The Vision thing

Never mind the Mayan calendar, you know the end of the world is nigh when Conrad Black gets a talk show. And what about the title? The Zoomer – Television for Zoomers with Zip. Sounds like it was written by a committee. Or Moses Znaimer, owner of Vision TV, where the show will appear. I’m not even sure where Vision is on the dial. Didn’t it start out as the Church Channel? Like Henry VIII, it seems to have converted to High Church of England.

I imagine Znaimer himself will make an early appearance on the weekly one-hour show scheduled to start this spring. Maybe he’ll talk about his current bugbear: noisy restaurants and how he’s forced to order takeout all the time. Another guest will almost certainly be Barbara Amiel. Conrad could ask: “How does it feel to be married to me?” We might wait a while before seeing the host’s former Hollinger colleague David Radler.

I’m happy to be a guest, too, after he’s had Henry Kissinger and Donald Trump and gets hard up. I’ll talk about the Conrad I used to know, the one who wrote insightful biographies about Duplessis and FDR. Otherwise, I doubt I’ll be watching. I usually cut the grass that night.