THE DUKE ON OUTFOXED
What happened over the last week or so was that The Duke got to
see a bunch of excellent documentaries. On account of the time
required for to allow these mammoth sessions of talking heads,
statistics, information and so on to sink in, I’m only getting
around to yacking about it all right now.
Who knows where the hell to start with it all, so what I had to
do was get a lift to, like, the twenty-fifth floor of some
gothic dwelling of some sort and throw the whole lot of them out
the damn window, and then see what ones hit the ground first.
Turns out it was this number right here, being the number by the
name of Outfoxed – Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism.
Unlike Murdoch, the subject of the documentary in question, The
Duke believes in “fair and balanced” reportage, free of the
noxious stench of opinion, and so the following statement
arrives free of any bias-related baggage on behalf of myself;
Murdoch is a foul motherfucking scum-sack.
Some less ethical writers might wish to add stuff like “And he
also smells of Satan”, or maybe “Most likely, he fucking is
Satan, Satan himself, awash with sulphur and reeking of
corruption”. Far be it from The Duke to endorse these sentiments.
Anyhow, Outfoxed goes to great lengths, via some really rather
wonderful editing and such, to present to us this portrait of a
republican mouthpiece masquerading as a news channel.
Fair And Balanced Man Says: “But dig this, ain’t all ‘publicans
on the channel. Theresa some liberals there, too.”
This is true. I guess we can give them a little leeway since if
you look to the right of the butch, dapper, ever-so-handsome
sons a bitches yacking about stuff like “43 days till Bush is
re-elected”, you can see this skinny cretin sniggering and
trying not to annoy the big boys. Poke him with, I dunno, a mop-
shaft or something and he might say something a bit further to
the centre than these jock motherfuckers around him. Who knows?
On the whole though, far as The Duke can see, Fox News is less
concerned with journalism and reportage and all that hoopla,
than it is with government-line propaganda.
Back in the 30’s and 40’s they used to get folks like John Ford
to go make propaganda films. Go fight the motherfucking war,
motherfuckers, was the thinking, since look, it’s the fella what
did Stagecoach, and he just made a very beautiful film about
why, indeed, you should be flying planes, bombing stuff, coming
home to the little lady unscathed.
What that amounted to, though, was 15 minutes in a cinema before
something more substantial arrived, like maybe one of those
Abbott And Costello flicks, where they maybe meet up with a
bunch of zany Africans. This here, The Duke would reckon, is a
much more effective means of keeping folks thinking what they
should be thinking.
Fair And Balanced Man Says: “But we can turn the motherfucker
off, should we wish not to hear it nor see. We ainta forced to
watch it, and can watch another channel, even though we might
miss something hilarious involving Bill O’Reilly.”
The problem with this theory, let The Duke suggest, is that
Murdoch owns fucking most of what you’re gonna turn to. You pick
up a paper, especially here in the United UK, and chances are
high that you’re gonna see his sleazy Thatcherite grip all over
it. Fling it in the fire and turn on something good, like The
Sci-Fi Channel on Sky, perhaps? Oh, shit…
With the aid of The Moderate Independent, let’s fire up the old
Informatron, shall we? What in the hell might Murdoch own,
anyhow? How about this shit right here;
Adelaide News, Australia
News America Publishing, Inc.
Times Newspaper Holdings, vice president
Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp, co-owner and chairperson
William Collins PLC, Scotland
News Corp, Ltd., Australia
Fox Entertainment Group, CEO
British Sky Broadcasting, UK, chairman
City Post Publishing Corp, chairperson
Cruden Investments, co-owner
News Ltd, Group and Assoc. Companies, Australia
Bemrose Publishing, owner
Bay Books, owner
United Technologies, director
These companies, in turn, preside over this extra shit right
here;
Fox Broadcasting Co. (Fox News, Fox Network, Fox Family, Fox
Sports)
Twentieth Century-Fox TV
Fox Filmed Entertainment movie studio
Over twenty Fox-owned TV stations
FX Cable TV Network
An additional 20+ regional sports outlets
Channel 10 in Sydney, Australia
Channel 10 in Melbourne, Australia
News Group Productions and Skyband in the US
Satellite Television PLC in England
BSkyB, UK (cable and satellite station that reaches all of
Britain)
Star TV, Asia
JSkyB, Japan
SkyLatin America, Telepiu
London Weekend Television (part-owner)
And, again, thanks to The Moderate Independent, here’s just a
handful of the motherfucker’s newspapers;
New York Post
Village Voice
Boston Herald
Chicago Sun-Times
Times, Sunday Times (and associated publications) in London,
England
The News Of The World And Today, UK
Australian, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mirror,
Sunday Sun, News and Sunday Mail, and Sunday Times in Australia
So any the hell way, Outfoxed plays out like a conspiracy
thriller, as indeed it might. Lots of shots of phones and reel-
to-reel recorders whilst some distorted voice tells us about
some heinous shit they had to put up with. Coupled with this are
sundry talking head types who yack on about stuff like the
internal memos suggesting to journalists that maybe what you
want to be reporting is that ludicrous fucking statement made by
Kerry, and forget all about that stuff you were gonna do about
Bush did some wretched thing or other.
The footage from the broadcasts themselves, though, is
priceless. Robert Greenwald previously directed, among other
things, Olivia-Newton John sci-fi vehicle Xanadu, and obviously
learned a thing or two about hard-hitting filmmaking when
working on that particular wonder. He has Michael Moore’s flair
for the cutting-and-pasting, but, thankfully, suffers little
from the self-indulgence that so cripples the final acts of
Bowling For Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11.
Star of the whole damn show, though, is Bill O’
MotherfuckinReilly. Laugh your guts up as he tells interviewees
to shut up, rants on about celebrities not endorsing their
government’s policies, and, in one particularly awe-inspiring
moment, hollers at a kid who lost his father in 9/11, obviously
shocked to the rectum that the upstart doesn’t support the war
on terror. “Shut your mouth!” he spits. If he wasn’t so, y’know,
real, he’d be the coolest motherfucking psycho ever invented.
Give him a slot on Pop Idol, is what The Duke suggests, right
beside that Cowell fella. “You fucking suck you little commie
faggot pinko! Shut your fucking mouth!”
At 75 minutes, Outfoxed doesn’t outstay its welcome, unlike the
subject, who has hung around at least 55 or 56 years longer than
anyone could be bothered with. Curiously, though, Murdoch
himself appears little in the flick. He’s here and there, a
ghost popping up via archive footage scattered about the place,
the name on the top of a list of statistics and such. There’s no
scene where maybe Greenwald goes to his house and corners him,
flinging photos at him and saying “Give me some answers, you son
of a bitch!”
Of course there’s more to the story than Greenwald has time to
relate. One gets the impression that these newscasters are
thrust before the cameras with a gun to their head saying about
“Support the party or die, on account of I’ll shoot you in the
brains.” Noam Chomsky has yacked about how, pretty much, these
folks are free to write and say what they like, it’s just that
they wouldn’t be in a position to do so if they hadn’t proven
that, well, they ain’t gonna say anything the network don’t
approve of.
This is a problem affecting not just Fox News, but mainstream
media in general. As a microcosm of the whole sickening carry-
on, though, as a glance at one sector of a corrupt machine,
Outfoxed is pretty much fantastic. It’s incredibly funny, and
then maddening as hell the next second. And, of course, it has
Bill O’MotherfuckinReilly, and for that we can only be eternally
grateful.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
see a bunch of excellent documentaries. On account of the time
required for to allow these mammoth sessions of talking heads,
statistics, information and so on to sink in, I’m only getting
around to yacking about it all right now.
Who knows where the hell to start with it all, so what I had to
do was get a lift to, like, the twenty-fifth floor of some
gothic dwelling of some sort and throw the whole lot of them out
the damn window, and then see what ones hit the ground first.
Turns out it was this number right here, being the number by the
name of Outfoxed – Rupert Murdoch’s War On Journalism.
Unlike Murdoch, the subject of the documentary in question, The
Duke believes in “fair and balanced” reportage, free of the
noxious stench of opinion, and so the following statement
arrives free of any bias-related baggage on behalf of myself;
Murdoch is a foul motherfucking scum-sack.
Some less ethical writers might wish to add stuff like “And he
also smells of Satan”, or maybe “Most likely, he fucking is
Satan, Satan himself, awash with sulphur and reeking of
corruption”. Far be it from The Duke to endorse these sentiments.
Anyhow, Outfoxed goes to great lengths, via some really rather
wonderful editing and such, to present to us this portrait of a
republican mouthpiece masquerading as a news channel.
Fair And Balanced Man Says: “But dig this, ain’t all ‘publicans
on the channel. Theresa some liberals there, too.”
This is true. I guess we can give them a little leeway since if
you look to the right of the butch, dapper, ever-so-handsome
sons a bitches yacking about stuff like “43 days till Bush is
re-elected”, you can see this skinny cretin sniggering and
trying not to annoy the big boys. Poke him with, I dunno, a mop-
shaft or something and he might say something a bit further to
the centre than these jock motherfuckers around him. Who knows?
On the whole though, far as The Duke can see, Fox News is less
concerned with journalism and reportage and all that hoopla,
than it is with government-line propaganda.
Back in the 30’s and 40’s they used to get folks like John Ford
to go make propaganda films. Go fight the motherfucking war,
motherfuckers, was the thinking, since look, it’s the fella what
did Stagecoach, and he just made a very beautiful film about
why, indeed, you should be flying planes, bombing stuff, coming
home to the little lady unscathed.
What that amounted to, though, was 15 minutes in a cinema before
something more substantial arrived, like maybe one of those
Abbott And Costello flicks, where they maybe meet up with a
bunch of zany Africans. This here, The Duke would reckon, is a
much more effective means of keeping folks thinking what they
should be thinking.
Fair And Balanced Man Says: “But we can turn the motherfucker
off, should we wish not to hear it nor see. We ainta forced to
watch it, and can watch another channel, even though we might
miss something hilarious involving Bill O’Reilly.”
The problem with this theory, let The Duke suggest, is that
Murdoch owns fucking most of what you’re gonna turn to. You pick
up a paper, especially here in the United UK, and chances are
high that you’re gonna see his sleazy Thatcherite grip all over
it. Fling it in the fire and turn on something good, like The
Sci-Fi Channel on Sky, perhaps? Oh, shit…
With the aid of The Moderate Independent, let’s fire up the old
Informatron, shall we? What in the hell might Murdoch own,
anyhow? How about this shit right here;
Adelaide News, Australia
News America Publishing, Inc.
Times Newspaper Holdings, vice president
Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corp, co-owner and chairperson
William Collins PLC, Scotland
News Corp, Ltd., Australia
Fox Entertainment Group, CEO
British Sky Broadcasting, UK, chairman
City Post Publishing Corp, chairperson
Cruden Investments, co-owner
News Ltd, Group and Assoc. Companies, Australia
Bemrose Publishing, owner
Bay Books, owner
United Technologies, director
These companies, in turn, preside over this extra shit right
here;
Fox Broadcasting Co. (Fox News, Fox Network, Fox Family, Fox
Sports)
Twentieth Century-Fox TV
Fox Filmed Entertainment movie studio
Over twenty Fox-owned TV stations
FX Cable TV Network
An additional 20+ regional sports outlets
Channel 10 in Sydney, Australia
Channel 10 in Melbourne, Australia
News Group Productions and Skyband in the US
Satellite Television PLC in England
BSkyB, UK (cable and satellite station that reaches all of
Britain)
Star TV, Asia
JSkyB, Japan
SkyLatin America, Telepiu
London Weekend Television (part-owner)
And, again, thanks to The Moderate Independent, here’s just a
handful of the motherfucker’s newspapers;
New York Post
Village Voice
Boston Herald
Chicago Sun-Times
Times, Sunday Times (and associated publications) in London,
England
The News Of The World And Today, UK
Australian, Daily Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Mirror,
Sunday Sun, News and Sunday Mail, and Sunday Times in Australia
So any the hell way, Outfoxed plays out like a conspiracy
thriller, as indeed it might. Lots of shots of phones and reel-
to-reel recorders whilst some distorted voice tells us about
some heinous shit they had to put up with. Coupled with this are
sundry talking head types who yack on about stuff like the
internal memos suggesting to journalists that maybe what you
want to be reporting is that ludicrous fucking statement made by
Kerry, and forget all about that stuff you were gonna do about
Bush did some wretched thing or other.
The footage from the broadcasts themselves, though, is
priceless. Robert Greenwald previously directed, among other
things, Olivia-Newton John sci-fi vehicle Xanadu, and obviously
learned a thing or two about hard-hitting filmmaking when
working on that particular wonder. He has Michael Moore’s flair
for the cutting-and-pasting, but, thankfully, suffers little
from the self-indulgence that so cripples the final acts of
Bowling For Columbine or Fahrenheit 9/11.
Star of the whole damn show, though, is Bill O’
MotherfuckinReilly. Laugh your guts up as he tells interviewees
to shut up, rants on about celebrities not endorsing their
government’s policies, and, in one particularly awe-inspiring
moment, hollers at a kid who lost his father in 9/11, obviously
shocked to the rectum that the upstart doesn’t support the war
on terror. “Shut your mouth!” he spits. If he wasn’t so, y’know,
real, he’d be the coolest motherfucking psycho ever invented.
Give him a slot on Pop Idol, is what The Duke suggests, right
beside that Cowell fella. “You fucking suck you little commie
faggot pinko! Shut your fucking mouth!”
At 75 minutes, Outfoxed doesn’t outstay its welcome, unlike the
subject, who has hung around at least 55 or 56 years longer than
anyone could be bothered with. Curiously, though, Murdoch
himself appears little in the flick. He’s here and there, a
ghost popping up via archive footage scattered about the place,
the name on the top of a list of statistics and such. There’s no
scene where maybe Greenwald goes to his house and corners him,
flinging photos at him and saying “Give me some answers, you son
of a bitch!”
Of course there’s more to the story than Greenwald has time to
relate. One gets the impression that these newscasters are
thrust before the cameras with a gun to their head saying about
“Support the party or die, on account of I’ll shoot you in the
brains.” Noam Chomsky has yacked about how, pretty much, these
folks are free to write and say what they like, it’s just that
they wouldn’t be in a position to do so if they hadn’t proven
that, well, they ain’t gonna say anything the network don’t
approve of.
This is a problem affecting not just Fox News, but mainstream
media in general. As a microcosm of the whole sickening carry-
on, though, as a glance at one sector of a corrupt machine,
Outfoxed is pretty much fantastic. It’s incredibly funny, and
then maddening as hell the next second. And, of course, it has
Bill O’MotherfuckinReilly, and for that we can only be eternally
grateful.
Thanks folks.
Drop The Duke A Line Via Electronical Email
