Two Random Observations Regarding the News Corp Scandal(s):
1. News Corp is an American-based multinational corporation/Humboldt squid. News International is its British newspaper company. This ain't a British-only scandal. America is giving aid and comfort to the heads of a massive racketeering operation masked as a media conglomerate. And the executives of that conglomerate broke American laws. So if the Justice Department hasn't announced an investigation yet, it's either on the verge of doing so or is so cowed by the power of Fox "news," shitting itself in a corner for fear that Sean Hannity will say something mean, that it's worthless.
Rupert Murdoch's products in the United States have long been engaged in a one-sided war with the Obama administration. Now there's a justification for joining the fight, bringing all the power of the law to bear. It's a gift. Obama could crush Murdoch and make Bill O'Reilly have to beg CNN to let them blow Blitzer for quarters. The phone-hacking scandal is like God just handed the President a perfect, wet pussy and said, "No, it's okay. You can fuck it. Enjoy."
(Note: He won't fuck it.)
2. The Rude Pundit's initial and somewhat current reaction to the phone-hacking revelations, which members of Parliament and 10 Downing Street ignored when it was just famous people involved, probably because a good many of them liked hearing about who Sienna Miller was shagging (that's a British word, right?), was, "Huh. That's fucked-up, considering how much Murdoch's entities condemned Wikileaks, with some calling for Julian Assange to be killed. How is that any different in action than hacking into the phone and paying off cops to get the medical records and banking information of the then-Prime Minister? Is that not a national security issue?"
But the Rude Pundit has long believed that the citizens of a nation engage in behavior in roughly the same way that its government treats those citizens. So if, say, a government tortures people, then the people believe it's okay to torture. This is not to say that a good many people won't oppose those actions, but governments set the norm for a society. Technology and the way government uses technology also has an effect.
For instance, how many Americans actually give a happy monkey fuck about how much our own government is allowed to spy on us? Not a whole lot. But (and this may be a huge fuckin' leap, so let's hold hands and jump together) the rise of the U.S. surveillance state coincided with the rise of Facebook and other social media that ask us to voluntarily give up our privacy. Sure, we have control (except when Facebook just decides to across-the-board fuck with those controls). However, since we are constantly asked by the government to forego privacy and to allow pat-downs and spying and told that it's for the good of the nation to do so, it just seems like how we exist in this world. If we'd had a government that said, "No, we need to protect individuals from unwarranted intrusions. We need to protect privacy" and then shitcanned the Patriot Act, we might feel differently. Maybe, just maybe, in this leap we're making, people would have thought twice before tweeting every dingleberry of faux wisdom that is shat out of their brains.
Now, what the hell does this have to do with News Corp/News International/News of the World/phone-hacking/scum-sucking pigfuckers/Murdoch-gate?
In England, by one estimate, millions of cameras watch the citizens of the nation, with the police watching the monitors fed by those cameras. You step out in public in any city and chances are that your movements can be tracked from the second you leave the flat until you get to the pub and then back again. And you're probably being filmed inside the pub, too, by their security. In other words, the cops in the U.K. have made the case that the best way to keep the population under control is to spy on them, constantly, unendingly, in whatever way the cameras can catch you, wherever they can catch you. That's the legal stuff. That's what you know about, even if you can't always see the cameras. That's on top of the crazy post-9/11 shit. Gravy, man, not the meat.
It's not that big a leap to think that the media, especially the mad whores at the tabloids, would feel it is their responsibility, to their readers, to the corporations' shareholders, to their insane belief in what journalism exists for (apparently, to spy on the victims of child murderers), to hack into phones in order to get the best story possible. If the government doesn't believe in your right to walk your stroller with your baby in it down the fucking street without being recorded in case you are inclined to commit a crime with that baby, why should anyone else give a damn about your privacy?
In other words, the phone-hacking/cop-bribing scandal is the inevitable result of the merging of corporate profit-driven media, ultra-invasive technology, the competitive exhibitionism of social media, and governmental disregard of the rights of the citizens to exist outside a well-disguised prison that we helped to build.
1. News Corp is an American-based multinational corporation/Humboldt squid. News International is its British newspaper company. This ain't a British-only scandal. America is giving aid and comfort to the heads of a massive racketeering operation masked as a media conglomerate. And the executives of that conglomerate broke American laws. So if the Justice Department hasn't announced an investigation yet, it's either on the verge of doing so or is so cowed by the power of Fox "news," shitting itself in a corner for fear that Sean Hannity will say something mean, that it's worthless.
Rupert Murdoch's products in the United States have long been engaged in a one-sided war with the Obama administration. Now there's a justification for joining the fight, bringing all the power of the law to bear. It's a gift. Obama could crush Murdoch and make Bill O'Reilly have to beg CNN to let them blow Blitzer for quarters. The phone-hacking scandal is like God just handed the President a perfect, wet pussy and said, "No, it's okay. You can fuck it. Enjoy."
(Note: He won't fuck it.)
2. The Rude Pundit's initial and somewhat current reaction to the phone-hacking revelations, which members of Parliament and 10 Downing Street ignored when it was just famous people involved, probably because a good many of them liked hearing about who Sienna Miller was shagging (that's a British word, right?), was, "Huh. That's fucked-up, considering how much Murdoch's entities condemned Wikileaks, with some calling for Julian Assange to be killed. How is that any different in action than hacking into the phone and paying off cops to get the medical records and banking information of the then-Prime Minister? Is that not a national security issue?"
But the Rude Pundit has long believed that the citizens of a nation engage in behavior in roughly the same way that its government treats those citizens. So if, say, a government tortures people, then the people believe it's okay to torture. This is not to say that a good many people won't oppose those actions, but governments set the norm for a society. Technology and the way government uses technology also has an effect.
For instance, how many Americans actually give a happy monkey fuck about how much our own government is allowed to spy on us? Not a whole lot. But (and this may be a huge fuckin' leap, so let's hold hands and jump together) the rise of the U.S. surveillance state coincided with the rise of Facebook and other social media that ask us to voluntarily give up our privacy. Sure, we have control (except when Facebook just decides to across-the-board fuck with those controls). However, since we are constantly asked by the government to forego privacy and to allow pat-downs and spying and told that it's for the good of the nation to do so, it just seems like how we exist in this world. If we'd had a government that said, "No, we need to protect individuals from unwarranted intrusions. We need to protect privacy" and then shitcanned the Patriot Act, we might feel differently. Maybe, just maybe, in this leap we're making, people would have thought twice before tweeting every dingleberry of faux wisdom that is shat out of their brains.
Now, what the hell does this have to do with News Corp/News International/News of the World/phone-hacking/scum-sucking pigfuckers/Murdoch-gate?
In England, by one estimate, millions of cameras watch the citizens of the nation, with the police watching the monitors fed by those cameras. You step out in public in any city and chances are that your movements can be tracked from the second you leave the flat until you get to the pub and then back again. And you're probably being filmed inside the pub, too, by their security. In other words, the cops in the U.K. have made the case that the best way to keep the population under control is to spy on them, constantly, unendingly, in whatever way the cameras can catch you, wherever they can catch you. That's the legal stuff. That's what you know about, even if you can't always see the cameras. That's on top of the crazy post-9/11 shit. Gravy, man, not the meat.
It's not that big a leap to think that the media, especially the mad whores at the tabloids, would feel it is their responsibility, to their readers, to the corporations' shareholders, to their insane belief in what journalism exists for (apparently, to spy on the victims of child murderers), to hack into phones in order to get the best story possible. If the government doesn't believe in your right to walk your stroller with your baby in it down the fucking street without being recorded in case you are inclined to commit a crime with that baby, why should anyone else give a damn about your privacy?
In other words, the phone-hacking/cop-bribing scandal is the inevitable result of the merging of corporate profit-driven media, ultra-invasive technology, the competitive exhibitionism of social media, and governmental disregard of the rights of the citizens to exist outside a well-disguised prison that we helped to build.
