My Sweet Shadenfreude* - Rupert Twisting in the Breeze

Not since the sentencing of serial criminal Conrad Black, another of the new era of media moguls, have I received news as shamelessly satisfying as the unwinding of Rupert Murdoch.

 

But where Conrad elicits at least a modicum of sympathy and grudging admiration, Rupert's fall from the great heights into the pool of his, and his legion of faux journalists', crapulence evokes nothing so much as glee.

Watching the once omnipotent multi-media tyrant, with more fingers in more pies than the Medusa has snakes, frozen in his efforts to sew up Britain's largest independent television station, BSkyB, (an effort to greater concentrate his control of UK media) stayed by the veritable midgets of government he so recently bought and sold with not so much as a stern look and wave of a hand, is the closest thing to hope I can recently remember.

While it may be too optimistic to think the whole of the stinking pile Murdoch's News Corp represents will now be flushed from the media bowl, sent swirling down the drain and away, the menace it poses to the public weal disappeared beneath the airwaves as suddenly and finally as fellow media con man and traducer of truth, Robert Maxwell was, I like to think the still spreading scandal of the Murdoch Method of journalism, as practiced at News of the World and a growing list of his other holdings, marks the beginning of a great turning away.

Perhaps the visceral disgust now being expressed by an outraged public in Britain towards the despicable, sick-making, amoral News Corp can prove a contagion to cross the Atlantic and infect, not just Murdoch's US assets, but all media purveyors who thrive on lies, and market sleaze?

 

Lying behind the ugly truth of l'Affaire Rupert, with its gross violation of decency, (seeing News Corps' press gangs employed hacking into the voice mail accounts of murdered kidnap victims, the families of dead soldiers, celebrities, the British Royal family, MP's, and even the families of victims of the 9/11 attacks in the United States) is a much more unpalatable truth: It is the collective "We" who watch the sports and television programs, read the newspapers and websites, buy the books and cinema tickets who are, more than the odious citizen Murdoch, to blame.

 

It is we who, by turning a blind eye to the corruption of the government and police services, allow the spread of malfeasance and degradation of our democracy. It is we who, through our devotion to the distractions of titillating celebrity gossip and endless hours of mindless sports programming, are filling the coffers of proto-fascists like Rupert Murdoch. It is our money making his twisted world view a reality.

 

And, we must remain cognizant, knowing; should this scandal prove Rupert's end, should his fall land him in the dock, or even prison, that fall will too soon be eclipsed by the rise of the next mogul.       

 

The perpetual wars are cheered and led by Murdoch and his like-minded media manipulators, yet we allow that jingoism continue. The economy is delivered to fraudsters, and government given over to thieves and charlatans as we sit idly by, drooling for the consumer crap paraded before us on television.

There is much work to be done, and the bringing to book of one media tycoon, even one as large as Rupert Murdoch, is not going to solve the myriad problems we face; but allow we for now savour the rare moment when the worm turns, Karma comes home to roost, and the truly deserving are duly served their just desserts.