Political pundits around the world are suggesting Rupert Murdoch’s decision to hold a fund-raiser for Sen. Hillary Clinton is reminiscent of the old phrase, “Politics makes strange bedfellows.”
While it may be true that politics makes strange bedfellows, personally I don’t think this alliance between Murdoch and Clinton is strange at all – or unexpected.
I guess it is strange and unexpected if you are among those who deluded themselves into believing Murdoch is a right-wing ideologue and his Fox News Channel is really much of an alternative to CNN and the three major networks I refer to as CBS, ABS and NBS.
Murdoch has never lived up to his billing as a “conservative.” With Fox Entertainment, he is one of the biggest purveyors of pornography in the world. His News Corp. has been characterized by its reliance on sleaze for a generation. There are the nude page 2 girls in his British and Australian tabloids. There’s the filth on his TV network that makes watching even sports programming, with its Viagra ads and constant promotions for prime-time licentiousness, dangerous for children and other innocent living things.
Do I really need to remind Americans that Murdoch sent money to John Kerry and has throughout his career in the U.S. Senate?
This is hardly the record of a “conservative.”
No, a great myth has been created around Murdoch – perhaps because his political preferences may seem more eclectic than other media moguls, who live and die with socialist politicians, whether they have a chance for victory or not.
Murdoch is not today, was not yesterday and will not be tomorrow a freedom fighter. He is a man who has accommodated even the brutes of Beijing for access to that developing market.
A man who can make his peace with the totalitarian fascists in China will have no moral qualms hosting a fund-raiser for Hillary Rodham Clinton.
They are actually quite a pair.
Hillary is indeed an ideologue, but she has learned from her estranged husband the art of sounding mainstream, the art of positioning oneself as a political moderate, the art of … well … lying.
Clinton, as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 will become a chameleon. She will adapt to her surroundings – become whatever her audience wants her to be. She will tell people what they want to hear. If necessary, she will sound more conservative and more traditional in her thinking than her Republican opponents.
None of it, of course, means anything.
It’s all about winning – winning at any cost.
Murdoch, too, is all about winning – in a different arena. While Hillary is an overachiever in politics, Rupert has an inexhaustible appetite for business success. He’s a classic example of the guy who measures life by the standard: “Whoever dies with the most toys wins.”
While Hillary is a true believer who masks her real agenda, Murdoch is a man who really doesn’t care that much about politics at all – a man without real convictions. Ultimately they are two of the most ambitious people alive on the planet. And, if it suits the goal of meeting their own individual personal goals, they will help each other out.
You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.
While Hillary and Rupert are scratching each other’s backs, many people are scratching their heads over this “strange liaison.”
It’s really not so strange. Some people have deluded themselves into believing they have a media champion in Rupert Murdoch. Others have deluded themselves into believing they have a political champion in Hillary Clinton.
The common bond these two share is that they are, indeed, champions – of themselves and their own lustful ambition.
