I liked this Charlie Brooker piece on Rupertdämmerung:
You know the liberating feeling when someone unpopular leaves the room and everyone breathes a sigh of relief before openly discussing how much they dislike them? I don’t. What’s it like? What do people say? I only ever catch the odd whisper as the door shuts behind me. I’d love to hear the full conversation. Fortunately, watching Britain’s politicians queue up to denounce Rupert Murdoch has given me a taste of how such talk might play out.
A few weeks ago, Murdoch, or rather the more savage tendencies of the press as a whole, represented God. Fear of God isn’t always a bad thing in itself, if it keeps you on the straight and narrow – but politicians behaved like medieval villagers who didn’t just believe in Him, but quaked at the mere suggestion of a glimmer of a whisper of His name. You must never anger God. God wields immense power. God can hear everything you say. You must worship God, and please Him, or He will destroy you. For God controls the sun, which may shine upon you, or singe you to a Kinnock. Soon he will control the entire sky.
Linda Featheringill
Voldemort?
sb
I wasn’t wild about the God metaphor but I liked this passage:
BGinCHI
Someday people will look back at this period of history and wonder how capitalism was so broken as to let a few people gather so much power at the expense of everyone else. It cannot nor will not come to a good end.
It’s not good morally, ethically, or even capitalistically.
Love,
Cassandra
MGB
OT but the ad I’m getting at the top of my page is the “Russian Love Match”
beltane
Rupert Murdoch never kept a single damn soul on “the straight and narrow”. He is just another right-wing thug who used his media empire as his own personal Stasi, thus infecting the politics of Australia, the UK, and the USA like some kind of incurable retrovirus.
beltane
David Cameron is out of the country at “an undisclosed location”. For security reasons, of course.
MikeJ
@beltane: He’s flown to Iceland to join Rupert for his last stand in Murdoch’s lair under Eyjafjallajökull.
Chris Johnson
It’s the Libertarian Autumn- or should be.
You know- when the libertarians figure out that private power is precisely as bad as their worst fears of government, and no different, and ironically only government can save them (just as only private enterprise can save them from the excesses of government)?
Oh wait- ‘figure out’- my bad ;P
Corner Stone
@beltane: IMO, I am salivating at the outside chance Murdoch pulls his version of a Col. Jessup. He’s just done exactly what he wants for so long I’m not sure he knows he’s not supposed to do certain things.
I hope he gets gutted.
SiubhanDuinne
Brilliant. Love it.
Cat Lady
The They Live metaphor is so apt, that I beat Charlie Brooker to it myself here in the Cat Lady black ops bunker several hours ago when it occurred to me that a movie had already made been made that loosely followed the same plot. The Wizard of Oz will do, also too, with Toto filling in the role played by Roddy Piper as the character who exposes the charade. The only thing left is to determine whether this all plays out as tragedy or farce, and which director will be able to adapt the screenplay (JK Rowling does the first draft?). Calling Costa Gavras.
Violet
@Corner Stone:
The fact that he’s done what he wanted for so long, and that everyone from other media to corporate CEOs to politicians to celebrities to sports stars quaked in terror lest he ruin their lives, has meant that he hasn’t lived with any kind of accountability for decades. He doesn’t have the skills to deal with being held accountable.
It’s going to be fascinating to watch how this plays out. I suspect his skills aren’t up to the challenge and he’s going to make some really poor decisions.
Dream On
Purple prose, not unlike Kortney and her vegetables.
JGabriel
@SiubhanDuinne: Seconded.
.
kdaug
@Dream On: Do not get me started on the green projectile vomit.
Linda Featheringill
@Dream On: #13
Kortney and her Kukumber
You know, with no-script I don’t see that at all. :-)
Mark S.
Herbert Cain: Fuckin’ Insane
Yes, no other religion has a set of laws. And Christianity has always been about following Jesus’ teachings and staying out of politics. What an ass!
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Violet:
I think this is spot on, as they’d say across the pond. And it could make for some entertaining moments. he will be his lawyers’ client from hell, since he’s so accustomed to being the boss.
dmsilev
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s pretty good, but it falls just short of the sheer perfection that Josh Marshall coined when Tom DeLay fell from power: Hammerdammerung.
Linda Featheringill
@Mark S.: #17
Cain:
Yeah, he’s sounding just like the TeaParty folks.
As it was my hope that he would demonstrate to some on the right that a man with dark skin could have a lot in common with them [the white nuts], I am rather pleased with his progress. Maybe they [the TeaParty people] will learn to listen, really listen to a person talk before passing judgment. That would be a big improvement.
Go, Herman!
jl
@17 I bet Cain will be take on Halakha any day now. That would be foolish and bigoted too, so would not be a big leap for him.
THE CENTER FOR HALACHA & AMERICAN LAW:
http://www.jlaw.com/LawPolicy/CenterforHalacha.html
Edit: and would be inconvenient to point out John Calvin was a lawyer, and half of what he wrote was rules for his new church and how it would run Geneva.
PeakVT
There’s so much news on the scandal that the Guardian live-blog is running around the clock.
Linda Featheringill
@PeakVT: #22
Stealing from on of our regular commenters but I don’t remember which:
“Ah the schaden, how it freudes itself.”
MikeJ
@jl: Got 95 theses and a bitch ain’t one.
SiubhanDuinne
@dms:
Well, let’s hope Murdoch and his minions all end up in the slammerdämmerung!
Anya
beltane @ #6 ~ Since when were trips to Africa classified as “undisclosed” for security reasons?
Tom Q
As another guy who was a (young) adult during Watergate, I want to echo those in the previous thread who mentioned how reminiscent this feels. There was this same mind-boggling sense: that people (then the Nixon White House) who’d evoked such fear suddenly seemed deeply vulnerable. This past week-plus has had that rapidly-cascading feeling I recall from the day Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned — the “whoa — this is bigger than I thought” realization.
If this becomes a truly trans-Atlantic scandal — and the pathetic attempt at misdirection on Fox News suggests they’re at least worried it might — this could upset the long-standing political order in a way that mere elections could not. (And if it comes in tandem with a strong Obama re-election, it could reset priorities in our media universe the way even the wave elections of ’06 and ’08 were unable to)
Calouste
Past midnight UK time and Rebekah is still with her former friends at the Met. And on another forum I frequent with a lot of Brits, people are starting to speculate who is going to succeed Cameron.
PeakVT
@Calouste: Brooks was just bailed according to the Met, according to the Guardian.
The Republic of Stupidity
I’m sorry, but this in NOT a movie…
This… is… an opera… a grand opera…
Something perhaps written by John Adams…
JimPortlandOR
Rupert’s empire won’t really suffer much, a few weeks down the time-road, unless there is something stronger than iron-clad evidence comes to light that exposes the US branch to hard-time penalties (perhaps the 9-11 victim’s kin being manipulated by the the same hacking, accompanied by payoffs of Wash. DC elected figures and media personalities).
I’d especially take glee from having both Rupert and Roger Ailes at Fox being deeply involved in something both socially scandalous and legally forbidden – it would take both.
Too bad their is no media organization in the US with the independence, resources (The Guardian Trust), and persistence of The Guardian. It certainly won’t be the WSJ or WaPo since they already are lined up as defense character witnesses, and are surely prepared to launch a smoke-screen that is unpenetratable. (WaPo has already tested their cannons for the counter-attack.)
Maude
@Tom Q:
If this comes to the US, let’s hope that the telecommunications act of 1996 gets re done and eliminates the huge corporate ownership of media.
MikeJ
Love the hed now up at the guardian: “Ed Miliband: Murdoch’s empire must be dismantled”
From Miliband’s lips to His noodly appendages….
jwb
efgoldman: I still think we’re looking at a film: Citizen Kane remade by Paul Greengrass.
No one of Importance
Sure. And you can fix your tax and medical systems while you’re at it. All it needs is an independent media, politicians who aren’t greedy, venal *and* insane, and a public who pays attention to reality.
In other words, you should be so lucky.
SiubhanDuinne
@efgoldman #34:
Some of us were having this conversation earlier today on one of the morning threads (Shakespearean and operatic). I was plumping for an operatic treatment, and yes, I see it as something really lush and multi-layered. Verdi would definitely do it justice. (But you just know that Andrew Lloyd-Webber is simply panting to turn it into a West End/Broadway musical extravaganza, don’t you?)
scav
Blue-skying it a bit, we’re also looking at a Shakespearean set-up starring an 80-year-old man who’s just suffered a visible coup de vieux, his chosen heirs are looking shaky and their recent management skills haven’t been sparkly smooth. Forget the proles for the moment, the shareholders/nobles have got to be eyeing this lot of main protagonists warily and shuffling about behind them for the best positions and whispering among themselves. Empires also get broken up during bad regime-changes. Toxic parts will be left but a change in scale might still be a help.
ETA: Totally agnostic as to whether it should be spoken or sung. Funny timing SiubhanDuinne, no?
jwb
SiubhanDuinne: Normally, I’m not at all a fan of Andrew Lloyd-Webber, but this might in fact be exactly the musical for which he was put on this earth to write. Because he would try to turn Rupert into a great tragic figure and he would fail at it, but I have this feeling that he would fail in a particularly arresting and inadvertently revealing way that might prove the definitive portrait.
Kathy in St. Louis
Can we get Bill O’Reilly to sic one of his hounds on Rupert, devilling his every move, asking him, “Do you still beat your wife” type questions regaring this scandal? No, I guess not.
Isn’t there some other obnoxious news personality that we could get? I know Nancy Grace is winding up the Casey Anthony story right now, and she’s obnoxious….do you think she’s be willing?
I would love to see him get just a taste of what he dishes out so cavalierly.
jl
Zombie Alban Berg sickening up a mythical John Gay libertto would do a good opera on it. I prolly couldn’t sit through it though, it would be set in England so Jack the Ripper would be worked in again.
Re animated Brecht and Weill would do good too.
Or Richard Strauss, who would blandly direct it as if were a Lawrence Welk musical.
jwb
efgoldman: actually, to be fair, he wrote two musicals. But that’s not the point; the point is that he would fail at rendering Rupert a tragic character but he would fail inadvertently in the right way. And the fact that the whole thing would be bombastic, derivative dross: well, what better way to sum up Rupert.
SiubhanDuinne
@scav #40 and jwb #41:
Well, there are plenty of Shakespeare plays that have been turned into grand opera and musicals and movies and ballets and pop songs. There’s material enough for all kinds of treatments.
I’d like to know more about Murdoch’s wives and children. There seems to be a strong aroma of Lear hovering about the principals.
Tom Q
“31.efgoldman – July 17, 2011 | 8:05 pm · Link
Aside from all the factual stuff (somewhere in my basement there’s a box with about 15 different Watergate books) the thing I remember most is that it seemed every single day there was another jaw-dropping revelation.
I think i spent months with my jaw metaphorically on the floor.”
Absolutely. In those pre-Internet days, you had to look at the headline every time you walked by a newsstand in case something had happened. (One clear recollection I have is “Colson Guilty” — he’d pleaded out, and no one had even known he was in discussion) Unexpected developments kept turning up at regular intervals for over a year. It was like the best miniseries ever.
Liberty60
One of my amusements is to read Memeorandum and notice the list of blogs under each Murdoch-related headline- not one rightwing blog is commenting about it that I know of- all the usual tribe of howler monkeys are studiously avoiding this, like orcs turning away from the explosion of the eye of Sauron (my nomination for the most apt movie analogy).
jl
@45: There is a reincarnation of George Buechner out there writing pamphlets right now. I just know it. That’s who will get the theatre/movie/opera career of this scandal going.
Joel
I echo the Brecht sentiment on the Murdoch opera.
1) his political leanings favor it.
2) a mess like this requires a decidedly darker touch.
3) Murdoch is about as sinister as Mackie Messer.
priscianusjr
I understand the comparison, but I’ll take God over Murdoch.
jprfrog
Glad to see that several people here are onto the hollowness of Andrew Lloyd Weber. As a musician who had to play some of his erzatz “hits” night after night at the Boston Pops, I have a special animus for him.
It’s a tough call…Murdoch is too sleazy and basically picayune to warrant the attentions of a Verdi. I think the right spirit would be more like that of the Marx Brothers.
Here in the US, we have yet to see a spillover, but should it happen (Peter King, of all people, made some interesting noises last week) it would make me happier than seeing Tom DeLay in jail, and that is saying a lot.We would need a new word, however…schadenfreude is just not powerful enough.
When and if people write and read history in a hundred years, I think Murdoch will get more space in the sad tale of decline and fall of the United States than any other single individual, even G W Bush, or Cheney. For it was Faux Noise that made these grotesques and many others (cf. Bachmann, Palin, Limbaugh, etc.)possible and may well, due to the cultivation of ignorance and the phony populism as embodied in the New Yotk Post (and Boston Herald) lead to another Great Depression starting in a few weeks.
As with the death of Jerry Falwell, the demise of Murdoch (which I hope will precede my own) will be an occasion when this convinced atheist wishes that there really is an afterlife.
Brachiator
The Guardian is not as rich as some US media organizations, nor was it the only one who investigated Murdoch. And what is most needed is courage, not just money.
By the by, for a little comedy relief, the BBC Friday Night Comedy program, The Now Show, deftly satirizes Murdoch, and also the complicity of other British Institutions. Available via iTunes and other sources.
Brachiator
Or even The Who. Rupert, A Rock Opera.
He’s a phone hack wizard,
He’s on the Richest List,
A phone hack wizard
With such an Aussie twist
How do you think he does it?
Rebekah knows.
What makes him so cool?
Lot’s of bags of money,
Coppers in his grip,
Fools want celeb gossip
And Rupert cracks the whip.
fuckwit
@Chris Johnson: “when the libertarians figure out that private power is precisely as bad as their worst fears of government, and no different, and ironically only government can save them”
Exactly! I came to this realization about 10 years ago, after having been a libertarian for some 20 years prior.
Libertarianism is like Marxism– it’s an ivory-tower kind of ideology that sounds good in theory, but fails miserably in practice because it ignores a fundamental flaw in human nature: people are greedy and irrational.
bob h
And God could offer you a job at a time when they were hard to come by.