Bill O'Reilly: Arrogance & Sleaze

Remember Bill "The Mouth" O'Reilly? It turns out that he's gotten mixed up in a scandal straight out of Danielle Steele. It turns out that he his wife, Maureen, was having an affair with a Nassau County Police Detective. It then turns out that O'Reilly tried to pull some strings with the Nassau county PD to retaliate against the Detective. It's all preliminary but just think about the implications? It seems that O'Reilly's status as an "opinion maker" makes him think he's either above the law, or that he can use it to his advantage.

The Plot Thickens and Sickens

New revelations keep appearing in the Murdoch scandals. Indications are that the Murdochs might have known about the phone hacking that was going on, in spite of their denials. Murdoch might have thought that all he had to do was throw underlings Coulson and Brooks to the dogs, but the scandal refuses to go away.

The thing about Murdoch is that he came to prominence proffering a phony populism. He made a big show of taking on the "establishment;" politicians, celebrities, the royal family. In reality, though, he was trying to gain influence with that very same establishment. The fakery went both ways of course. Conservatives who are constantly yammering about "values" and "principles" hitched their wagons to Rupert Murdoch, who has neither values nor principles.

The End of Murdoch?

The phone hacking scandal in the UK which forced the Murdochs to shut down the tabloid The News of the World is a blow to the Murdochs, though much of the rest of their media empire appears safe for now. Their appears to be much public revulsion in the UK into how some Murdock staffers engaged in phone hacking; celebrities, politicians, members of the royal family, and even crime victims. These activities certainly are hard to justify.

The deeper problem is that of media monopolies, like that which Rupert Murdoch has created in the UK and US, and how he has used it to push a right-wing agenda. Even worse would be a situation like that in Italy, where Silvio Berlusconi bought up all the country's tv networks, and then took over the country. In order to preven this kind of thing from happening, we need to allow greater public access to media, and prevent big concentrations of ownership.

Who Are These People?

Over the past 20 years or so the political discourse has come to be dominated by "pundits." Now the term pundit which is of Hindi origin, is supposed to be an expert. The thing is though that many of the so-called pundits put forth by the media hardly fit the bill. We have washed up disc jockeys-- Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck -- or empty headed nitwits like Christine O'Donnell. Then there are media hacks like Mark Halperin.

MSNBC recently suspended Halperin after he called the President a "dick." What interesting choice of language! What a display of wit and wisdom! These are the people who have come to dominate the political discourse, the ones who get to decide not only what is discussed but also what people think. These people shouldn't be called pundits but more like sock puppets.

Who's Fooling Whom?

I don't like the way that tabloid celebrity sleaze is trying to nudge its way into the public discourse. But the revelation that Arnold Schwarzenegger impregnated his former housekeeper is too egregious to ignore. It's sounds peculiar that Schwarzenegger was able to do such a thing and cover it up for more than a decade. All the while John Edwards indiscretion was splashed over the media ( and Edwards is now facing criminal charges on top of that.) It must be that media bias would allow a right wing politician to cover up his philandering. In fact allegations of Schwarzenegger's sexual aggressiveness having circulating for years. Then why didn't anybody bother to look int them? So much for the media having a "liberal" bias.