For more than a decade now, any Americans who have been paying attention have realized that the more that Right-Wing writers, authors, think-tanks, and celebrities (not to say 'leaders') crank out and throw charges and accusations against "liberals" and Democratic leaders, the MORE THE RIGHTIES are REALLY TALKING ABOUT THEIR OWN arrogant actions and base motivations.
At the very height of the Republican IMPEACHMENT crescendo against President Bill Clinton (based on Republican "independent" prosecutor SHIFTING his $70 million investigation from the "Whitewater" financial losses to the Monica Lewinsky affair) Republican House Speaker designate Congressman Robert Livingstone had to RESIGN from Congress when it was revealed that he, too, was LYING ABOUT an ONGOING AFFAIR... an ongoing affair! As were a dozen other Republican House leaders, including Henry Hyde, Newt Gingrich, and even the de facto House Republican leader, Tom DeLay of Texas, he of "HOT TUB TOM" infamy before he was accorded his more well-known nickname, "The Hammer" for relentlessly demagoguing "Moral Values" issues to enable Repubican "pay to pay" bribery and extortion scandals. (Namely the "K-Street Project," of which convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff was only one part; and Vietnam Navy war hero and Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham was yet another part of the ongoing Republican Congressional BRIBERY scandals.)
For her part, Right-Wing pundit provocateur ANN COULTER relentlessly decries the "LIBERAL" assault on America's morality and "moral values," although she remains single, is rumored to have an insatiable appetite for sex with many different partners, and (no rumor here) appears on morning talk shows and at public appearances wearing the skimpiest, shortest cocktail dresses imaginable, provocatively waving her legs and blond locks at the camera's TV audience. FOX 'news' commentator Bill O'Reilly also enjoys flirting with his TV viewers, with his sensuous, darting (not to say, 'snakelike'?) tongue, and O'Reilly was captured on tape talking phone-sex to his female assistant (behind his wife's back, we assume).
And of course radio "commentator" and Right-Wing "MORAL VALUES" demagogue blowhard RUSH LIMBAUGH is a divorce attorney's dream, and more to the point not only consumed Oxycontin "hillbilly heroin" pills by the handful, BUT SENT HIS house maid OUT TO PURCHASE THOUSANDS of such pills "on the street" for him, a crime for which thousands of Americans are doing long stretches in prison in America's gruesome "Drug Wars" as we speak! And for YET ANOTHER Limbaugh level Republican hypocrite, there is Right-Wing self-appointed defender of "moral values" BILL BENNETT, decrying the "LIBERAL" contempt for "Moral Values" one day, and then sitting naked in his Las Vegas suite, pulling the handle of a slot machine into which he is voraciously feeding quarters the next!
As these and 100 other examples illustrate, when Righties shout "LIBERAL DEMOCRATS ARE DEFILING AMERICA's CULTURE!" they are often talking about THEIR OWN base motivations and habits.
And SO IT IS WITH RUPERT MURDOCH, who is doing his own level best to turn America into "POTTERSVILLE," the nightmare gangster-ridden town featured as an alternative reality to the quite, dignified small town we see at the beginning of the film in the James Stewart movie, "It's a Wonderful Life." According to the wikipedia entry for the movie, Director Frank Cappra had to skirt the MPAA movie association rules in force at the time, that held that criminals must always be punished for their crimes; in this case that Mr. Potter was never caught or punished for stealing the $8,000 from Uncle Bernie that led to George Bailey's suicide attempt and the alternate reality bestowed on Bailey - "I wish I had never been born!" - by his guardian angel, Clarence.
Director Cappra received more mail about Mr. Potter's ill-gotten money than about any other subject in the movie that is now considered an iconic part of America's film culture.
Today, we wonder if America's evil Mr. Potter incarnate - Rupert Murdoch - will profit from his latest ghoulish, hypocritical debasement of America's culture.
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News that Murdoch organisations have scooped a book and TV deal based on the OJ Simpson [MURDER] case has prompted a US-wide wave of revulsion
OJ 'confession': now US turns on Murdoch
by Paul Harris in New York
Sunday November 19, 2006
The Observer
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1951831,00.html
It must have seemed like a good idea to someone. The man most Americans believe is behind their country's most infamous murder agrees to a virtual confession in a book and TV interview. Surely it would be a ratings and publishing smash.
Not quite so fast. For in reality OJ Simpson has succeeded where millions of angry liberals have always failed: striking a direct blow at the media empire of Rupert Murdoch, and especially its controversial broadcasting arm, headed by Fox television.
A wave of revulsion and open criticism, reaching a climax this weekend, has swept America in the wake of revelations that Simpson intends to capitalise on the murder of his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her friend Ron Goldman with a book and TV 'confession' in a £1.8 million deal brokered by Murdoch-owned companies. So widespread is the condemnation that even some of the top names on Murdoch's own cable channel, Fox News, have urged viewers not to buy the book or watch the interview.
It is no surprise. In both book and interview Simpson describes how he would have murdered Brown and Goldman. But only if 'hypothetically' he had done it. He even describes the amount of blood that would have been caused by slashing the pair to death.
The extent of the reaction perhaps typifies a case that has both outraged and enthralled Americans.
Certainly, the public vilification of Simpson seems to have taken its toll on Judith Regan, the controversial US book publisher who conducted the interview and whose Murdoch-owned ReganBooks is behind the deal. She has issued a bizarre eight-page defence of the deal in which she confessed to being a battered wife and that she felt the spirit of the slain couple in the room with her as she spoke to Simpson.
Given the scale of the backlash, it is no surprise that Regan is feeling the pressure. Murdoch and Fox must have been taken aback at the sheer speed at which the publishing scoop of the century has turned into a potential public relations disaster.
Local TV stations have already been swamped by complaints from the public, prompting many to opt out of showing the interview.
The outrage has spread to the publishing world, where revulsion at the book itself, entitled If I Did It, has already seen some stores start sending it back.
The anger was sharpened by publicity stunts such as the colouring of the 'I Did It' part of the book's title in red, and the fading of the 'If' into a pale white. In California the owner of Brentwood Bookstore, near where the murders took place, has refused to stock it, while the Northern California Independent Booksellers' Association, made up of some 240 bookstores, has emailed its members suggesting cash generated by the book be donated to domestic violence charities. Even some of the biggest media names in Murdoch's own empire have joined the fray, though the cynical might interpret that as a clever media ploy to have one's cake and eat it.
Bill O'Reilly, the conservative and outspoken anchor of a talk show on Fox News, called for a boycott of advertisers who buy ad space during the two-hour long interview. Another Fox star, Geraldo Rivera, famous for his patriotic stance on the war on terror, declared that the Simpson deal was 'appalling' and vowed to oppose it.
The Fox channel has long been a liberal bete noire and the subject of numerous documentaries about its obvious conservative bias. But the Simpson scandal is different, with the sheer involvement of Murdoch's empire striking at the heart of middle America. It was controlled from the start by disparate elements of Murdoch's News Corp empire: ReganBooks is owned by Murdoch's HarperCollins. The interview is to be shown on two separate shows on Murdoch's Fox network, just in time for a vital ratings boost that will set lucrative future advertising rates. And news of the deal was first revealed in the Murdoch-owned New York Post last week.
The New York Daily News, bitter rival to the Post, immediately came out blasting both its editorial barrels at Murdoch and Regan. In an editorial directly addressed to Regan, the newspaper accused her and her boss of making blood money. 'He did it for buckets of bloody bucks, just as you and Murdoch are,' the paper thundered.
But Murdoch is used to media storms. Fox, too, has long revelled in controversial attention. Both have often trusted the old adage that there is no such thing as bad publicity, even when it involves Simpson's hypothetical confession of a murder that was all too real. But if millions of Americans still tune in to watch or buy the book, then Murdoch will have had the last laugh over his critics.
It would not be the first time.
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