When he’s not remotely uploading baby penguin porn on to the
laptops of editors that have upset him, Rupert Murdoch likes to relax by
wearing a specially made ceramic urinal bonnet and having blindfolded
Aboriginal boys piss in his face. All the while, and it’s this specific detail
which brings the media mogul to orgasm, his latest trophy wife (at the time of
writing it’s heartless ex Jagger spunkbin Jerry Hall) needs to softly coo “Time
for Tubby bye bye, Time for Tubby bye bye” at the nonagenarian’s urine-speckled
features.
None of that’s true, of course, but that’s unimportant.
Truth is in the lie of the beholder. And when your goal is world domination,
little things like dignity and people’s feelings are just minor potholes in the
road. The stresses of the megalomaniac
are unknown to us, just as their wealth and power lust seem unimaginable so
their problems must seem exponential too. We may quietly sympathise with the
widow whose husband has died at a football match, or the mother of a missing
child whose deleted voicemails give temporary hope they may yet be found but
what are these worries compared to those of a man in pursuit of a controlling
interest in a news channel that employs Eamonn Holmes? We all neglect things in
personally turbulent times, our families, our appearance, our finances – the truth
is just something we can mend at a later date.
People staring at the front pages of today’s newspapers may
find themselves appalled by the lack of prominence given by Murdoch’s papers to
the decisive verdicts handed out at the Hillsborough inquest yesterday. Some
might say this is a final insult to those dead football fans, crushed as they
were by an incompetent police force in thrall to a right-wing psychopath, and then lied about by a press deeply in love
with the same woman. Perhaps it is easier to see Murdoch and the South
Yorkshire Police Force as rival lovers, both desperately yearning for the
affection of a cold, distant woman. Love makes us do desperate things. It makes
us believe supermodels half our age have genuine affection for our bald,
wobbly, melanoma scarred bodies and not the billions in our account. It makes
us rob pension funds and move our cash into our spouses names when we’ve been
rumbled as a celebrity paedononce. It can even make us campaign for over a
quarter of a century to clear the names of our loved ones when they have been
besmirched by a national media in order to save the necks of Establishment
figures. Love, love, love, love, love. It’s called love and it belongs to us.
All Murdoch has ever been guilty of is love. He craves your
affection. And right now, when he refuses to issue even the slightest mea
culpa, he leaves himself at his most vulnerable. Just as the shamed husband
queues forlornly at the florist so the speckle headed press baron makes Sky
Sports and Movies available to new customers at their lowest ever price. He can’t
tell you how he feels in words. He’s not Julia Roberts, stood before Hugh Grant
asking him to love her. He can’t go near Hugh Grant, not since Leveson. Truth,
well what does it matter when love is at stake.
Don’t boycott his papers, don’t cancel his channels. That’s kicking a man when he’s down, pissing
in his pockets, robbing his money, slandering his name. And we’re better than
that.
