I occasionally have cause to wonder if my persuasiveness and clairvoyance are not greater than I realize. Case in point, Rupert Murdoch is a naturalized American. But I’ve argued for years that he seems more hell-bent on doing everything to destroy this country from the inside than Vladimir Putin is on doing so from the outside. Talk about the enemy within …
And so I questioned why this wizard of Trumpism and his like-minded son Lachlan were still welcomed in polite society. Given their manifest efforts to destroy America, I suggested they should be so sued and pilloried, they are forced to seek refuge where their family hails from, down under in Australia – where I suspected their hearts still reside.
I refer you in this regard to such commentaries as “Political Ads: Twitter, Facebook, Fox News: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And Then There’s Google,” November 6, 2019, “Murdochs and the Culture of Misogyny and Racism They Lord Over at Fox News,” July 22, 2020, and “Rupert Murdoch, the Wizard of Trumpism,” January 23, 2021.
The point is, given that, imagine how gratified I felt when I read this in the April 5 edition of the London Daily Mail:
________
Fox Corporation CEO Lachlan Murdoch is rumored to have turned control of the company to its chief legal officer – who is also the godfather of his son – after abruptly moving back to Australia last month. …
On Saturday the Sydney Morning Herald reported that it was the political climate in the US that drove the decision.
The newspaper said the family ‘felt the cold winds of political change’ when Biden assumed power over Donald Trump, after the family-owned Fox News appeared to favor the Republican Party throughout the election campaign.
Things ‘got pretty rough’ for their children … at school. … ‘The school communities here are very close knit, and it extends into the wider families and the circles and parties they all go to. That Hollywood set is very pro-Democratic.
‘They are mostly big fundraisers for Biden, so you can imagine how well it went down when one of their classmates’ dads is at the helm of the biggest anti-Biden machine in the country.’
________
Naturally you feel sympathy for the children in this situation. That is, until you realize their father and grandfather spent over a decade making things far worse for the children of former President Barack Obama.
Imagine how rough it must have gotten for young Sasha and Malia at school – in Washington, D.C. no less. After all, Murdoch had his caged parrots masquerading as reporters and commentators on Fox News squawking birther conspiracies, racist tropes, and political lies about their dad, day in and day out. And you know Sasha and Malia’s friends and frenemies alike were grilling, if not ribbing, them about all of it.
No, iPINIONS says, good riddance to the Murdochs!
Except that my friends Down Under are telling me these muckrakers are no longer welcomed there. So it looks like either Russia or China for them. Ha!
Related commentaries:
wizard of Trumpism… Culture of misogyny and racism…
Legacy Note: With over 5,600 posts spanning 20 years, I am easily the most prolific blogger on the most eclectic array of topics on the web. That makes The iPINIONS Journal an unparalleled archive of informed political and cultural commentary. Visit the ARCHIVES section in the sidebar or search by topic. You won’t find a more consistent, independent voice on world affairs.