Murdoch, Mea Culpas and Unremarked Crimes

It's fun watching the rich and powerful squirm in their own pudding, and in the case of Rupert Murdoch, it's downright delicious.

It also reinforces my theory that the decline of modern civilization began the day that politicians, propagandists and press lords realized that emotion is far more useful in manipulating the masses than Reason.  This explains today's obscene transmogrification of the United States Constitution, one of the sublime fruits of the Age of Reason.

I've just read a report that Murdoch has had a meeting with the family of Milly Dowler, the 13-year-old murder victim, whose phones were hacked when police were searching for the missing girl in 2002.  Clearly he will go to any lengths to control the damage from what's now being called "the hacking scandal."

Earlier today, a highly placed head rolled:  Rebekah Brooks, editor of Murdoch's tabloid News of the World when the Dowler phone taps took place, resigned.  A favorite of Rupert's, she had ascended to head all of his U.K. newspaper operations.  After closing News of the World, he's buying space in other British newspapers to publish an apology.

There are rumblings  in the United States Congress about investigating Murdoch's holdings in this country -- the Wall Street Journal, New York Post and Fox "News" television -- to see if they've committed crimes against journalism and the public interest.  They're thinking of electronic hacking and police payoffs.

The intercepts of a grief-stricken family's private conversations after the murder of a child reeks of villainy, of course.  The emotional reaction of the public has so damaged Murdoch's empire that he personally is conducting the mea culpa propaganda.

It requires more than emotion, however, to recognize the crimes of Rupert's U.S. empire, particularly Fox Fiction.  Yet the deliberate lies, distortions, salacious rumor mongering and sleazy innuendo that Fox Fiction garbs as "news", arguably, has done more harm to more people than the intercepted phone messages in the U.K.

But for the most part it's only a handful of souls on the American political left who have pointed accusatory fingers at the Murdoch minions for these transgressions against truth.  The public, obviously, is charmed by them and keeps electing the wingnuts, teapot windbags and Christofascist fruitcakes Fox endorses and beatifies.

But isn't Fox's proud alliance with Andrew Breitbart and his boy-toy with the hidden cameras, James O'Keefe, just as wretched as NOTW's telephone spying on grief-stricken families?  Like the pols, performers and royals who previously were spied upon by Murdoch's so-called journalists, the victims of the Fox pals' hidden-camera scams lacked the emotional socko of a murdered 13-year-old.

I really don't expect much more than self-serving noise from American politicians in the calls for an "investigation" of Murdoch's U.S. companies.

But wouldn't it be fun if some of the top Foxies were made to squirm just a little bit, like their Big Boss?