Table Talk: Bob Ellis on Film and Theatre

In the film on the Queen on ABC last night it was asked what caused the big rude alteration in attitude to Royalty from mannerly respect to aggressive prurience and the answer came, ‘In two words: Rupert Murdoch’. It became clear to me then that what I had heard, that Murdoch had twice been put up for a knighthood, by Thatcher and Major, and the Queen had twice knocked him back was very, very likely.

We were then shown what became the subject of the fine feature film The Queen, the four days after Diana’s death when the Queen was in Balmoral trying to cope with the young princes’ grief at the loss of their mother and Murdoch’s paper The Sun was demanding she come to London ‘as a sign of respect’ for the fallen goddess and she finally, obediently came.

A sign of respect. It was yet another example of the way Murdoch makes new rules and pretends they’re old rules and castigates and shames those who disobey them. The rule that a Prince does not say the word ‘tampon’ to his lover and if he does he should not be King. The rule that a Prime Minister cannot call a bigoted woman ‘bigoted’ in a private conversation and he cannot be Prime Minister if he does. The rule that an MP cannot say ‘Do you know who I am?’  to anyone and if she does she must lose preselection. The rule that you cannot say anything Rupert suddenly decides is wrong or he will come after you and ruin you after bugging you saying it.

This week the new rule was that you cannot ‘accept’ an accused man’s vote though there is no constitutional way you can refuse it. That if he offers it he must be thrown out of parliament for his corrupt impertinence. That he has no right to vote the way that Rupert thinks wrong. That fascist powers exist in our democracy to stifle a duly elected parliamentarian if Rupert does not like him for getting in Rupert’s way.

It’s been a remarkably successful technique and it’s based at his heart on English working class ignorance and their tendency to genuflect before a crisp voice speaking confidently. So if Rupert tells them in The Sun that Sarah Ferguson’s big bum is a national disgrace he is believed. If he says we must make war on Iraq to halve the price of petrol he is thought to be wise. If he says on Fox News that Barack Obama is an illegal Muslim alien who should not be in the White House he is believed. If he says climate change isn’t happening, it isn’t.

And lately he is saying in the same authoritative Anglo-Aussie voice that the Labor Government is bound to lose its numbers and fall in a month or so and in an Abbottite landslide be swept out of history and many, many Labor people believe him.

But it is not true. Labor gained half a million votes in a fortnight and there are thirty-eight fortnights to go. The money goes to the pensioners this week and to the parents of schoolkids next month and the hounding of Craig and his plain and evident innocence is hurting the Liberals badly and Abbott and Pyne will be sacked by their party in a month or so and it will be different, very different, after that.

But still he is believed. The touter of the Hitler Diaries and the WMD and the Florida numbers is believed.

The Queen is onto him and we are not. The young princes knew, or they know by now, that their mother’s death was due in part, at least in part, to the fox-hunters’ bloodlust with which his buggers and hackers and peeping toms pursued her; pursued her into her grave, and smirched her beauty beyond it.

And this knighthood will not be forthcoming from Charles The Third or William the Fifth or Henry the Ninth not ever; not even if Rupert lives as long as his mother.

He is scum: a stalker, harasser, forger, pirate, liar and blackmailer and he should be in gaol. The Queen thinks so and so do I.

Or perhaps Andrew Bolt disagrees