Rupert Murdoch Hates America

There are two theories about Rupert Murdoch: 1) that he doesn't really care about anything except money and he discovered that catering to the lowest common denominator (nudity on the cover of newspapers, etc.) is the most efficient way to use the media to make money (this is Rupert as 20th/21st century Elmer Gantry, with rightwing romanticism a substitute for a less political evangelicalism), and 2) that the former political Marxist Rupert is still alive and well in the older, meaner Rupert and that he is using his vast media empire to get revenge on the evil empire (USA), including by unleashing the Fox News (sic) Network to act as a sort of media cancer inside the belly of the beast, sowing division, pushing American politics to the extreme right and thus alienating the rest of the planet, exposing the worst about American society in an effort to isolate America (Rupert as the Manchurian media mogul). Either way, Rupert is making a ton of money (after having avoided bankruptcy only because of having friends in high places and bankers scared to call in their loans for fear their own foolishness/misfeasance would become an issue), has reshaped the American media (even CNN, which was already pretty darned conservative, has turned more to the right, abandoning its pretense of objectivity and the FCC is essentially a subsidiary of Newscorp) and political landscape, and played a pivotal (king making) role in the U.S. presidential election (Karl Rove owes him big time). As they say, nothing will ever be the same again. Thanks, Rupert.

In another sense, Rupert is just another general in the two pronged assault on modernity. He is leading the media forces in the romanticist wave against modernity, while the post-modernists come at the common opponent from the other direction. Fox News and post-modern critics of the media both assault the notion of objectivity and expose the underlying ideological content of all media representations. The notion of objectivity was fundamental to American journalism and the effectiveness of American propaganda. By attacking this notion of objectivity, the romanticists and post-modernists come together in tearing down the edifice of American propaganda, emasculating the propaganda machinery that has played a critical role in promoting the notion of the United States as ideal (near paradise) society. American media and politics now appears to be just as corrupt, undemocratic, and captive to economic elites and religious hardliners/bigots (ultimately therefore hypocritical) as that of many Second and Third World countries.