Friday 8 July 2011

The Animal Spirit of Rupert Murdoch.

Risk and Reward.

Originally, Rupert Murdoch won the bid to takeover The News of the World in 1968 from old money Sir William Carr and soon cornered the shareholders before shoving Carr out of the picture completely in 1969. Sir William Carr had picked Murdoch over Bob Maxwell because Maxwell was a Czech and he found Rupert Murdoch to be a "gentleman", the Establishment found Murdoch most "ungentlemanly" for giving Carr the boot. Murdoch went on to buy The Sun and drag John Profumo through the mud once again for shagging Christine Keeler back in 1963 when Profumo was Secretary of State for War. The affair had scandalised high society and wrecked a government. The issue for the Establishment was that Profumo had been rehabilitated after his charitable work in the East End, Murdoch was simply out to destroy a man for profit. Now with the public disgusted Rupert Murdoch has slashed off the infected limb of his own media-body, there is no room for sentimentality with this old fart. There are bigger things at stake, as in BSkyB.

Everyone was just so appalled to find that the media empire of Rupert Murdoch is not just limited to a narrow right-wing agenda to prop up his favourite politicians and it has reflexively hacked the phones of not just the rich and powerful but dead soldiers too. We find that the Conservative Party and the police - both of whom have helped Murdoch crush a strike in the past - are entangled in the conspiracy ran out of the Murdoch red-top. It is clear that there is no low that the parasites in the press will not stoop to for a good yawn. Of course, it took the revelation of bugs in the phones of the victims of terrorism, warfare and serial killers as celebrities are fair game and politicians are the scum of the earth to most people. It should be no surprise if we consider that it was the Murdoch press that published vicious lies about the Hillsborough disaster, including the smears that fans robbed the dead, attacked police officers and urinated on paramedics. To some it would seem that Rebekah Brooks has proven that gingers have no soul! But it is Rupert Murdoch who has no soul whilst the lower minions would only be replaced if they were not complicit.

After the most recent revelations in the phone-hacking scandal I wonder if Kelvin MacKenzie is still thanking God for Rupert Murdoch. No doubt the answer from that meat-headed shit sack would be an emphatic "YES!" Murdoch would express no less from a Thatcherite pig he has fed well over the years in his role as editor of The Sun. MacKenzie maintained The Sun as a buffet for the working-class where they were spoon-fed a diet of sex, death and football meshed in a conservative agenda on immigration, gay rights, multiculturalism and welfare. Kelvin MacKenzie once said of his readers "You just don't understand the readers, do you, eh? He's the bloke you see in the pub, a right old fascist, wants to send the wogs back, buy his poxy council house, he's afraid of the unions, afraid of the Russians, hates the queers and the weirdos and drug dealers. He doesn't want to hear about that stuff (serious news)." Whatever pays the mortgage is alright at News International.

The public outrage struck as the Yuppie Mephistopheles was on the verge of the biggest deal of his life and it has been delayed until September, which gives the Mephistopheles some breathing room and some time to do a bit of "spring cleaning" to ensure a smooth deal before the year is out. There is little chance that the Coalition will oppose the demands of the man who threw the support of 40% of British media behind the Conservative Party in 2010 and, as usual, Murdoch's man won the election. This should not be a surprise as Murdoch backed Margaret Thatcher, John Major and Tony Blair. That is the reason we found David Cameron was ever so keen to put Jeremy Hunt on the job after the hilarious outburst from Vince Cable, who would apparently act as a "Gang of One" against Rupert Murdoch. Of course, Vince Fable was not meant to be biased against Murdoch so the government found someone who could ease the deal through in a quiet way. That's where Jez Cunt came in handy!


In his article in The Guardian Kelvin MacKenzie inquired "Cynical eyebrows were raised when Murdoch gave assurances over the independent future of Sky News. Why?" First of all, out of the 247 editors who work for Rupert Murdoch none opposed the Iraq war. It is clear that there is no problem of independence when all the editors are reactionary pigs. Even Rupert Murdoch has admitted that News International supported the foreign policy of the Bush administration on the Middle East in particular. It was Rupert Murdoch who immediately throw Fox behind the Republican Party in the 1980s and even more so in the 1990s, beginning with a fawning tribute to Ronald Reagan at the Republican Convention. There was a cultural shift in emphasis at Fox when Murdoch took over, race issues and AIDS were at the top of the list at the time. The channel became a lot more sophisticated after Roger Ailes, a long-time mudslinger for the GOP, was put in charge of the newly launched Fox News Channel. It was Rupert Murdoch who contributed $1 million to the Republican Party in 2010.

Remember this is the same man who has meant to have taken on the Establishment, it took "guts" and "management skill" to do so according to Kelvin MacKenzie who has nothing but celebratory words for the Murdoch monopoly. News International is a family business which Rupert built up from his inheritance and will no doubt be passed down to young James in a few years. This is not particularly different from the Old Boys' Network of the Establishment, which Murdoch has railed against only as a buccaneer capitalist with no time for tradition and society. It was not "risk" that the Murdoch press was built on, but cold calculations which oiled the wheels and restrained anyone who got in the way of a smooth running operation. Notice as soon as the advertising goes AWOL there is an immediate reaction from Murdoch, we find Glenn Beck has been axed as his rating dwindled and Waitrose boycotted his lunacy. It is the same at The News of the World, Murdoch was "standing by" Rebekah Brooks and the paper until the public disgust was too costly.

Just as Kelvin MacKenzie wishes that there were hundreds of Rupert Murdochs in Britain to "wipe out" unemployment, as if the cure of unemployment is entrepreneurial adventurism, we find that it is the staff at The News of the World who are paying the price for the contemptible practices of a media outlet. Though it must be noted that the individuals who write for the Murdoch press are there because they hold particular beliefs in most cases, otherwise they would be somewhere else and this goes for the BBC crowd too. At the same time, it is not the case that every employee (particularly the lowest of the low) of News International is a right-wing maniac who has enriched themselves at the expense of the political discourse. It is not a concession of the 'trickle-down' variety to be concerned for the jobs that have been destroyed by Murdoch to secure a grubby business deal. This is precisely what the "animal spirit of capitalism" is all about, Rupert Murdoch kills jobs not creates jobs.

As Laurie Penny points out it is imperative that the momentum of rage against News International is allowed to fade away only for the Mephistopheles to assimilate BSkyB. The Conservatives want this all to go away for obvious reasons given the close relationship between government and media, let alone Andy Coulson's role in Cameron's anti-climactic rise. The Labour Party are clearly impotent with Ed Miliband making a pathetic call for Rebekah Brooks to resign, it looks even more pathetic as the entire newspaper is thrown away just a few days later. This means that the media oligarch is at least responsive to public outrage against his odious rags. Perhaps it is time to build a bonfire out of copies of The Sun and The Times, for we cannot allow this man to buy 60% of BSkyB and dominate over 40% of the media in this country. The concentration of such power in the hands of one man is intolerable just from a slight glimpse at his record.

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1 comment:

Alex Hackett said...

Fantastic Article :)