Monday, March 10, 2014

The Donald North

If Sun News Network is Fox News North, then Pierre Karl Peladeau sounds to me like Donald Trump.
Michael Den Tandt's list of anecdotes sure makes Peladeau sound grotesquely egotistical poseur, more than a little unwrapped:

"His claims to being entrepreneurial, decisive, and an innovator, which he reiterated Sunday, are absolutely fair. An insistence on having his own way, at all times and in all circumstances, however, has long been part and parcel of his management style, and often led his newspapers into thickets that verged on the farcical...

His reputation, which circulated everywhere through the senior ranks of Sun Media in the years after he took personal executive control, was that of an intelligent, determined and ruthless manager — who was also capricious, temperamental, and often enraged at his underlings...

There were stories of tirades that lasted for hours; very-late-night briefings with senior managers that went on and on, with Peladeau lecturing, Fidel-Castro-like, as his helpless employees struggled to keep awake; the Quebecor corporate jet wafting into small-town Ontario airports so the Boss could barnstorm into a newsroom of three or four desks, to sign a sheaf of backlogged expense cheques, as the workers stood quaking nearby. I know of one small-town publisher who received an email from Peladeau at 3 a.m., angrily querying the purchase of some T-shirts for a local charitable event. PKP made a virtue of intense micro-management, believing it integral to the operation of a good business.
Den Tandt seems to think it shows remarkable chutzpah for Marois to bring Peladeau into the PQ. I think it smacks of desperation.  The Parti Quebecois will regret getting involved with a guy like this.

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