Rupert Murdoch is in a pickle, and the famously abrasive lefty writer Matt Taibbi is loving every minute of it. In a Tuesday article for Rolling Stone, Taibbi portrays Murdoch as “desperate… because he senses his beloved audience of idiots” abandoning Fox News in favor of Donald Trump, “a onetime Fox favorite who is fast becoming the network's archenemy.”
Taibbi argues that Fox News must routinely dumb itself down in order to stay popular; Murdoch and Roger Ailes, he writes, “know they've spent a generation building an audience of morons. Their business model depends on morons; morons are the raw materials of their industry, the way Budweiser is in the hops business…[But] you have to keep upping the ante to make it work. Trump is…going to places now that make even Rupert Murdoch nervous.”
In other words, Murdoch has standards, sort of: “He created a political propaganda network whose next step down was the Third Reich. But he's been careful to never go there, likely not because it's wrong, but because that next step scares advertisers – just ask Glenn Beck.”
From Taibbi’s article, headlined “Rupert Murdoch Is Deviant Scum” (bolding added):
[T]he 2016 presidential race is fast becoming a referendum on [Murdoch]…
The two top candidates in the Republican field are a Fox News contributor [Ben Carson] and a onetime Fox favorite who is fast becoming the network's archenemy: Donald Trump is the fallen angel in the Fox story, a traitor who's trying to tempt away Murdoch's lovingly nurtured stable of idiot viewers by denouncing their favorite "news" network as a false conservative God…
[Last week, Murdoch tweeted:]
"Ben and Candy Carson terrific. What about a real black President who can properly address the racial divide?"
Forget for a minute what Murdoch said. Think about the why.
…Fox News has constantly presented Barack Obama as a mongrel, a kind of Manchurian President, raised in madrassas and weaned on socialism, who hates white people and yearns to euthanize them…
[But] after blasting out this ocean of repulsive, underhanded and frankly racist bilge over the course of years, Murdoch still thought we hadn't got the message that Obama isn't a "real black president"…
Murdoch [has] sold political coverage that could be digested directly by the stomach, bypassing the mind. He fed viewers a steady diet of Southern Strategy bromides about minorities and foreigners and queers and feminists and Sean Penn, all working together to steal the minivan out of Middle America's driveway…
Murdoch's genius is that he always found ways to hit new lows without hitting absolute bottom. He created a political propaganda network whose next step down was the Third Reich. But he's been careful to never go there, likely not because it's wrong, but because that next step scares advertisers – just ask Glenn Beck.
Along comes Trump, who wants not just to cross that invisible line, but race past it…
Now Murdoch has to worry how low he'll have to go to keep his street cred...
[Murdoch and Roger Ailes] know they've spent a generation building an audience of morons. Their business model depends on morons; morons are the raw materials of their industry, the way Budweiser is in the hops business.
[But] you have to keep upping the ante to make it work. Trump is doing his best, but he's going to places now that make even Rupert Murdoch nervous…
I think Rupert Murdoch fired off those desperate tweets last week because he senses his beloved audience of idiots drifting away. They are beginning to suspect the truth about him, i.e. that he isn't really one of them…
Murdoch could go lower to prove his devotion, but that next step down is Trump. If he balks at that, he might lose his audience. Beautiful.
