[quote=“MikeN”]Though I did appreciate his pointing out in the first episode that leftists were motivated by idealism, and hence the natural enemies of Soviet Communism, while conservatives were ratfucks who would sell out their country for money or power.
Does the name Rupert Murdoch ring a bell?[/quote]
SURE DOES! One of my favorite posts ever comes to mind…
[quote=“Vay”]Take for example Rupert Murdoch, the gadjillionaire owner of the Fox Network, Readers’ Digest, the LA Dodgers, 20th Century Fox, TV Guide, the New York Post, and a whole slew of TV stations.
Well, Murdoch, a bigtime Commie-hater, started beaming anti-CCP propoganda into China via Star TV. At that time, he made the observation that “advances in the technology of tele-communications have proved an umambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.” Very noble.
However, China, which happens to have a totalitarian regime and didn’t like being threatened in this manner, retaliated by banning satelite dishes. Did Murdoch, knowing he’s already richer than many countries, take the “moral high road” and tell China to piss off?
Nah… that would’ve been too uncompromising, too Paul Wellstone of him! Instead, he resigned himself to the unpleasant reality and assumed a let-us-say slightly pro-totalitarian stance. He told his detractors, “The truth is - and we Americans don’t like to admit it - that authoritarian societies can work.” Bye bye principles, hello satellite dishes in China.
Just to show there were no hard feelings, Murdoch even took the BBC off his network. (The BBC had shown students being mowed down by tanks in Tiananmen.) He then launched a million-dollar joint venture with the People’s Daily, producing “Chinabyte”, an online news service that brought CCP propoganda into the 21st century.
Well, hmmm…is it just me, or does that sound ammoralistic and relativistic to you? FOR THE LOVE of GOD, Murdoch, owner of the Fox Network, must be a LIBERAL!!! Well, no, maybe those ‘-istics’ don’t exactly pin his behavior down. Maybe “crassly materialistic” would be more precise.
But do you see how closely that adjective relates to the others listed above? (IE, being ammoralistic and relativistic were, and generally are, a means to the end of being crassly materialistic, whereas being principaled and uncompromising would’ve been a means to losing contracts in the world’s largest potential media market…and perhaps being called ‘tiresomely theatrical’ by Fred Smith!)
And how exactly opposite to ‘ammoralism, relativism, and crass materialism’ are the principles that Liberals like Paul Wellstone represent. What do they represent? In a nutshell, here it is, in Wellstone’s words: “Politics is not about power. Politics is not about money. Politics is
not about winning for the sake of winning. Politics is about the improvement of people’s lives.”[/quote]