Last night, Jon Stewart opened the show with coverage of the latest involving Rupert Murdoch and the whole phone hacking scandal, and compared it to what's been going on with Donald Trump.
Come on, Murdoch. If you're not responsible, who is responsible?
7/19/2011:
JIM SHERIDAN: If you're not responsible, who is responsible?
RUPERT MURDOCH: The people that I trusted to run it, and then maybe the people they trusted.
My God, this scandal goes all the way to the bottom! The buck stops.... (points down below the desk)
But now Parliament has opened a second inquiry. And this time, into whether Rupert Murdoch used his media entities to improperly influence the British government, and once again, Murdoch had his unaccountability moment.
4/26/2012:
RUPERT MURDOCH: I want to put it to bed, once and for all, that that is a complete myth.
ROBERT JAY, LEVESON INQUIRY LEAD COUNSEL: Sorry, what's the myth, Mr. Murdoch?
RUPERT MURDOCH: That I used the influence of The Sun or their supposed political power to get favorable treatment.
Now when you say that you never used influence to get favorable treatment is a myth, do you mean that as in it's a fanciful way of explaining things that are hard to explain, or that it's a story about how grotesquely powerful beings assume various forms to fuck mortals?
By the way, that's Zeus, coming down in the form of swan to have sex with a mortal woman. Story's apparently how peaches ended up with fuzz, mythology's a very... I dunno.
Come on, Rupert Murdoch! Don't shit on my chest and tell me it's Vegemite! According to various reports, Murdoch had been a frequent visitor and visitee of British Prime Ministers, wishing to thank him for his support for a long long time. While coincidentally in 1981, two years into Margaret Thatcher's first term, Murdoch was allowed to circumvent monopoly rules to buy two more papers. In 1990, those same rules were waived again for his BSkyB satellite TV purchase. In 1998, Murdoch asked Prime Minister Blair to squash a European competition commission investigation that would further delay another of his broadcast projects. In 2003 (catches his breath), Blair allegedly added a last-minute clause to a bill that allowed newspaper owners to also purchase terrestrial television stations. The clause is referred to, for reasons that are apparently unclear to the chairman of NewsCorp, as the Murdoch Clause.
Video and full transcript below the fold.
Tonight, we begin overseas where Australian Rupert Murdoch, known as Yahoo Extremely Serious, finds himself still in a spot of trouble in Great Britain, simply because several of his newspapers hacked the phones of celebrities, politicians, a 13-year-old murder victim, and the relatives of some killed in action British soldiers, and allegedly bribed Scotland Yard detectives to help with the cover-up. I could go on, but I know many of you are probably eating in the next 24 hours.
But of course, Mr. Murdoch has already answered for those crimes against decency last July.
7/19/2011:
JIM SHERIDAN: Mr. Murdoch, do you accept that ultimately, you are responsible for this whole fiasco?
RUPERT MURDOCH: No.
"OK, well, that's a wrap, people. Clear the chamber, the House of Commons Subcommission on the Regulation of Muffin Nooks vis-à-vis Its Crannies has the room at 14 o'clock. I said, good day."
Come on, Murdoch. If you're not responsible, who is responsible?
7/19/2011:
JIM SHERIDAN: If you're not responsible, who is responsible?
RUPERT MURDOCH: The people that I trusted to run it, and then maybe the people they trusted.
My God, this scandal goes all the way to the bottom! The buck stops.... (points down below the desk)
But now Parliament has opened a second inquiry. And this time, into whether Rupert Murdoch used his media entities to improperly influence the British government, and once again, Murdoch had his unaccountability moment.
4/26/2012:
RUPERT MURDOCH: I want to put it to bed, once and for all, that that is a complete myth.
ROBERT JAY, LEVESON INQUIRY LEAD COUNSEL: Sorry, what's the myth, Mr. Murdoch?
RUPERT MURDOCH: That I used the influence of The Sun or their supposed political power to get favorable treatment.
Now when you say that you never used influence to get favorable treatment is a myth, do you mean that as in it's a fanciful way of explaining things that are hard to explain, or that it's a story about how grotesquely powerful beings assume various forms to fuck mortals?
By the way, that's Zeus, coming down in the form of swan to have sex with a mortal woman. Story's apparently how peaches ended up with fuzz, mythology's a very... I dunno.
Come on, Rupert Murdoch! Don't shit on my chest and tell me it's Vegemite! According to various reports, Murdoch had been a frequent visitor and visitee of British Prime Ministers, wishing to thank him for his support for a long long time. While coincidentally in 1981, two years into Margaret Thatcher's first term, Murdoch was allowed to circumvent monopoly rules to buy two more papers. In 1990, those same rules were waived again for his BSkyB satellite TV purchase. In 1998, Murdoch asked Prime Minister Blair to squash a European competition commission investigation that would further delay another of his broadcast projects. In 2003 (catches his breath), Blair allegedly added a last-minute clause to a bill that allowed newspaper owners to also purchase terrestrial television stations. The clause is referred to, for reasons that are apparently unclear to the chairman of NewsCorp, as the Murdoch Clause.
Of course, I do notice there's no David Cameron involvement. Perhaps the current Prime Minister alone was able to withstand the Australian's innocent charms.
4/26/2012:
ROBERT JAY, LEVESON INQUIRY LEAD COUNSEL: Mr. Cameron, flying out to Santorini in your yacht. ... You have no recollection of that, do you?
RUPERT MURDOCH: It's coming back to me vaguely. Actually, I checked it with my daughter, because he was being flown, I believe, by my son-in-law's plane, on his way to holiday in Turkey, and he did stop in Santorini. And she says that I in fact met him on her boat. But it doesn't matter, there were a couple of boats together.
"I mean, the size of these boats, mate, I mean, they're enormous, these boats. I can't be expected to know the whereabouts of every Prime Minister in my fleet."
By the way, not for nothing, not only did Cameron meet with Murdoch, Cameron had to go to him. And his only way in and out of the meeting? Murdoch's son-in-law's plane. Over in the States, we're not allowed to give Congresspeople t-shirts and hats, and our country's corrupt as shit!
But all right, fine. Let's say Rupert Murdoch enjoyed a healthy series of friendships with Prime Ministers of Britain for the last 35 years, while also coincidentally passively enjoying the fruits of the relaxing of media ownership rules overseen by his shipmates. So what? Right place, right time.
What evidence do you have that if you went against Murdoch, someone from one of his properties would completely fuck you with his Zeus swan dick? Yes, you, Chris Bryant, Labour Member of Parliament.
3/27/3012:
LOWELL BERGMAN, PBS FRONTLINE: Labour Member of Parliament Chris Bryant ... he got Rebekah Brooks, then editor of The Sun, to make an astonishing admission.
MP CHRIS BRYANT: Do either of your newspapers ever use private detectives, ever bug, or pay the police?
REBEKAH BROOKS: We have paid the police for information in the past.
MP CHRIS BRYANT: Six months later, those two newspapers did me over, good and proper. They hacked my phone, and they ran some pretty hideous stories about my sexuality.
I'm completely fucked!!
So Rupert Murdoch's defense appears to be, I'm no evil genius Randolph Hearst-type figure. I'm like the Australian Mr. Magoo! I don't know what the hell.... I'm like the Kangagoo, if you will. Completely hands-off guy. Just ask my staff at that paper I bought a while ago, oh what's the name of that... the Wall Street Journal.
NEIL CAVUTO (12/13/2007): You have been busy meeting with a lot of Dow Jones folks, Journal folks, Barron's folks, editors. You've gone, I think, to printing press in East Brunswick, New Jersey. They were impressed with how well you knew the details, the most minute details of the operation.
Someone just got their phones tapped!
I gotta give it up for Rupert. He's a guy with total influence, and he's all self-deprecation. He's deflecting with Vinny the Chin-type perfection.
Jon also covered the
Democratic shenanigans in North Carolina, from the John Edwards trial to the ousting of the state Democratic Party chairman for possible sexual harassment.
Meanwhile, Stephen covered the
various panders Obama and Romney are now doing for the general election.
He then updated us on the latest with
Colbert Super PAC, along with its first clue for the college edition.
Jon had on journalist
Robert Draper, who has a new book out,
Do Not Ask What Good We Do, about the Congressional Republicans after Obama took office, and Stephen had on musician
Jack White, who performed
"Freedom at 21".