The Roman Pornocracy

If you are very well-read, let's not say 'educated' - it means something entirely different today to what it meant fifty years ago... Well, if you are knowledgable, the thought will occasionally occur to you that so-and-so must have access to the higher books of learning, in spite of what is commonly portrayed about them.

I ask myself, now and then, for instance, what books does Paris Hilton read? She shows, apart from the obvious things she shows, that she has some fundamental appreciation about higher culture. What that will turn out in the end to shape of her life I cannot detect, but she will likely not make certain types of mistakes that others have made who are in the spotlight and have wealth and position of some kind. I think in particular right now of Lord Black – Conrad Black – of Hollinger International, the previously quite substantial media group. And I think of Lord Black in terms of the current Lord Leveson Inquiry into the machinations of the print media in London. Oddly, at least it seems so to me, there has been no instance or indication that any of Conrad Black's newspapers were engaged in the same scandalous behaviour that Rupert Murdoch's were. How two competing participants within the same industry grouping could behave apparently so diametrically differently in their commercial practices begs the question why Conrad Black experienced so much animus against him.

No, there is no printable answer; for we are living in the last times of Rome under Nero, that is abundantly clear. There is a particular kind of stubborn stupidity in anyone believing that we are not; it is unreasonable any longer no matter how pacific you may want your equanimity to be. It's the ostrich-in-the-sand thing!

It has been all too easy for Rupert Murdoch's Octopus arms to imply mud where there wasn't any, and to have the hypothetical mud stick with tangible effect, while the strictly legally tangible stuff was dragged out in tricky courts over too many years with underlying animus driving officers of the court, frankly. Young Conrad Black was, I fear, a rich youth naiive about the sharks in the pond. He displayed his wealth too openly to too many and had too much fun, and this was of course a sin to the Puritans. Ever was it thus: Jesus was feared by the Romans to be the literal blood claimant to Caeser's family wealth and title, and at least 50-something claimants to the legal title to inheritance of James Stuart's Mint of silver coin were around the place when the self-promoting Puritan, Cromwell, stole King Charles' money.

Little that I should care though. I care for things like what Paris Hilton reads, and how Deanne Berry keeps motivated in her fitness regimes, and who the hell devised the SuitSupply of Holland's advertising campaign. As I say, we are living in those times that in Rome were called 'the Pornocracy.' And when in Rome...

Best,

Calvin J. Bear