One thing I would like to say after my last post

[fpb]

There is nothing I disapprove of more, in the range of British and American "conservative" behaviour, than Rupert Murdoch and the people who cozy up to him because Fox TV has big money and big audience. And it follows that any enemy of Murdoch, no matter whether I even like them, is at least an ally of mine.

Comments

Please elucidate

[frittomisto.livejournal.com]

Salve Fabio,

Greetings from frittomisto (Duchamp, Pollock).

May I ask you to explain? Does it have to do with the religion of americanismo?

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, I like Murdoch. Have worked for him. Several times. And a good deal of his enemies stink to high heaven.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

We've been through this. I came to this country in 1977, one year before he bought The Sun. I have had thirty years' opportunity to observe at close quarters, not the New York Times', but the Murdoch press' effect on man. And the effect of a newspaper that sells four to five million copies daily is huge, both in itself and in its imitators. I am sorry, but I do feel you have spent too much time in close contact with a monster to realize just how monstrous he is.

The people I mean are Lawrence Auster, Debbie Schlussel, and Diana West. None of them are particularly my favourites; Auster has positions that are not easily distinguished from racism, Schlussel is a harridan more interested in discovering enemies to hate than in doing anything positive, and West is a laudatrix temporis acti. But none of them have bent their knee to Murdoch, and that is admirable. One of the most depressing rake's progresses it has been my misfortune to observe is the way the supposed scourge of media porn and exploitation, Brent Bozell III, has been falling increasingly silent about all the trash Fox broadcasts, when only a few years ago he was quite clear that it is the worst of a bad lot. Murdoch's wholesale purchase of American conservatism had produced many intellectual parabolas of the kind.

[fellmama.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between thoughtful, intellectual conservatism--although here one could substitute any ideology--and shameless pandering to the worst inclinations of humanity. Murdoch's efforts fall firmly in the latter camp. (At least in the US; I'm not qualified to comment otherwise.)

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You've seen nuttin' till you've seen his flagship, The Sun. And mind you, it has been calming down - in its glory days, led by two journalistic thugs called Larry Lamb and Kevin McKenze, it was the most effficent tool of vulgarization and stupidification the world has ever seen.

[fellmama.livejournal.com]

I will take your word for it, sir--Fox TV angries up the blood enough already!

[affablestranger.livejournal.com]

There is nothing I disapprove of more, in the range of British and American "conservative" behaviour, than Rupert Murdoch and the people who cozy up to him because Fox TV has big money and big audience. And it follows that any enemy of Murdoch, no matter whether I even like them, is at least an ally of mine.

I am so inclined as well. His influence has even limited what used to pass for discussion, political conversation. It's maddening, saddening, but alas, all too easy to understand the mechanics of it all.