First posted Friday, 22 July 2011

In the UK this week the British Parliament is having a real old go at our Rupert Murdock (he is still ours, you Yankee bastards) and I, for one, don’t like it. Good Ol’ Rupe is a dinky dye Aussie icon and as such those bloody Poms should keep their unwashed mitts off him. Isn’t it typical! Whenever any antipodean success story crosses their path and has the temerity to make them look average the “Limies” want to have a dig at it.

But it isn’t just the Poms who are ripping into Rupe, even John Dean, former White House advisor to Richard Nixon, is sticking the boot in. JD, apparently in an effort to establish his bone fides, maintained in his diatribe against News Corp that at the height of the Watergate scandal he had tried to convince Tricky to fess up early. That’s not the way I remember it. I seem to recall Wood-Stein dragging JD, kicking and screaming, to the table. Johnny, who spent several months in stir despite his righteous efforts with his former boss, has developed a thing against right wing demigods. Strange! It was the Washington Post (to quote someone else; not exactly a bastion of conservative sentiment) who managed to end his law career and establish his rights to incarceration.

But whatever, I doubt Rupe will pay much attention to Johnny. It would be like receiving tips on fielding from former English spinner, Phil Tufnell. Steve Waugh once said that England had an advantage when Tufnell was bowling because it was unlikely he would have to catch anything while he was up that end. Actually even calling Tufnell a spinner is stretching the point.

During the interrogation last week at the hands of a bunch of poncy Anglo-pollies, while the ageing Rupert rambled his way through in his halting and traditionally inarticulate manner, some malcontent tried to smash a cream pie into his face only to have the missus fell the intruder with a stylish right hook. I always wondered what Rupert saw in Wendy Deng; let’s face it, classic beauty she’s not; but now I get it and I would want The Deng on my side too.

Calls for the head of News to resign reverberate across the oceans of the world from numerous sources, but the most vociferous come from journalists themselves. What a hoot! There is nothing more hilarious than a journalist ranting on about integrity. The old joke, better to be thought a piano player in a brothel than a journalist, still gets a laugh and for a good reason. Since when has anything stood in the way of a story? Show me the journalist who, when faced with the dichotomy of conscience over expedience, does not regularly choose the latter.

The Sydney based journalist, Champagne Socialist and flea, Mike Carlton, accused Rupert of using his power to bludgeon other journalists to the Murdock train of thought. That sounds like a common employer/employee relationship to me. Methinks Carlton probably once displeased Rupert to such an extent that the paucity of his future prospects with any News Corp journal was made very clear to him. The Flea has been unable since to resist any opportunity to go on the attack. Concern is hardly written all over the Murdock countenance.

Maybe I‘m in the minority, but I doubt Rupert was aware that his grubby staff were hacking into the mobile phones and computers of innocent people. Whether he cares his staff are grubby is another matter; but Rupert sleeps comfortably. He, in the manner of many extremely successful businessmen, needs only about four hours sleep a day. Yet, despite the source of his wealth, he doesn’t spend his extra time reading his own newspapers. Like most of us, he probably thinks they’re crap. No, Rupe spends his time counting his money and dreaming of ways to make more of it. Now what’s wrong with that? Money, Spending and Dreaming are three common areas of thought in my life also. I just don’t have as much of the first to accommodate the second so I’m just stuck with the third.