James Murdoch

In these odd times, what marks somebody out as degenerate?

I’ve just been watching a short Youtube clip at Splitsider, the link for which was supplied by a Slog reader. Whatever you think of Steve Coogan (and having observed him close up once or twice, I’m less than impressed) he rips into ex-Wapping Liar Paul McMullen with a laudable degree of venom. McMullen truly did come across as an ethically muddled zombie…an impression I’m told has been worsened over the years by chasing the dragon on a regular basis. I remain mystified by the knee-jerk Young Right, most of whom are still desperate to see the hounding of Newscorp as some kind of Johann Hari-style dishonest plot. Perhaps they should view this clip – and wait for the rest of the mire to come puking forth from East London before being quite so eccentrically contrarian.

But after the torrent of gross, at times mystifying – and obviously less than half-finished – farty Wapping emissions (they’ve been overtaking the last one before quickly losing out to the next one in terms of malodour all day) I must confess to being snowed, rather than better informed. One is still left feeling that The Big One is yet to emerge; and yet at the same time, reflecting on just what the hell we have become as a culture.

Having watched a procession of celebs, police and politicians throughout the day declaring themselves mortified and dumbstruck by the jolly japes that had been going on inside Wapping, I’m left wanting somebody to be much more honest, and say “Actually, I’m not even slightly surprised by anything the tabloid vermin get up to”. None of it took me unawares, because much of it had crossed my path as gossip and rumour over the last five years. Cruelty has become such an integral part of our society in 2011, it makes a mockery of all the endless pc-bollocks. People get an attack of the vapours because one swears in Latin or says ‘negro’ or ‘foreman’ instead of foreperson. As more and more perfectly inoffensive words become off-limits, so the real life taking place outside the hermetically sealed bourgeois Harmanite brain becomes increasingly brutish and uncaring.

Tabloids like the Sun, Mirror, Star and Mail, of course, feed like demented cannibals on the world that Labour and its fellow-travellers have helped create: infant abuse and murder, paedophile rings, drug wars, reality television victims, ego-drenched celebs, old people neglected in under-funded care homes….on and on the exploitation goes. It was a revolting sight to behold this afternoon as Saint Mili and the Band of Hopers fell over each other to be more sanctimonious than the last crypto-nun. It is as if Tony Blair’s persistent love-bombing of Rupert Murdoch had never happened. Meanwhile, up in the gallery sat the hobgoblin Tom Baldwin, a man who (with a little luck) might also get his own collar felt before all this is over.

But for me, it is all the cynical, twisted and uncaring values personified by Rupert Murdoch that must be banished from Britain. And I’m not talking figuratively: the Slog’s goal is nothing less than the permanent ejection from our Land of every Murdoch business. Let me offer you an example from today as to why I feel this extreme about it.

Having pondered for the last 24 hours as to what the point might be of Murdoch’s visit, at 3.45 pm today I got my answer: to put into action a base corporate ruse – Murdoch himself requesting a delay to the BSkyB bid – in the hope that, public memories being short, early next year the deal might be revived….after everyone incriminated by the scandal has been dumped by the old Cobber – except for him and his son.

That sums up the entire casual degeneracy of Newscorp: sales, power, the destruction of obstacles, then more sales, more power, and monopoly supply until every dumbed-down robot is clicking, clicking and clicking again to read The World According to Newsgarp. Not a second’s thought given to the innocents hacked and sacked: just a copper-headed siren backed, and then some deft footwork his underlings lacked. Dear God, the two of them deserve each other.

It’s a good word is degenerate. It was given a bad name by Hitler (who constantly referred to art, homosexuals, the mentally ill and of course the Jews as degenerate) but the scale of degeneracy demonstrated by every move Murdoch makes somehow rises well above anything. I am sure he is a terribly sad old git, but be it unChristian or not, this is one Born Again Christian I want to see drowning in his own ice-cold blood – and the sooner the better.

However, what many observers may have missed to date is that degenerate is also a word that could be equally well applied to the Chipping Norton set. I know I keep harping back to this, but whatever Cameron is fearful of – and/or whatever life assurance in terms of dirt Brooks has – it’s something that seems to worry Rupe too. I have no real leads in this area at present beyond the now well-worn gossip about white powder. But my water tells me that the common factor is James Murdoch.

Goodnight. And stay tuned.