By Dan Kennedy • The press, politics, technology, culture and other passions

Murdoch sends a message. But what is it?

This front page is too weird for me to be sure, but I think Rupe’s sticking up for Obama. Here’s the story.


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6 Comments

  1. Steve

    This front page is too weird for me to be sureAnd we, your loyal readers, are certainly glad to hear it!Either that’s one hell of a patient pig, or one hell of a Photoshopping job! 😉

  2. Dot Lane

    The capacity of Republicans to be either (a) too stupid to understand context or (b) deliberately misunderstand something never ceases to amaze me. John McCain must be so proud of the campaign he is running. But I just had another thought: don’t pigs live in pens? And didn’t McCain live in a box, which is kind of like a pen? That’s what Fred Thompson kept saying anyway and if you can’t trust a mediocre actor for the truth who can you trust? I seem to recall that Vietnamese pot-bellied pigs are kept as pets as well….oh no…the truth is clear: Barack Obama was actually calling John McCain a crossdressing Viet Cong sympathizer!

  3. Steve

    Dot – I choose (c) understand perfectly, but choose to create a storm of false outrage, knowing that the press will eat it up! The Republicans can do this because they control the vast majority of the microphones on radio and cable television, and can count on their press outlets to fan the flames.

  4. acf

    That Murdoch, he sure puts out a classy publication. Something everyone in the writing business can be proud of. I suppose it might be useful to start a fire in the fireplace, what with the night air getting chillier and all. Rupert Murdoch, Pat Purcell’s role model. Where the Boston Herald gets its ideas.

  5. Gerard

    Humm, the actual story seems to be a report of the Obama campaign’s reaction to the reaction.I read the byline as “By GEOFF EARLE and LEONARD GREENE, Post Correspondents” Hard to see where Murdoch himself is requiring this. Perhaps our host has telepathic powers that I’ve missed. If so I’d be glad to know about them.Elsewhere, in more grounded terrain, Tom Beven at RCP asks:===Imagine for a moment if John McCain had used a similar shopworn phrase in reference to Barack Obama’s policies. Suppose he said, “Obama says he’s going to cut your taxes but he’s really going to raise them. My friends, it’s time for some straight talk about taxes, it’s time to call a spade a spade.”Do you think for a second the Joe Kleins, Andrew Sullivans, and Josh Marshalls of the world wouldn’t scream from the rooftops that McCain had used a racial slur against Obama? Of course they would – and they’d scoff at the notion that McCain was somehow unaware of how that phrase would be interpreted. Anyone who tried to argue that McCain was simply using a well known phrase that predated the current presidential race would be tagged as an apologist for racism. Even if McCain hadn’t meant it that way, it wouldn’t matter.===http://time-blog.com/real_clear_politics/2008/09/the_first_and_last_word_on_lip.html

  6. Dot Lane

    Because, of course, a hypothetical situation and the imagined reaction to it proves Obama called Palin a pig or some other damn thing. I wouldn’t call fantasy “more grounded terrain” especially when the writer claims to know how individual people would react, going so far as to know they would “scoff”. Perhaps the writer you quote has telepathic powers that I’ve missed. If so I’d be glad to know about them. Your fantasist can’t even get the construction right. Obama would have to get Deval Patrick and David Patterson posing as the “Obama Truth Squad” on conference calls with reporters to insist McCain called a Obama a spade and did so with racist intent. I highly doubt Obama would parade a group of willing dupes to insist that it was racial, because I don’t know of anyone who seriously claims McCain is a racist, his refusal to support an MLK holiday notwithstanding. Tarring Obama as a sexist is a key part of the McCain strategy however, in a effort to woo female voters. Other than that, the situations are exactly the same.

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