"We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell" Oscar Wilde
Oscar Wilde was a criminal - he was convicted of a serious crime and went to jail for a long time. His crime was one considered malum in se (wrong in itself) by most of his contemporaries. His position in society was ruined by his crime. Yet I read Oscar Wilde without qualm.
http://natpo.st/qQkiv7
Jonathan Kay, National Post
This morning, as I was enjoying the sun on the deck of my health club, another member approached me and asked if he could ask me a professional question on personal time. "There's something I find very troubling — and I really want to talk to you about it," he told me.
"Why do you publish Conrad Black?" he asked, taking the air of someone seeking to right a great moral wrong. "He's a criminal. By running his columns, aren't you effectively condoning criminal behavior?" Thereupon, we spoke for half an hour, and I enumerated all the reasons that I disagreed with his premise.
I have heard different versions of this complaint many times. Sometimes, the National Post has even published letters to the editor asking this man's same question. But as comment editor, I have never set out my answer. For those who care, here it is. ...
5 comments:
Wilde going to jail for homosexuality does not seem comparable.
I guess my point is that what is criminal, when it is malum prohibitum, varies over time. What Conrad Black did, and what we see as wrong today, was normal and legitimate in the 1890s -- what Wilde did then we now see as perfectly within his rights and proper but then it was a serious crime.
Comparing Wilde to Black is apples to oranges. Wilde harmed himself - and maybe Bosie. Black devastated thousands through a career of deprecations from Dominion Stores employees and those dependent on Dominion's pension fund to Hollinger shareholders and employees - to mention just two. Kay is hiding behind a false equivalence and I'm surprised you didn't notice.
I still go back to my earlier point -- what is crime depends on when you ask.
As for Dominion, people in the pension field in Canada date matters as:
BC - Before Conrad; and
AD - After Dominion
Black is a criminal, a genuine criminal - and pointing out that it was normal in 1890 is irrelevant; 1890 is closer to the age of legalized slavery than it is to contemporary law. And we wouldn't let Black off a charge of holding slaves, or think him somehow less culpable, simply because slavery was legal not so long ago.
Black is a criminal, he does not deserve the time of day, not until he apologizes and repays the millions of people he lied to and bilked.
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