Though events in Britain suggest the Murdoch top executives bribe police, bug royalty and ‘target’ selected politicians for destruction, no thought is given to the probability that Murdochists do the same things here. That they set up Della Bosca, Mike Rann, Evans and Kernot, David Campbell, Matt Brown, Paul McLeay, and the false rumours that Keating was homosexual, Beazley had lost his mind, Latham somehow likely to assault the Prime Minister, Wilkie the whistle-blower suffering mental collapse, David Hicks a blue-eyed crazed killer, Dr Haneef a supplier of weapons to Muslim terrorists, and so on.
It is said the Murdochist ‘culture’ is different here and though Australians serve Murdoch here and in the UK and in the US and some, like Les Hinton, have worked in all three places, all Newscorp criminal tendency stops at the Channel. Why would it? Americans and Australians run it. Why would it?
If proof were needed that business as usual continues here in Australia as in the UK (where the Murdoch bugging of a good Prime Minister saying nothing remarkable in the back of a car was used to bring him down), it lies in the Orwellian dirty tricks I have been lately bringing to light in these pages as they have occurred to me. How it is only left-of-centre politicians who ‘lash out’ and ‘spit the dummy’ and only unions who have ‘bosses’ while corporations have CEOs. How all these words imply emotional instability as do, of course, the reports of irregular sex by Thomson, Bartlett, the left-wing Liberals Buswell and Brogden and (of course) Assange. Abbott is not said to have ‘lashed out’ against the events of Australia Day or ‘spat the dummy’ on surpluses, nor is Rupert Murdoch asked to resign for saying ‘Do you know who I am?’ to a hotel clerk, as he lately did, I hear. These hanging offenses apply only to figures of the Left. Abbott’s early desertion of his pregnant fiancee, Howard’s alleged adultery with Pru Goward are presented as mere bagatelles, but Della Bosca’s dalliance with a comedienne (a Strauss-Kahn-type set-up by the look of it, in my view) and David Campbell’s unsecret bisexual variety of nocturnal outing were touted as grounds for their exit from public life.
The curious numbers that Newspoll offers Murdoch from time to time should be looked into also. How is it Newspoll showed Gillard losing badly one weekend, and Nielsen showed her significantly gaining, and in with a chance, the next? How is it Newspoll showed, this morning, Abbott ahead as an economic manager after last week publicly doubting he’d have us in surplus in the next five years, to the horror of his team? Does Rupert ask by nod or hint for this sort of result in particular needy weeks? When the Liberals would otherwise take a hit and require a Monday Surprise? Does Newspoll cravenly give it to him? Is this why it has a CEO, or, as we used to say, a boss? Do numbers need to be bossed? How precisely is that number-bossing done? How are the numbers changed? Are they changed? And on whose instruction? Or is it just fraudulent sampling? We have a right to know.
One remembers the forged Hitler Diaries, and Murdoch ordering Hugh Trevor-Roper to swallow his doubts, and recommend they be published against his better judgment, and a great historian thus ruined by Rupert’s implacable need for a splash, a headline, a scandal, a revelation, a Big Lie. Is Newspoll likewise thus bullied? Was it thus bullied in the last twenty-four hours? We have a right to know.
And who should be arrested here in Australia, as tge Big five were in Britain? Hartigan must be a Murdochist of interest, surely. What dealings did he have with Chantelois and Phillips before the assault on Mike Rann, or after? Was money discussed? We have a right to know. (Nice to be writing Murdoch-type sentences about Murdoch and his flatterers. Does me a power of good.)
Rupert’s recent addled twitterings which show him seemingly in decline, may be of course his rallying of the Pinochet Ploy — this man is too sick and old to stand trial or serve time — and his latest fabrication, his latest cover-up, his latest alibi. The Murdoch miniseries Paper Tigers I am currently co-writing suggests his tricks, his wriggles, his illegalities, his prurience and pantie-sniffing have not altered too much down the years, and this is another poker game with his destiny, another roulette-spin against the odds, another two-up game of tails for the thirteenth time in a row, that he well may survive.
Or perhaps you disagree.
Name:
Another most amazing one for me is the now silence on AWB giving $300 million to Saddam without one person being sacked or charged with any crime while the Murdoch rags are persecuting Craig Thompson for what seems to be precisely nothing.
Howard started two wars that have slaughtered hundreds of thousands, Gillard legislated a carbon tax that the rich will pay and she is crucified.
The problem with the born to rule mob is that they have no sense of perspective.
Even today in the Advertiser retaining two state seats is “a snub” to the government.
How that is is quite beyond me.
Murdoch’s media runs with the Tony Abbott Big Lie : “that this is an incompetent government”
Being longer than three words, this is a complicated message to the average conservative voter, but perhaps it is pitched to the apocryphal “swinging voter”.
If he and they repeat it often enough, people may actually believe it, contrary to almost all objective evidence.
Dr Goebbels would be proud of them, using his Big Lie so relentlessly.
But it did not work out so well for Goebbels, and it must not be allowed to work out well for Murdoch and his present protege, Abbott.
As Lincoln pointed out, you can fool some of the people most of the time, and you can fool most of thr people some of the time.
The thing about Abbott is, he is having the Latham affect on the ALP, as Latham had on the Howard Govt. He’s got them at sixes and sevenses and if true now considering a leadership change.
Without attributing motive, I wonder if Bob’s “Last Days of TA” is a countermanoeuvre to start the rumour on the otherside?
Gillard has got to shake Abbott’s hand, hard and fast and get his knees to buckle or failing that let down the air in his tyres.
Perhaps; Abbott was a missile aimed at Rudd, and it hit its mark. The accession of Gillard upset the programming, but it still buzzes about aimlessly, hitting the target in dartboard fashion. The media give its misfires little attention; it is not the Murdoch agenda (as yet) to destroy the missile called Tony.
My response to Stephen Mayne’s latest article at the Drum – “Can Rupert Murdoch save The Sun?” :
The tradition has been for the empires of newspaper magnates to fall apart after the death of the Great Leader, in the reign of the Dear Leader or of the Great Successor, perhaps.
But when the Great Leader lives past 80, and we note that his mother is still hale enough at 103 years of age, things may not go according to tradition.
The Dread Dark Lord sleeps uneasily tonight, and perhaps every night that remains to him.