US President Joe Biden offended all notions of diplomatic sense and sensibility last month when he called Russian President Vladimir Putin murderous and Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch dangerous.
I found his candor – in calling a spade a spade on the world stage – refreshing and encouraging in equal measure. But perhaps it just reflected the freedom and wisdom that come with old age.
Murderous Putin
Speaking at the annual Friends of Ireland Luncheon on St. Patrick’s Day at Capitol Hill, Biden said Putin is ‘a murderous dictator, a pure thug who is waging an immoral war against the people of Ukraine.’
(CNN, March 17, 2022)
But it appears Biden gave license to other world leaders to dispense with diplomatic niceties. Because, since then, many of them have been calling out Putin in similar fashion, so much so that Biden is now following their lead.
President Biden on Monday joined the chorus of world leaders who have said reports of mass killings in the Kyiv suburb of Bucha constituted a ‘war crime,’ vowing to hold Russian President Vladimir Putin ‘accountable’ for the apparent atrocities in Ukraine.
The president’s remarks bolstered the global furor over gruesome images from Bucha that showed mass graves and bodies strewn in the streets — some with hands tied behind their backs, several with gunshot wounds in the head — following the withdrawal of Russian troops from the region.
(The Washington Post, April 4, 2022)
And bear in mind, these “gruesome images from Bucha” will appear sanitized compared with those that will come from Mariupol and other cities when Ukrainians finally force the Russians to end their genocidal siege.
But I fear it will take a revolution to hold Putin accountable. Even so, as a matter of principle, he must be charged. Because, given the war crimes Putin’s Pootzis are committing, they make Hitler’s Nazis look like choir boys …
Meanwhile, Putin’s state-sponsored doping program to cheat at the Olympics had already made Russians international pariahs. But the genocidal war crimes he’s lording over in Ukraine will cause Putin’s willing executioners – with their Z swastikas – to be treated like skunks everywhere they go for generations to come. So here’s to them enjoying life in their North Korean-style dystopian kingdom.
But I warned it would be thus – beginning over 15 years ago in “Putinization: President Putin Reforming Russia in His Own Image,” March 25, 2005. And, since then, I’ve had far too many occasions to say, I told you so, including in a series of commentaries just this year, most notably “Putin Humiliates Russia Spy Chief,” February 23, 2022.
Dangerous Murdoch
In a forthcoming book, a pair of New York Times reporters and CNN political analysts report that President Joe Biden ‘assessed’ Fox News ‘as one of the most destructive forces in the United States.’
According to the book, Biden told an unnamed associate in mid-2021 that Murdoch was ‘the most dangerous man in the world.’ …
The book describes Fox as a ‘torrent of anti-Biden programming, stoking skepticism about vaccines and disseminating wild conspiracy theories about the January 6 attack.’
(CNN, April 3, 2022)
Biden is right, of course. Because, despite all the dystopian maladies Fox News has already wrought, Murdoch is doubling down.
Again, this Aussie interloper seems as hell-bent on destroying America from the inside as Vladimir Putin is on doing so from the outside. And, with Tucker Carlson on Fox News feeding viewers far more palatable lies and conspiracies on a nightly basis, all he needs is a Trump with brains, like Ron DeSantis of Yale BA and Harvard Law, in the White House doing his bidding to consummate the destruction he so devoutly wishes for America…
As it happens, though, I preempted Biden calling out Murdoch just as I did him calling out Putin. Here, for example is what I wrote in this respect in “Political Ads: Twitter, Facebook, Fox News: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. And Then There’s Google,” November 6, 2019:
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Rupert Murdoch can fix all that is wrong with Fox News with one phone call. Yet he seems perfectly content to preside over a propaganda machine that would shock even Joseph Goebbels with awe. But it betrays the conspiracy among media honchos that other networks go after everyone at Fox except that old fox himself.
So here’s to mainstream and social media pillorying Murdoch mercilessly for acting as Trump’s willing propagandist. It’s bad enough that his Fox News makes Putin’s RT worthy of comparisons with the BBC.
But, his anchors present propaganda with such religious conviction, their gullible viewers can be forgiven for accepting it as coming from Cronkite’s mouth to their ears. And don’t get me started on all the captains of industry who blithely associate with Murdoch, when they should be treating this Trumpian Goebbels like a pariah.
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I continued in this vein a couple years later in commentaries like “Treated Like Pariahs in America, Fox-News Murdochs Flee to Australia,” April 8, 2021, and in online comments like the following to a report in The Washington Post on how Fox News is spreading Russian propaganda, on October 28, 2021:
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Folks, Tucker, like Trump, is just a performing monkey. Feed him a few headlines, which are like ripe bananas, and he goes off. But both are just useful idiots for the Murdochs. And these Aussie interlopers seem more hell-bent on destroying America from the inside than Vladimir Putin is on doing so from the outside.
Thank God Rupert, the wizard of Trumpism, and his like-minded son Lachlan are finally being pilloried and sued. Perhaps you’ve read about them fleeing for refuge where their family hails from, Down Under – where I suspect their hearts still reside. So Tucker (that little f**ker) will do his gaslighting shtick. But don’t lose sight of the fact that the Murdochs are the real enemies of the state. So boycott everything they own – from Fox News to the WSJ.
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Sure enough, after sowing divisions they clearly hope will lead inexorably to the destruction of America, nobody should be surprised that the Murdochs are fleeing the United States:
Media heir Lachlan Murdoch has dropped a cool $30 million on a new 43-metre motor yacht that will soon be docked in Sydney Harbour. …
The new comes amid reports Lachlan and his wife Sarah, 49, along with their three children – sons Kalan Alexander, 17, Aidan Patrick, 15, and daughter Aerin Elisabeth, 11 – are in Australia to stay. …
The family, who are based in their Bellevue Hill compound, have settled in to life in Sydney after Sarah was seen at the Royal Easter Show in Olympic Park with their children.
The publication also confirmed that the Murdoch kids are enrolled in Sydney schools.
(The Daily Mail, April 2, 2022)
I delineated why Murdoch has been the “most dangerous man in the world” in podcast episode, “Rupert Murdoch, His Fox News, and the Poisoning of America,” December 5, 2021.
Related commentaries:
Putinization… Putin spy chief…
Murdoch… pariahs… poisoning of America…
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