Is any US outlet other than the Times doing original reporting on the News Corp. scandal? The Times has it wrapped like a mummy, and I can’t help but wonder if WaPo and other outlets have ties to News Corp. (for example, Charles Lane of the WaPo Editorial Board is a regular on Bret Baier’s Special Report) that make it unlikely they will cover the story seriously.
Sullivan is so far in the bag for his paymasters at News Corp. that he’s making “the Guardian is shrill” jokes.
For shame. He is dead to me.
JPL
For shame. He is dead to me. Sully hasn’t changed and I’m not sure that you ever supported him. Please correct if I’m wrong. I have no idea about the Post. My personal thought is that Murdoch was offering to buy them for lots and lots and lots of money. Why would they support this slime.
MikeJ
I pointed out on an earlier thread that the same people who tell us that unfettered competition is the key solving all life’s problems don’t like it when a competitor to Murdoch does anything.
dslak
Don’t forget Sully’s “the British people are as much to blame for this as News Corp” post earlier today. That one’s a real keeper.
DougJ in Damascus
I did, it used to be one of my favorite blogs.
mrami
Isn’t somebody gonna read him so I don’t have to?
BGinCHI
I loved the WSJ rationale the other day: “the law is too strict and therefore forced NotW to break it and that’s why the law should be changed.”
They’ll probably try that with rape and murder next.
I hope Bernie fucking Kerik and Rudy G are involved and get the buggering in prison for life treatment. Assholes.
rikyrah
I’ll say it again,
nothing is more true…
TRUTH.IS.STRANGER.THAN.FICTION.
if someone WROTE this in a screenplay, it’d be call a ‘ dramatic device’.
as it is…
this is HILARIOUS.
it’s just falling, domino by domino
………………………………………………………
from DailyKos:
Rebekah Brooks’ husband ‘accidentally’ has computer thrown out+*
This. Is. Hilarious.
stuckinred
BGinCHI
you’re gonna get in trouble. . .
dslak
Ah, here we go:
Tell yourself whatever you think morally absolves Rupert and his underlings, Andrew, but how many British proles hacked into other people’s phones?
rikyrah
Lawrence O’Donnell did a piece on this tonight. Loved it. Kerik was Rudy G’s driver, and became NY POLICE COMMISH?
oh, begin to dig.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Now now, Sully just needs a few years to figure out how stupid he is about things, and in the meantime he’ll be shrill and snotty about people who aren’t stupid. Did you know he went to Oxford? And even though he’s gay, he’s still a devout Catholic and a conservative. He’s just a fascinating fellow. Also, too, Oakeshott.
stuckinred
rikyrah
You just killed any chance of an edit.
JPL
Sorry Doug, Sullivan is what he is. He follows not only the paycheck but health care benefits. I don’t think he’s ever been good. He certainly has never been deep in his thinking.
RossInDetroit
Sullivan:
A lie in the first line.
Leszek Pawlowicz
Isn’t that a bit unfair to Sullivan? Don’t always agree with him, but he’s already had a number of earlier posts on Hackgate that aren’t very complimentary to Murdoch:
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/07/the-hubris-of-murdoch.html
http://andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/2011/07/enhanced-journalistic-techniques.html
Linda Featheringill
The Guardian says that the US DOJ has begun an investigation of News Corp etc. on the basis of foreign corrupt practices.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/18/news-corp-global-investigation-bribery
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
What Murdoch organ does Sully work for?
stuckinred
These endless conversations about this guy are really tired.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Bernie and Rudi and Rupi and Judi (Judith Regan, that is) have a long and complicated history, don’t they? It would be irresponsible to speculate, of course, but I can’t imagine an investigation of News Corp practices is gonna be pretty embarrassing for all of FoxNews stipended politicians.
fleeting expletive
I’ve been trying to recall whether George W. Bush hired any FOX news people. If he had, then we have had an analogous situation here in the US.
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
Really, Dougie? It took this long? Not the race baiting he did with Charles Murray? Not the AHIP lies he did with Betsy McCaughey to kill universal healthcare in the early 90s? Not his putrid McCarthyism during the Iraq invasion? This? It took his flaking over a dead white girl scandal to turn you?
Lolis
Sully is also on his Obama is a coward blather for the prez not announcing his 4 trillion in cuts back in January. Whatevs. Sully is a retard on economic issues among others.
lldoyle
“I’ve been trying to recall whether George W. Bush hired any FOX news people. If he had, then we have had an analogous situation here in the US.”
Bush took on Tony Snow.
aimai
I believe Tony Snow, who was spokesman for a while, was a Fox News operative.
aimai
Mike Kay (Chief of Staff)
Tony Snow was white house press secretary, for one.
SiubhanDuinne
@fleeting expletive #20:
Tony Snow.
ETA: What a bunch of other people said.
aimai
But the real issue isn’t the Fox in the henhouse/who’s the Coulson clone issue at all. It is the revolving door between the Met and the newspapers, the hidden and overt payments to police, the tampering with evidence (in more than just the Milly Dowler case) and the probable use of the newspaper and its journalists to create opportunities for extortion and blackmail of both celebrity and political figures.
aimai
Warren Terra
The Sumday Times (of London). As a columnist. And that’s at present; he might want to suck on another Murdoch teat at some point in the future.
Still, taking money from The Times Of London shouldn’t be an absolute indictment; John Oliver and Andy Zalzman put out an excellent podcast through them, and presumably are paid. The evidence that Sullivan is an execrable, shallow-thinking narcissist lies in his accumulated body of work and in the shame his performance daily heaps upon him, not in his columnist gig.
lldoyle
The evidence that Sullivan is an execrable, shallow-thinking narcissist lies in his accumulated body of work and in the shame his performance daily heaps upon him, AND THAT GOT HIM his columnist gig.
Slight edit.
chopper
lol, doug. quit trolling yer own blog.
burnspbesq
Hardly surprising that the Times, which has to compete with two News Corp. papers, would grab a gilt-edged opportunity to strike back. Hope their aim is better than the women’s national team.
Violet
Was wondering when you’d post on that post of his. What a cop out. You saw his “The British public are to blame for this scandal” post earlier, right? Because they bought the tabloids, so it’s all their fault the phones got hacked.
What a wanker.
Heliopause
Since we’re doing dueling anti-Sullivan bona fides, here’s mine. Politics completely aside, I find his blog uninteresting. I’m not interested in his obsessions. I’m not interested in pretty pictures from somebody’s front yard in Kuala Lumpur (pro tip: Google has a handy little feature called “Images”, I can look at pretty pictures of whatever I want, whenever I want, as long as I want). I’m not interested in Trig Palin, even if all the conspiratorial bullshit were true. Sullivan inhabits roughly the same intellectual territory for me as reality shows; I just don’t understand what’s interesting about it.
Calouste
The Conservative Party.
PeakVT
Via DougJ’s (tonight in the role of DugJay) link, a nice interactive timeline of the scandal.
PeakVT
Via DougJ’s (tonight in the role of DugJay) link, a nice interactive timeline of the scandal.
Kilkee
OT, but I’m at a Sheraton in Philly, and half of the BJ topics are being bloocked by something called “Pure Sight” as “adult.” The shame. Maybe it’s the “a**holes” tag on all things Texas, but what can one do?
Erin
What,s interesting about Sully is that he appears to be the ONLY conservative left that has even half a brain, and is willing to recognize how ridiculous the Republicans have become. If we don’t want to live entirely within the liberal blog community, and want to have some outside opinion vaguely based in reality, who do we turn to if not Sully? Give me an alternative!
PeakVT
Okay, FYWP. And now, finally, the link.
Heliopause
The “premium blogad” at the top left as I type this has a picture of a tarty blonde grinning devilishly as she puts a 14″ cucumber in her mouth. No joke. Sheesh, the “Olivia Munn nude” ad at Eschaton is tasteful compared to this. What say ye, Cole?
Lojasmo
Snow.
And perino, amirite?
eemom
oh. my. God.
How could you take the awesomest scandal in half a century and turn it into yet another in the infinity series of fucking I-love-Sully-I-love-him-not posts??
Shiiiiiit. Scandal is wasted on bloggers.
BruinKid
Wait, didn’t Sullivan just write this today?
Martin
Pro publica is covering it a bit. Not one of their dig-in-deep topics though. Media scrutiny isn’t really their thing though – they’re much more wonky.
ChrisNYC
You know what? No Sullivan doesn’t get credit for a smattering of ho hum posts on this. He’s shallow, craven and despicable.
He plastered those photos of those hip kids in Tehran on his blog and got all weepy over self determination. No trading on dead Iranians if what you’re really about is shoring up the power elite. The country of his birth is controlled by a non-elected body called News International. He likes self determination? He likes democracy? Time for him to say what’s happening there — the ground is shifting because this *non* *elected* shadow government is being challenged and exposed as a mafia.
His “affable” “sincere” David Cameron is clearly adrift without the cover of his directors. Too bad he can’t get a ride to Rupert’s yacht now, like he did in 2008, so they could tell him what the hell to do. Not a leader, that Cameron. Thatcher would never have stood for it. :)
NYT
Whether the Wapo has ties to Murdoch or not, I imagine their staff will be very reluctant to write anything sensible on this. Journalism is a small world and getting smaller rapidly. Being honest could be a career limiting move.
JPL
ChrisNYC Thank you and great rant.
DougJ in Damascus
That wasn’t especially hard-hitting.
ChrisNYC
On the substance, Bloomberg seems to be trying to get some traction on the corporate/shareholder issues. That’s where I, personally, think this comes out, where this really hurts. Can’t have a huge corp like this run as a personal podium, piggybank, collection of bizarre fiefdoms. But, outside them, no good US sources. And I am truly a NotW addict.
burnspbesq
@Erin:
Bruce Bartlett, Dan Larison, David Frum.
Royston Vasey
On Saturday 2 July, Rupert Murdoch’s daughter Elisabeth and her millionaire PR husband Matthew Freud hosted a party at their 22-bedroom mansion in the Cotswolds. Michael Gove, the education secretary, was there. So was David Cameron’s consigliere Steve Hilton, and the culture minister Ed Vaizey.
The Labour Party figures in attendance included Peter Mandelson, the ex-work and pensions secretary James Purnell, the shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander – and his shadow cabinet colleague Tessa Jowell, who reportedly arrived with her supposedly estranged husband David Mills. They were joined by David Miliband – who was supported in his quest for the Labour leadership by the entire Murdoch stable of newspapers.
Royston Vasey
Robert Peston (BBC) was glimpsed in deep conversation with Will Lewis, News International’s general manager (and was editor-in-chief for the Daily Telegraph until 2010).
The BBC’s director general Mark Thompson turned up, along with Alan Yentob, Jon Snow from Channel 4 News, Bear Grylls, Mariella Frostrup, Lily Allen and Patrick Kielty.
Also among the guests was James Murdoch, who spent much of the night talking intently to Rebekah Brooks – whose behaviour that night was said to be somewhat uncharacteristic. “Usually, Rebekah flits around having a word with everyone,” one witness told the Daily Mail. “She loves being the centre of attention. But that night, she spent nearly all her time with News International people.”
The following Monday, the 4th of July, the Guardian ran the story by Nick Davies and Amelia Hill about Milly Dowler’s phone being hacked.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Perhaps McMegan will be next? It all starts with admitting that you have a problem.
Ruckus
mrami
Isn’t somebody gonna read him so I don’t have to?
Why is anyone reading him at all?
Look at the pluses and minuses and he gets a +2 out of 1000. He wallows around in the -500 area for what seems like forever then starts a late, slow climb back to +2. Sits there for a while then free falls back to -500 just to start the whole thing over again. So even when he looks good it’s only by comparison to where he was, never to where he could/should be.
Royston Vasey
A great article “How the phone-hacking scandal unmasked the British power elite” by John Harris of Teh Grauniad.
Go read
Brachiator
The LA Times has done some good stuff. But since this is a UK story with international ramifications, you really have to look at the Guardian OK, BBC News, Reuters and also look at the take that Australian and maybe Canadian media have on Murdoch’s antics.
The Guardian continues to do the best, most tenacious coverage. I just love their recent piece, Rebekah Brooks and the Murdochs: questions that need answering.
Cat Lady
Who gives a fuck about Sully when we’re witnessing the collapse of all of the institutions we’ve known in our lifetimes? NotW existed for 168 years, and it was gone in one week. The Church, the banks, the full faith and credit of the US, all going down. Some of us knew it was all bullshit, but now it’s becoming common knowledge. We’re being launched into uncharted territories, and we’re going to need a bigger boat.
hilts
Sully’s breathtaking douchebaggery has hit a new low.
murbella
LOLLLOLLLO11!!
if Sully is “dead” to you what is “liberaltarian bleeding heart libertarian” EDK??
a fucking undead cannibal zombie?
hahahah!
Jon H
I didn’t read that as saying the Guardian is being shrill. It seemed like a reasonable, if exaggerated, estimate of what the Guardian’s reaction would be if this story, which they’ve worked so hard on for so long, resulted in an attempt by Brooks to dispose of smoking-gun evidence in such a ham-handed yet dramatic fashion.
Basically, I didn’t sense an implication that the ‘orgasm’ would be unwarranted if the bag contents were relevant to the case.
JGabriel
Sully:
Sully is a mediocre analyst who occasionally gets something right in those rare moments where he already knows the subject (since he’s frequently too lazy to do even basic fact-checking or research before posting his blog comments).
That’s why I don’t usually bother with his blog more than once or twice a month unless someone points out a particular post.
On the other hand, the paragraph I’ve quoted above illustrates one of those moments when he gets it right and why I don’t write him off as dead to me.
.
TenguPhule
Tory Sullivan Sucks Fox Co*k.
Film at Elven.
Joel
@aimai: Ding! Ding! Ding!
This is where you might find leads where you least expect it. Maybe the Spitzer case, but maybe not. I can’t wait to find out.
ciaran
um harking back to an earlier comment. i had to laugh when he said obamas major failing is that he didnt come out for “simpson-bowles” earlier. what the fuck is wrong with the man i dont know. since he clearly reads enough to know better it must be just class war that motivates him.
dedc79
I think the Brits are a bit to blame for this whole mess. They made a tabloid paper that covered its pages in absolute crap the most read paper in the country. If you sell filth for a living it’s not all that likely you’ll follow all the rules, which this paper clearly didn’t.
Now i’m not saying the people are on par with the people who committed criminal acts, but there is a level of complicity there that shouldn’t be entirely ignored.
GVG
Um, I agree with Sully that the British public is at least partly to blame. It agrees with my judgement that the American public is partially the cause of our journalistic decline AND the we voters are collectively responible for our own elected idiots.
This does not excuse anything the various crooks did. It doesn’t get them off at all IMO.
This is a parallel issue that has to be talked about if you hope to reform any of these types of problems. the American voter at least tends to deny responsibility and forget they did stupid things like dismantle Glass-Stegal. In fact I recall some of the smarter republicans and democrats back at the time losing primary’s to opportunists who said nicer to hear things like we can lower taxes without cutting anything you care about and it magically will all work out. TV viewers and tabloid readers have picked juicy stories over fact based hard ones. Some of them could change their choices if they could be lead to see that it matters. they won’t if no one points it out.
Its also nessesary to point out that we still have to prosecute the actual lawbreakers and the fact the public wanted the juicy stories right up until they realized it could happen to them, doesn’t mean these perps should get off.
Sully is wrong alot, but sometimes he gets an interesting story first. I believe he is away on vacation right now and the blog is mostly not him. Actually I think he is in England and would normally not post at all except that he turned out to be right there when the story got big. Actually he knows too much about England for me, and I haven’t understood what he has written. He’s been too much of an insider to be useful to an outsider trying to understand (me).
kay
I can’t wait to watch libertarians and conservatives spin themselves dizzy when it comes clear that Murdoch purchased a police agency.
It’s okay of the state over-reaches, as long as it’s at the command of private money, I guess. If he can purchase a get out of jail free card, he can also purchase the state prosecution of another.
NonyNony
@kay
Only actual principled libertarians will need to worry about it – and since there are about 4 of them on the Internet and they get shouted down by their glibertarian cousins, we won’t even know when they say anything about it.
As far as conservatives and glibertarians go, Murdoch owning the police force isn’t a bug it’s a feature – the rich should be treated differently and anything that makes money for a corporation is a good thing.
The only conservatives and glibertarians that would be complaining are ones who had their own phones personally tapped by Murdoch’s lackeys.
bob_is_boring
About fucking time.