It's A Wonderful Life

Happy holidays to everyone. To celebrate the true spirit of the season, here's a heartwarming tale in the tradition of A Christmas Carol or The Gift of The Magi.

It was inspired by this Emmett Tyrrell piece on "born losers."

"Salvation appeared in the spring of 2000, when Conrad Black, the owner of The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The (London) Spectator, Canada's National Post, and the Chicago Sun-Times, offered to help the Spectator.... [Para.] But Black wanted much in return. First, he asked for de facto control over the board of directors. Second, he wanted to demote Tyrrell, taking away his title of editor in chief and cutting his pay by 40 percent.

....'[Tyrrell] said without hesitation that he'd choose rejecting the proposal,' Eastland recalls. 'I asked why, and he said he had a bond with all of those who had taken on Clinton and fought for his impeachment, and that he was seen as a leader of the opposition, and that if he were demoted or marginalized, he would be letting down those who had followed him. He also said Clinton and those around him would notice what a terrible fate had befallen him and take great pleasure from it. In his view, they would be vindicated if that happened.'

"By summer the magazine was almost out of money. In August, [George] Gilder ... offered to buy the Spectator outright. With the magazine a few weeks away from missing a payroll, Tyrrell agreed. He had known Gilder for years; he told employees that the Spectator would still be about politics and culture, but would now take more notice of technology issues. Instead the magazine became something entirely new, virtually unrecognizable to readers of the old Spectator. Gilder would eventually close the office and fire everyone�except Tyrrell, who stayed on, with no control over the magazine he had run for thirty-three years.
....

"On Monday, July 16, when George Gilder's movers arrived at the Spectator's Arlington office, there wasn't much left to take. They packed up computers and a few pieces of furniture, but threw everything else into an enormous pile for the garbage men to pick up. They threw away original illustrations by Elliott Banfield. They threw away dozens of bound volumes of the Spectator's past issues. And they tossed the old papier-m�ch� Mencken, dressed in his original black suit, onto a pile of trash�to be discarded the next day, along with everything else."

I love that story.

(And the moral of the story is, don't bite the pimp that feeds you.)