Culture Wars

The terrible hypocrisy being daily enacted regarding the News Corp scandal underscores the venom people on the left of politics seem to hold in their hearts. Do we truly believe that conservatives are the sole purveyors of antics such as as hacking and bribery...I think not, and as despicable as these things are they are a part of human history. The issues need to be addressed, punished and moved on with but what we see is the Left making a meal of it. I think they should be circumspect because there is evidence emerging that shows such practices being rather widespread, perhaps even impacting on these holier-than-thou apostates.
As C.S. Lewis once wrote about, we ridicule honour and courage then gasp with amazement when people evidence dishonourable and cowardly behaviour. Or as Lewis so imaginatively put it; We castrate the stallion then bid the gelding procreate.
Another English writer Melanie Phillips has this to say about the very personal attacks on Rupert Murdoch:

 No, the real reason is that for the past three decades the Left has been desperate to bring Murdoch down. For such people, he is a hate figure of diabolical proportions. The venom and hysteria he inspires are truly irrational.

He ignites passions far more incendiary than are generated by any tyrant or war criminal. Indeed, to them the Left turns a blind eye, while treating Murdoch as if he dismembers babies before breakfast.

Why?

...Murdoch’s real crime in the eyes of the Left-wing intelligentsia is simply that he has stood in the way of their total capture of the culture.

The dominance of Left-wing ideas has been such that even among so-called conservatives many of them have become accepted as mainstream. And one of the most powerful architects of that shift has been the BBC.

The same thing is rampant in Australia and we are deeply involved in a culture war.

UPDATE
From the Wall street Journal:

The British politicians now bemoaning media influence over politics are also the same statesmen who have long coveted media support. The idea that the BBC and the Guardian newspaper aren’t attempting to influence public affairs, and don’t skew their coverage to do so, can’t stand a day’s scrutiny. The overnight turn toward righteous independence recalls an eternal truth: Never trust a politician…

We also trust that readers can see through the commercial and ideological motives of our competitor-critics. The Schadenfreude is so thick you can’t cut it with a chainsaw. Especially redolent are lectures about journalistic standards from publications that give Julian Assange and WikiLeaks their moral imprimatur.

The biggest problem that stems from this debacle is that ordinary people are now less inclined than ever to trust what journalists have to say, which makes the dissemination of accurate information even more difficult.
It reminds me of living in South Africa where no one knew what was going on, what was true or what was about to happen...a perfect recipe for totalitarianist rule.

UPDATE 22.7.11
As I mentioned earlier in this piece the hypocrits had better be careful lest their diatribe turns around to bite them on the bum...see this piece from Tim Blair:

A former Daily Mirror reporter adds his old paper to the News of the World phone disgrace:

James Hipwell, 45, told The Australian Online he saw show business reporters on the Daily Mirror regularly intercept voicemail messages when he worked there from 1998 to 2000.
Hipwell is the only Fleet Street whistleblower who is offering to go on the record with accounts of voicemail hacking at newspapers other than the News of the World, which was closed down by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation two weeks ago.
“I know that for one simple reason: I used to see it going on around me all the time when I worked at the Daily Mirror,” he said ...

The paper denies the accusation. It should be noted that Hipwell himself spent time in prison for market rigging via a Mirror business column. Others point to a stablemate:

The New York Times yesterday reported that five former journalists at the Mirror’s stablemate The People had said that they regularly witnessed hacking in that newsroom in the late 1990s to early 2000, but they spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“I don’t think anyone quite realised the criminality of it,” said one of the unnamed former reporters at The People.

The judicial inquiry into all of this is going to be spectacular.

Will the lame stream media run this as much as they have the Murdoch attack...I suspect not.