Maureen Dowd Takes Aim at the Mighty Rupert Murdoch

Here is a bit from a NY Times opinion piece by Maureen Dowd which rips proud flesh off an arrogant billionaire:

The hunters became the hunted during three hours of riveting testimony in the House of Commons. The News Corporation trio, baked in the bottom-feeding and whatever-it-takes business, seemed coached. They would say whatever it takes. They stuck to a hoary formula for scandals, claiming the cognitive advantage that being on top of the world left them out of touch.

Mistakes were made, but not by the captains of the ship. We deeply regret these things we were in no way involved in. We’re transparent, even though we’re still paying off former employees to keep their mouths shut.

Playing the ruthless mogul reduced to helpless victim, Rupert came across better than his 38-year-old son James, with the Haldeman buzz cut, the American Harvard dropout accent, the “Mad Men” skinny blue tie, and the ingratiating over-articulateness hiding the arrogant entitlement.

Rebekah Brooks, the 43-year-old former editor of The News of the World and daughter-figure to Rupert, was a prideful pre-Raphaelite Medusa, with a sweet face and soft voice spinning tales of innocence that didn’t quite gel.

At hearings revealing their corruption, the police revealed their incompetence, unable to stop a lame comedian from further victimizing their self-professed victim.

Rupert Murdoch’s tabloids pandered to the lowest common denominator, but, in the end, his sleazy henchmen were lower than the people they pandered to. People had a limit, as it turned out. Citizen Murdoch was brought low, his grip loosened and his myth deflated, by the power of social opprobrium.

She catches the essence of what a billionaire wants out of his government:

His most revealing moment was when he volunteered his admiration of Singapore, calling it the most “open and clear society in the world.” Its leaders are so lavishly paid, he said, that “there’s no temptation, and it is the cleanest society you’d find anywhere.”

It was instructive that Murdoch chose to praise a polished, deeply authoritarian police state. Maybe that’s how corporations would live if they didn’t have to believe in people.

Yes... clean streets and a docile public who know to bow and scrape before their "betters".

Sadly Murdoch is the vehicle of Republican party dominance in the US via its Fox "News" channel which floods TV with right wing propaganda dressed up as "news, fair and balanced". Yep, like Hitler was a democrat who sacrificed himself for "the little people" of Germany by defending them against "aggressors" on all sides. Hitler was as fair and balanced as any of the megalomaniacs who have sought to dominate the world. Murdoch is the commercial version of Hitler, i.e. a person who preened in his own self image as an "artist" who cared for life so much that he was a vegetarian and kept himself pure by refusing sex except with close relatives.