I get up just after 7 except on the weekends and holidays when it is possible to sleep in. I eat some granola and go to my workplace where I tutor high school-leaving candidates, one-on-one, though sometimes I have to deal with up to four at a time, around my desk, and talk with fellow tutors and other convivial people. I lunch around 11 with friends from education, work on e-mails, play the piano for 30 to 60 minutes, return to my tutoring tasks by 1, return to my unit at 3, deal with more e-mails, rest from 4 to 6, eat dinner in the unit then, and go for a walk in the compound or recreation yard for a couple of hours, drinking coffee well-made by Colombian fellow-residents, and come back into the residence about 8: 30, deal with e-mails and whatever, have my shower etc., around midnight, read until 1-1:30 a. m. and go to sleep. On the weekends it is pretty open.

Given Conrad's penchant for concealing pertinent facts about his incarceration, we imagine the truth is more like:

Wake up, crack open stash of Honey Nut Cheerios, get yelled at by unappreciative fellow inmate who yet again failed to turn in the paper I assigned on the history of British Lordships, bologna sandwich, sunburn in the yard, sock coffee, answer emails from Tina Brown—I have more to do than write for the Daily Beast, Tina!—listen to same damn Stevie Wonder tape again, sleep.

[National Post]

Conrad Black

1. Formerly a wealthy, elitist press baron, he was convicted of fraud and obstruction of justice for plundering his own company. Currently serving a 78-month prison sentence.

2. Uses jail time as an opportunity to portray himself as a wronged martyr. Finds hilarious ways to avoid calling himself a criminal.

3.Laughable lack of self-awareness: Believes he can be taken seriously as a critic of Wolff's book while avoiding the issue of his own complete lack of credibility, caused primarily by his own complete lack of contrition.

Michael Wolff

1. Though admirably willing to talk shit to power, the heavy-lidded media writer is also fascinated above all by himself, his interactions with media moguls and celebrity media types, and the keen insights that Michael Wolff can draw by examining the exploits of Michael Wolff.

2. Instantly and enthusiastically responds to any and all comments about himself from boldface names, as he thrives on being seen as a figure of concern to the media establishment. Although he strikes back with characteristic insidery bitchiness, he would paradoxically be distraught were people to stop talking about/ insulting him.

3. Laughable lack of self-awareness: He responds to Conrad Black's attacks on his book and its facts with an ad hominem blog post (that's our job!) that completely ignores Black's claims about his errors, in favor of the idea that Black is just trying to whitewash his own reputation online, because the web is full of "balderdash":

This is a new sort of Web journalism: dramatically discredited people reinvented as Web opinionists—Slate just hired Eliot Spitzer in this vein—who will work for free. (Tina Brown herself, dramatically discredited in her own way, is using the Web for a similar type of reinvention—though she, presumably, is not working for free.)

...Despite the fact that Wolff himself is a famously failed Internet entrepreneur whose thoroughly unnecessary new web venture, Newser, only gets press in relation to Wolff's various media feuds.

Tie?

In style and organization, this is an irritating book...If sentences containing "iconic," transformative," "ridiculous," "being and nothingness," "fragile construct," and suspenseful endings ("well...") were omitted, the book would be at least twenty pages shorter.

Rather witty, Baron Black of Crossharbour! We must admit this imprisoned, fraudulent plutocrat has a certain way with the cutting word. He's also extremely creative about self-descriptions that avoid the fact that he is locked up, currently, in jail, for the next six years:

He has been engaged in a dispute with the US Justice Department and the SEC over the governance of his former companies for several years—civil and appellate litigation continue.

[The Daily Beast]

"The US is now a carceral state that imprisons eight to 12 times more people (2.5m) per capita than the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany or Japan. US justice has become a command economy based on the avarice of private prison companies, a gigantic prison service industry and politically influential correctional officers’ unions that agitate for an unlimited increase in the number of prosecutions and the length of sentences. The entire 'war on drugs', by contrast, is a classic illustration of supply-side economics: a trillion taxpayers’ dollars squandered and 1m small fry imprisoned at a cost of $50 billion a year; as supply of and demand for illegal drugs have increased, prices have fallen and product quality has improved."

Somebody help this man run for president. Nader/ Black '12! Ironically, prison has turned a fabulously wealthy plutocrat who once billed his company for $2,500 in handbags for his wife into a radical. When you get out, we look forward to working with you to reform mandatory minimums and decriminalize drug possession, your majesty. [Times via Negevrockcity; pic via]

Lawyers for the deposed press baron, who is serving a 6½-year prison sentence in Florida for fraud and obstruction of justice, recently submitted legal bills to Sun-Times Media Group, Inc., some of which referred to work done in pursuit of a clemency plea, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The sources said the company is balking at shouldering the payments, even though it has been forced by the courts to pay $117-million (U.S.) on the defence of Lord Black and other former company officials.

"We try to draw the line at outrageous things, and this is sort of one of them," said one person close to the company, once a sprawling Chicago-based newspaper empire known as Hollinger International Inc.

Isn't it great that they merely try to draw the line at outrageous things? It's that kind of discipline that could've kept Lord Black out of jail.

Anyway Bush probably won't pardon him because he's not even from Texas and he didn't go to prison for carrying out the President's illegal policies or even really doing anything directly in support of the Republican Party.

The paper's founder, Seth Lipsky, wanted the paper to be a six-page, small-circulation broadsheet. But original backer Conrad had other plans!

“He felt the better approach would be to go for a newspaper that is not a quixotic paper operating on the margin like a six-page broadsheet,” Mr. Lipsky said, “but that one should go for what he called a ‘primary read,’ which he said would need to be a 16-page broadsheet with a sports page and a business page.”

The sports page has been consistently one of the best in the city, of course, but wealthy conservative Jews probably would've been more likely to subsidize that tiny broadsheet about Israeli issues and foreign policy with a local bent. They weren't going to switch from the Times (or the Journal even, where Murdoch is now trying out a similar "let's have a sports page" strategy).

As a result, the Sun never had any paid circulation worth speaking of. Lipsky says he's raised "a lot" of money to save the paper, but who knows what October will bring. Maybe they should go tabloid.

P.S. Anyone seriously thinking they'll miss the independent voice and rebellious spirit of this doomed broadsheet should probably remind themselves of this:

One former editor said the staff had drunk Champagne in the newsroom in 2003 when the American-led invasion of Iraq began. As at least one commentator noted in the wake of Mr. Lipsky’s letter, The Sun, in editorials, had mentioned Vice President Dick Cheney as “the one who would bring the most to the race” for president this year.

Damn good arts section, though.

• Tyra Banks is to dress as Michelle Obama for Harper's Bazaar, thus ending all rumors about the prospective first lady being kind of crazy and off the handle. [NYM, P6]
• Ryan Adams is supposedly a big jerk who doesn't bathe, Googles himself constantly and regularly verbally berated Mandy Moore. When presented with this allegation, this is the strongest his flack could muster: "I don't think any of that stuff is true." He sounds reasonably certain, people! [Post]
• Rosie O'Donnell left her apartment door open! Dead?? Robbed?? Or just hiding hiding from Julia Allison? [Julia Allison]
• Conrad Black's wife is shocked — SHOCKED — that Henry Kissinger was conniving and Machiavellian with regard to his friend Black. Who would expect that from Henry Kissinger?? [Post]
• The CEO of Blackbook admitted models are invited to his New York and Miami apartments for "shoots," but said he's not around when the come by. Or at least he wasn't around at the shoot in Miami. [P6]
• OK! and Us Weekly are supposedly sending "twice as many staffers" to the Democratic convention as to the Republican convention. Wait, OK! and Us Weekly are even going to the Republican convention? [Daily News]
• When she's not making Anderson Cooper blush, CNN's Erica Hill will now sometime tease other people on the CBS Early Show, apparently. [TV Newser]
• Someone's trying to develop a reality show about cougars in New York. [P6]

The latest totally rad production for Eisner will be "The All-For-Nots," a web show about a band trying to take over the world with indy music. Man, high school kids can completely relate to that, plus they like watching TV on the web. "The All-For-Nots," is being produced by the people who did the "The Burg." Eisner's so down with the DIY Brooklyn scene.

Since Eisner knows that young people love social networking, he's going to distribute through Bebo. People totally use Bebo, like my friend who went on a social networking binge joined that site two years ago.

He's not the only media mogul who's down. Ex-Time magazine editor Walter Isaacson is going to make his next book a wiki. He'll publish part of the book online, and let anyone edit it. Because kids these days, they love to collaborate.

And Conrad Black. Conrad Black is in jail. That's so street. And hip!

There was no evidence to support two of the remaining convictions, and the only evidence, from the chief cooperating witness, was exculpatory. For the third count, the evidence was an uncorroborated allegation of a non-incriminating telephone conversation, which did not, in fact, take place.

Ya hear that? The only evidence was the allegation of a phone call that didn't happen and also that would not have even been incriminating if it did happen, which it didn't.

Mr. Black is apparently using his prison time to work on his memoirs, and if this column is any indication, they will be lengthy accounts of how, precisely, he did nothing wrong, in great detail, and also how he is the victim of a byzantine plot by the SEC and rebellious shareholders. BUT HE'S NOT BITTER.

My faith in the United States has inspired me to persevere, despite what I believe has been the prosecution's insufficient respect for the Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth Amendment guarantees of due process, of the grand jury as an assurance against capricious prosecution, of no seizure of assets without just compensation, of speedy justice, access to counsel, and reasonable bail. I have been besieged by various agencies of the U.S. government for over four years, and I know of only one higher bond in U.S. history than the $38 million I have been posting.

UK "online magazine" The First Post rather gleefully reports on precisely what Lord Black can expect in his new prison life, from the strip search to his "between 12 and 40 cents an hour" new job as a gardener. They even link to Coleman Federal Prison's official inmate handbook, which details the sorts of things you can and cannot do in prison. Here's the no list:
Of course, should Lord Black be caught, say on a grainy security camera, taking hostages or creating hazardous tools, it will be merely a harmless act of innocent fun misconstrued and blown out of proportion by the dastardly Hollinger International Board of Directors' Special Committee, the Canadian government, the FBI, his enemies in the British press, and Sotheby's.

My Faith in American Justice [NYSun]
Conrad Black Begins Prison Sentence [First Post]

Knowing Mr. Kissinger as well as I do, I suspected that he would behave as Richard Nixon told me he generally did when a colleague came under pressure: privately declare solidarity with both sides and separate himself, so that neither side would confuse him with the other side, until it became clear which side had won. He promised more, and I hoped for more, but Mr. Kissinger is an 84-year old fugitive from Nazi pogroms, and has made his way famously in the world by endlessly recalibrating the balance of power and correlation of forces in all situations.

Kissinger, Buckley, And Me [NY Sun]