Rupert Murdoch

[techs]

This carptbagger comes to America and is largely responsible for the enormous divisions splitting our country.
Personally, I hate him with a passion.
How do people feel about Murdoch, and should we have allowed him to emigrate to the US?

 

[StageLeft]

Yes, we have to be honest with ourselves. He is a symptom, but the real program is lack of education and self-esteem. That is why America is so divided. People are stupid and in fact so stupid they don't know they're stupid.

 

[retrospooty]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
Yes, we have to be honest with ourselves. He is a symptom, but the real program is lack of education and self-esteem. That is why America is so divided. People are stupid and in fact so stupid they don't know they're stupid.

Bingo... thats about it. at least 1/2 this country is just plain stupid. I am not claiming its the republican half. There are plenty O' stupids on each side.

 

[Jaskalas]

What?s wrong with Murdoch, he has a view point you disagree with?

 

[NoStateofMind]

Originally posted by: Jaskalas
What?s wrong with Murdoch, he has a view point you disagree with?

No, its that Fox is notorious for representing their opinions as fact and not the facts as facts. Murdoch openly admitted "they tried" to shape public opinion about the war in Iraq.

 

[bamacre]

I blame those that fall for the lies as much as those who spread them.

 

[Moonbeam]

Blame is self hate. There is no blame.

 

[Lemon law]

Maybe my problem is a penchant for playing chess, but the school of hard knocks has taught me the folly of falling for that naked gambit, and I always look the gift horse in the mouth.

Rupert Murdock's ownership of the means of mass communication may allow him to amplify his message, but I am constantly being bombarded by beguiling messages from deceivers of all
political persuasions, so I have a habit of looking those moves ahead and asking, will it be good for my side in the long term?

And at least with Rupert Murdock, I have long since learned that nearly everything he says comes from a forked tongue. Even if he uses various hired running dogs like Hannity and O'Reilly to
do the deceptions for him.

 

[Butterbean]

Originally posted by: techs
This carptbagger comes to America and is largely responsible for the enormous divisions splitting our country.
Personally, I hate him with a passion.
How do people feel about Murdoch, and should we have allowed him to emigrate to the US?

Yeah man - the nerve of people to oppose socialism, homosexual marriage, faux global warming science, illegal aliens, STD's etc. The schools and universities could be perfect re-education slop holes instead of severely compromised.

 

[CptObvious]

Al Franken made a good point about Murdoch - Murdoch doesn't have a conservative bias so much as a pro-making-money-at-all-costs bias, including supporting the Chinese state agenda in order to push his Fox News Network over there. If anyone at Fox News were true conservatives, they'd call him out on that, but they are all gutless tools for a paycheck.

 

[NoStateofMind]

Originally posted by: Moonbeam
Blame is self hate. There is no blame.

Exactly. So don't vote for Democrats because of the Republican years, blaming them only shows your own self hate.

:roll:

 

[Craig234]

Originally posted by: techs
This carptbagger comes to America and is largely responsible for the enormous divisions splitting our country.
Personally, I hate him with a passion.
How do people feel about Murdoch, and should we have allowed him to emigrate to the US?

He's not a primary cause, he's a tool (in more than one definition of the word).

The underlying cause is the conflict of interest between the most wealthy class, and the majority of people in America. From there, it's a short step to the conflict of ideologies.

From there, you see the ideology of the rich, the right-wing ideology ignorantly adopted by many who aren't rich, have various followers perpetuating it.

It's hard to kill because there are efficiencies to a wealthy class and to their pursuing more wealth. The wealthy and democracy are always in conflict, ultimately, insofar as it requires an 'enlightened view' by the wealthy to accept limitations and to try to help others, but they have to overcome the innate interest for more wealth in ways against others' interest and therefore in conflit with democracy.

If you want to see the 'real' modern events for the right wing, which helped cause the Murdoch movement, read David Brocks' "The Right-wing Noise Machine". It discusses how the right-wing movement passionate in the Goldwater campaign era but politically impotent took measures to build a political base, largely starting with Richard Viguerie and his mailing lists; an important event, though, was when Lewis Powell, shortly before being put on the Supreme Court, wrote a memo for the right wing leaders about how the liberals kept beating them on the popular issues by having the more appealing position, and the need to counter that by creating think tanks and messaging to 'sell' the public on their view. In other words, a call for the birth of an American propaganda machine for ideology.

(Link to an interview with an author of a book on Ailes).

And it worked marvelously. Some wealthy benefactors (read up on Richard Mellon Scaife) donated large sums to get think tanks started; and Nixon's Roger Ailes, after a long string of bad business, started Fox News, sponsored by Rupert Murdoch who is good at finding media opportunities. Before Murdoch, it was one of the biggest right-wing extremist tycoons, Joseph Coors, who hired Ailes to try to create conservative news in a cmopany called TVN, where Ailes learned a lot that he took to Fox News. One of the lessons he learned at TVN was that they hired journalists who were more credible and resisted some of the pressure to be right-wing hacks, so it didn't work like they wanted.


The right has created, with big money tycoons, right-wing media outlets, right-wing think tanks, right-wing political strategists like Ailes and Atwater and Rove, right-wing politicians like Tom DeLay (previously) but plenty of others, and a machinery filled with everything from the K Street Project to Grover Norquist, a movement that's done all too well politically, that can manipulate millions of voters and keep them 'oriented' their way, assassinating most liberals politically with those voters - an American radicalism. The left has not had anything like that movement, it's a more disorganized collection of ad hoc grass roots poorly funded groups - which has left the Democratic Party somewhat vulnerable to invasion by the corporatist interests itself, so it has a corporatist 'DLC' wing and a progressive wing (not to mention the 'blue dog' wing of more conservative converts, like James Webb, who was trashing Bill Clinton in 2000).

So the thing is, Murdoch is not so much a cause as he is a minion of evil. To counter him, truth needs its minions, too.

You can help by supporting independant media (The Nation, salon.com, commondreams.org, etc.), media watchdog groups, mediamatters.org, etc.

It's pretty well known that the people who choose to serve the right-wing think tanks have a lot more money available, well-organized networks to help each other, compared to the more idealistic left-wing think tanks. Unfortunately, this helps that side. The wealthy are happier to spend some money for their interests than the middle and poorer classes are to spend money for their side. And indeed, the right has even persuaded many middle and poorer class Americans not to be 'political', not to notice there are 'class issues'.

When you look at American history, you see a lot of situations where the 'masses' have politically organized to stand up for their view; they've largely been sort of neutered now.

To answer your question about Ailes, I think it's a good idea to do what you can to block him, within the principles of free speech.

One step that would help is to reverse the Telecommunications Act Clinton and the Republicans approved, but progressives were against.

 

[BigDH01]

Originally posted by: Butterbean

Originally posted by: techs
This carptbagger comes to America and is largely responsible for the enormous divisions splitting our country.
Personally, I hate him with a passion.
How do people feel about Murdoch, and should we have allowed him to emigrate to the US?

Yeah man - the nerve of people to support equality, fairness, tolerance, civil rights, science, opportunity, education, and health and to reject religious fundamentalism. I hate college because it teaches people to think for themselves.

Fixed.

 

[LGT]

corrupt bastard of the NWO that rupert