Rupert Murdoch: Perception manager
Rupert Murdoch is a bad man. His son James is also bad. Rebekah Brooks is allegedly bad. The
News of the World was very bad; it hacked phones and pilloried people. British prime ministers grovelled before this iniquity. David Cameron even sent text messages to Brooks signed "LOL", and they all had parties in the Cotswolds with Jeremy Clarkson. Nods and winks were duly exchanged on the BSkyB deal.
Shock, horror.
Offering glimpses of the power and petty gangsterism of the British tabloid press, the inquiry conducted by Lord Leveson has, I suspect, shocked few people. As the soap has rolled on, bemusement has given way to boredom. Tony Blair was allowed to whine about the
Daily Mail's treatment of his wife until he and the inquiry's amoral smugness protecting him were exposed by a member of the public, David Lawley-Wakelin, who shouted, "Excuse me, this man should be arrested for war crimes." His Lordship duly apologised to the war criminal and the truth-teller was seen off.
Why Murdoch should complain about the British establishment has always mystified me. His interrogation, if that is the word, by Robert Jay QC, was a series of verbal marshmallows that Murdoch promptly spat out. When he described one of his own rambling, self-satisfied questions as "subtle", Jay received this deft dismissal from Murdoch: "I'm afraid I don't have much subtlety in me."
Comment: It won't stop because, as Lobaczewski wrote in Political Ponerology, "Germs are not aware that they will be burned alive or buried deep in the ground along with the human body whose death they are causing." Nothing less than a broad-spectrum shift in awareness would cause people to see the psychopaths for what they really are. For that to happen before the whole world is consumed by Total War, from where we're standing, is gonna take a miracle of some sort.