Theodore Dalrymple has a few words for Cherie Blair in the National Post - Poor Princess Cherie:
LONDON - Cherie, Princess of Blair, sobbed her heart out on telly last night. (Where else should one sob one's heart out? What, after all, would be the point of doing so in private? That is what God gave us tears for: to shed in front of the cameras.) She confessed to the nation and the world -- truly, genuinely, sincerely -- that she was not perfect. Every sucker in the land was deeply moved.I wonder if that would work on the IRS?
The problem is that Princess Cherie has been making a few rather foolish decisions lately. Like her late sister-in-suffering, Princess Diana, she has been consorting with some dubious and even unsavoury characters. It turned out that her personal trainer's newest boyfriend, by whom she -- the personal trainer -- is really excited to be pregnant, was a convicted fraudster who had done time in more than one great country's penal establishments. On the basis of what is alleged to have been only the briefest of acquaintances, and reputedly knowing nothing whatever about his past accomplishments, Princess Cherie allowed him to advise her on the purchase of some luxury apartments in Bristol. Worse still, these purchases were made from a supposedly blind trust in which the Prince and Princess's money was stored. The Princess was not supposed to be involved in the blind trust's affairs at all.
As it happens, the fraudster was in the process of being deported as an undesirable alien from these enlightened shores. Some local scandal sheets suggested that the Princess's telephone call to the fraudster's lawyer, and subsequent search to find out who the judge was who was to decide upon his appeal against deportation, indicated an exaggerated interest in his welfare, but these -- said the Princess through her televised tears -- were unfounded allegations. She refuted them utterly.
How? The proof was simple: apologizing "if" she had caused embarrassment to anyone (what a wonderful word "if" is when used in this fashion, so full of marvellous ambiguities), she added "the people who know me well know that I would never want to harm anyone...." In other words, the rest of us were born with original sin, but she was born with original virtue, that is to say a good heart, and is therefore incapable of real wrongdoing.
But it's not over until it's over and the day after Cherie's performance, The Scotsman had a scoop with a sordid tale of faxed documents which had the inevitable result - Revelations leave Downing Street in turmoil:
DOWNING Street was in turmoil last night as it failed to close down the political row over Cherie Blair’s links to a conman re-ignited by revelations yesterday in The Scotsman.Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Cherie should call Hillary for advice on this one. She's weaseled out of worse.
Senior aides were forced to admit crucial documents relating to the deportation case of Peter Foster were faxed to Mrs Blair’s study in Downing Street, as The Scotsman said. It claimed that she never read them.
And the Sun piles on with Treachery of a crook:
THESE are the amazing phone conversations that shamed Peter Foster and his brother Paul had with their mother yesterday.Hmm, class acts everywhere you look.
In them, Foster makes it plain he is determined to cash in on the Cheriegate scandal. Foster’s mum Louise Pelloti, who lives in Dublin, eggs him on.
...
LOUISE:
“Ahhh. Hang on there’s something on the telly. Hang on. Ah, its a newsflash saying Caplin says that Cherie refused to read the papers. What a heap of s**. Cherie rang the bloody lawyer and told him to fax them over. (Paul laughs). And then she comes out in the statement and says she was just helping a friend, a friend you know.”
...
PETER:
“It’s me. The trouble we’re having at the moment is that the Sunday Times will pay me any amount of money I want for my story as long as it goes to a charity and not me.”
LOUISE:
“F*** that.”
