PREYING ON DISCONTENT

As I watched a replay of Dennis Potter’s last interview, I heard this brilliant journalist and writer speak out about Rupert Murdoch and what he has done do honesty and decency. Potter died of cancer fifteen years ago. In the interview he said he had a name for the cancer that was killing him: Rupert Murdoch.

I am not having a “eureka” moment, when suddenly all becomes clear and I can finally divine what has made Murdoch a media billionaire. It’s not that momentous. Murdoch could not succeed unless the readers and viewers of what he shows on TV and in print had an appetite for it. It is like porn: it survives and thrives because there is a profound public need for it.

It is more than voyeurism. It is more than ignorance or indifference – it is a galvanizing force for discontent. Every politician knows that if you can tap into the discontent of a voter, you will win. In the simplest terms it is called “pressing all the right hot-buttons.”

Enshrined in our psyche is the misbegotten notion that everyone is entitled to an opinion. It may be so, but that does not make the opinion true, or valid, or worthy. Just because you believe devoutly that the Earth is flat does not make it so, nor are you “entitled” to voice that opinion. You can “believe” that crime is rising even though every statistic says it is not – because a political hopeful knows you believe it – even though it is not so!

It would seem finally, that no one, rich or poor, failing or successful, mentally stable or completely wacko, is immune from the appeal of the “hot button.” It is, for example, easier to believe that all politicians are crafty, venal, and duplicitous than to examine them in the bright light of understanding. Knowledge and information are required. You need go no farther than the situation here in Toronto where enough people saw themselves as beleaguered taxpayers whose money was being leaked into a massive “gravy train” that they voted for the man who told them he was “on their side.”

There are enough words in our language to explain the corruption of public morality and civil society. The winning word is still “demagogue.” The political snake-oil salesman who finds that vulnerable spot and presses the winning button. Choice becomes emotional. If not emotional, then somehow pleasing to the senses and the bruised ego. Is computer porn popular because people are deviates? In some cases – yes – but in most cases it is the essence of the cheap thrill and the naughtiness of it all.

What made News of The World the most popular newspaper for about 150 years? It had lots of pictures so you weren’t forced to read. When you did read is was scurrilous, close to libelous, and “naughty.” Peeking in the keyholes of the rich and famous and powerful has always appealed. I have, and so have you, sat with friends in conversation and found yourselves lapping up all the latest gossip.

So is Rupert Murdoch another Idi Amin who came in at the point of a gun? No one forced people to listen to Glen Beck or Anne Porter. No one coerced people into joining the Tea Party movement. No one demanded that you set reason and information aside and swallow huge gulps of lying demagoguery.

Who made Murdoch? Who empowered him? We did.

“The fault Dear Brutus….”