Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Saturday, April 29, 2017

The Murdoch Crime Family

All Don Corleone Rupert Murdoch wanted was for his son Michael Lachlan to go legit and become Senator Corleone a multiplatform media mogul.

But the Murdochs are coming to see that empowering Jabba the Hutt cosplay enthusiast Roger Ailes has led to a potentially bruising series of lawsuits against the toxic workplace that was and is Fox News.  Bill O'Reilly is out and if Sean Hannity isn't a serial workplace harasser, I'd be shocked.

Josh Marshall puts it best:
If you’ve watched Fox for years and you found that it wasn’t a hotbed of sexual harassment, pervasive racist attitudes and a generalized sixty-something faux-bro “alpha” culture, you’d have to think you had been scammed, that the big screen talent were somehow hypocrites and frauds.

How does Fox move past the very real dilemma that its product IS the politics of white guys who are pissed they can't let their id gallivant through the workplace anymore?  How does the slow ascension of the more cosmopolitan sensibilities of James and Lachlan Murdoch change the fundamental nature of Fox News?

Several thoughtful conservatives have noted - in David Frum's words - that "We thought Fox News worked for us and it turns out we worked for Fox News."  You simply do not get Donald Trump without the soaked in fear, rage filled screechings of the Fox News culture.

I think Trump forces a reckoning within Republicans at some point.  If so, Fox could be the conduit, but only if they morph from "Angry Old White Republicans" to "Thoughtful Conservative."

Let's see which way they go.

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