Conrad Black Still Innocent, and Still In Love

Also, Charlie Sheen is looking for God in all the wrong places.

You’ve got to hand it to the National Post’s Father Raymond J. de Souza. Until today he was simply that columnist that always made the writers in The Mark Newsroom think of Father Guido Sarducci, but now he also becomes the only person to write anything remotely serious about Charlie Sheen’s addiction to prostitutes. In this genuinely interesting Valentine’s-Day-inspired piece he asserts that despite appearances the Two and a Half Men star is not just binging on hookers and drugs, but in fact searching for spiritual love. And judging by recent TMZ reports, searching pretty damn hard. It’s an idea de Souza cribbed from GK Chesterton, who famously wrote, “Every man who knocks on the door of a brothel is looking for God.” And just as miscreants like Sheen seek for God’s love in excess, “the commercial message of Valentine’s Day is that indulgence is the path to love,” de Souza writes. Chocolates and jewelry “may be enjoyed, but cannot be the path to love … Sacrifice is the path to love, for it alone goes beyond the self to the service of the beloved.” So you, Charlie Sheen, and your Valentine’s date better get yourselves together.

The Post has a second Valentine’s Day offering in this open love letter by Conrad Black, whose recent incarceration has made him a lot more sympathetic but, not surprisingly, no less of a pompous windbag. The column is dedicated to his wife Barbara Amiel (Lady Black of Crossharbour to us proles), and describes how she sustained him through the Kafkaesque ordeal of his “Babylonian Captivity” in the U.S. prison system "for offences I would not have dreamed in a thousand years of committing." All this while simultaneously defending herself from the “avalanche of abuse directed at her” by the media. To poke fun at Black’s ostentatious love prose would be cruel, so we’ll leave it at saying that if you’d like to know how millionaire convicted felons with persecution complexes celebrate Valentine’s Day, now’s your chance.