly.

Barbara:

(Trump pardoned him in 2019.)

Conrad, always exactly himself:

Imagine comparing yourself to Nelson Mandela because you got caught looting your company and had to do soft time in Florida until the president pardoned you.

I also love that he got caught bc his wife gave too many interviews about her designer shopping and the investors were like “wait...we make newspapers. No one reads newspapers. Where is she getting this money?”

SHE WROTE THIS DOWN AND IT’S GOING IN A MEMOIR

If my current life every royally goes tits-up you will NEVER hear from me again, I will move back to Canada and work at my uncle’s artesian well business answering the phones and change my name.

They just don’t make villains like this anymore. It’s all hoverboards and accessing your personal information now. Not enough Conrads and Montegus.

I loved the private chapel blessed by two Catholic Cardinals.

GHISLAINE MAXWELL ran away from her at a party!!!!!

I remember a piece Barbara wrote for Maclean’s, a real magazine, when I was in high school, where she was shopping at Chanel and wanted us to know the “vendeuse” whispered “Madame has a lovely figure”.

Those words just burned into my brain and whenever I think of Conrad or Barbara a freakin’ RAVEN caws “MADAME HAS A LOVELY FIGURE” in my right ear.

Anyway, I pre-ordered the memoir, which is called “Friends and Enemies,” will be FILLED with shit-talk, and it’s going to be a really good time.

I just think that if you live like a goddamn duchess for 70 years and then disgraced and people don’t really want to hang out with for the next 20 years and then you’re 90 and people are like “but she’s so old, go take her to dinner” you’re still coming out way ahead in life.

I hope she gets an Orange Julius w her share of my pre-order, they’re delicious.

There’s a part where she completely loses it and is like “ELTON JOHN HAS NOT ABANDONED ME” and I was like, Sir Elton is a saint, don’t blow up his fucking spot like this in public, you wild bitch.

If you’re SOCIALLY TOXIC beyond all accounting of it and still have one rich friend willing to let you live in an outbuilding and have someone bring you a bowl of consommé three times a day, keep his secret for him!

If you want to know how bad Conrad is there’s a great Vanity Fair piece, but I think this excerpt is really all you need. https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1992/11/conrad-black-199211

Exact footage of Conrad Black at Career Day at his imaginary child’s school:

Something I truly do admire about Barbara Amiel is she is not prepared to fake-devote herself to public good works as penance. Every interview is “UNTIL MY BRITTLE BODY CAN NO LONGER CONTAIN MY VENGEFUL SPIRIT I WILL DEVOTE IT TO VIOLENCE AGAINST THOSE WHO BROUGHT ME LOW!”

She’s not going to pull a “taking time to pray and seek professional help”, she’s absolutely going to poison everyone who didn’t invite her to Lobster Night at the Rosedale Country Club for the last six years. After dragging them in print first.

Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel will never, ever take the L.

I know I sound absolutely off the chain right now but you have to understand that I have never had the chance to talk about Conrad and Barbara on here before and now decades of opinions and observations are just bubbling out of me uncontrollably.

ANYWAY I’m available for ARCs, galleys, and author interviews. Late blurbs! I just want to help. Will break international law and medical ethics to travel back to Canada to have tea with Barbara if necessary.

CONRAD BLACK SOFT-BLOCKED ME ON TWITTER SOME TIME AGO, as I have just discovered!

When this is over I have a date for tea at the House of Lords with a Lord who wishes to remain anonymous bc being a fan of mine is embarrassing and I’m gonna spread out on a couch and take a pic for Conrad like “you ain’t allowed in here no more, you punk-ass bitch.”

Oh, you know who I’m going to ask what one wears to tea at the House of Lords? Parisian Death Loafers. He’ll know.