The Day They Got Rupert in a Headlock.

The Day They Got Rupert in a Headlock.

This is not just about Rupert. It is about how things can change. Having lived in Adelaide and hence Rupert Land all my life, I have been pursued for much of that time by the feeling that an ossified, relentless, ruthless machine has been pounding away at my city, my country and indeed my world for most of that time. It has unseated some governments, made others and destroyed much of the cultural and political ecosystem in its wake. Once respected newspapers are now mainly fit to wrap hot, greasy chips.

I remember writing a song which contained a mock Rupertian headline, along the lines of ‘Margaret Thatcher and Boy Scout Troop in Nude Mud Wrestling Fight’. It sums up the almost forgotten ‘Dirty Digger’ sobriquet bestowed upon Rupert in London when he became the publisher of the Sun newspaper, renowned for its page 3 girls, if nothing else. 

Yet it was precisely that taste for prurience in the British public which made Rupert the man and power he is, or was. Ten million people were reading or ogling the News of The World. A ‘celebrity obsessed’ army of willing recipients of highly skewed political and cultural propaganda, had details of the private lives of others delivered to the doorstep. This was a newsprint version of Rupert’s Fox TV Network in the US. Rupert’s formula seemed secure and his audience and their nominal political representatives docile and obedient to his whims. If not, he had the connections and the power and the evidence to keep them in line.

It is obvious to anyone who cares to consider the issue, that having a huge worldwide media empire brings the power to rearrange the rules and the pieces in whichever game you are playing. The elites played along, again and again, and Rupert was able to play their own privilege and aloofness from the masses against them. The ‘Cate Blanchett’ effect at work. “How dare you, who we the masses have made wealthy dare suggest that we might be in need of a bit of action on climate change?”

I don’t mean elites in the way that Rupert would. He would regard, or at least depict anybody articulate enough to oppose him as representative of a snobbish, bookish elite. How often he has silenced such critics by means beyond vitriol remains to be seen. Now that the cat is out of the bag, the vicar defrocked, what will we see?

I might also mention the brave and eloquent rebuttal of Rupert and his ways that Hugh Grant provided, a spunky effort from a man who has risen several rungs up the ladder of admirable people in my estimation. This was another signpost for the importance of the social and political bravery that elites often used to feel obliged to display, as an integral part of their responsibility to the world which made and supported them. Indeed it has been remarked that one of the greatest effects of the Rupertisation and hence Bushisation of US society, was the separation of the condition and concerns of the elites from those of the masses. Tax cuts for the rich and elite and gated  communities lead to social disconnection. The Doctors and lawyers and public figures who even know what it is to be poor or discriminated against are consigned to irrelevance in the scramble for a successful career and its emoluments. The elites are assured that their wealth will trickle down and the dispossessed are left in the dust.

Rupert is responsible for much of the popularity of such tax cuts and hence the self fulfilling dreams of an arrogant cabal of the rich and influential. He campaigned for years over the issue of tax cuts and smaller government in the only national paper The Australian. This paper is  his one real claim to fame as an innovative publisher, but a terrible example of what power is bestowed upon those who use their influence to feather their own nests, and those of the already too fat, too bloated and too powerful, at the expense of the dispossessed.

Yet it was not the fate of the elites which rattled Rupert’s cage and threatens his empire and his influence, if he has any left. It was the revelation of the tampering with the phone records of missing, murdered young girls in England in 2002 that toppled the edifice of Rupert’s omnipotence.

This outraged the very elements of the mass audience that also made Rupert’s message appealing. The hate campaign against Elton John that Rupert once mounted through the Sun was OK because ‘every mother wants a son like Elton”. He could be forgiven because he was ‘our’ deviant, cocaine ridden personality and he was a friend of Princess Diana. In much the same way that people often relax their prejudices with regard to a friend or neighbour, the whole News of The World stance could be laughed off as harmless gawking. This basic sense of humour also provided a delivery vehicle for the rest of Rupert’s muck into the cultural and political life of Britain. Yet the same decency that admitted the poison also helped purge it. The readership was outraged and the same basic decency which allowed them to let Rupert into their homes and minds, despite his grubby feet, made them say ’enough is enough’. 

The realisation that the masses of readers of the News of the World would shun their erstwhile master and his predigested fodder came like a sign from the heavens. Advertisers withdrew to their bunkers, denying they ever even heard of Rupert and his evil ways. They and other elite rats desert ships faster and in better company than the rest. Thus, I expect we will see something like the scenarios in Imperial Rome when those about to be murdered by the whim of an Emperor would be shunned as if the smell of death already hung around them. I mean no intimation of Rupert’s mortality, rather I see a massive diminution of his influence and the power that comes with it, the power to shape governments and policies and achieve outcomes which benefit Rupert and his wealthy and powerful friends.

As an inhabitant of Rupert Land I wonder what the outcome of current ructions will be. I have a vision of the empire forced back on its roots, to a place where being a bully can still get some traction and politicians have been known to behave like golden sheep, being mustered into the corner of any paddock Rupert has cared to designate. In my home town, where it all began, with an afternoon tabloid newspaper, there is now only one daily , the Advertiser, once amongst the best of Australian morning papers, now utterly ignorable. In the newsrooms and throughout the local media linger people who worked for Rupert, and imbibed his version of journalism and the ways of the world at his knee. If BBC journalists can still ramble on as if there is even a question about the lack of ethics rampant throughout the News empire, then one still wonders whether even Rupert’s transgressions will be eventually forgotten and forgiven as ‘yesterday’s news’. However , even the heart of Rupert Land may have grown less auspicious. If even the craven British political class has raised its head and dared stare Rupert down, will his former homeland and his horde of acolytes and sycophants still respond to its master’s voice?

Rupert is renowned for coming back from the brink. I am sure an army of strategists awaits his every directive as I write. However, he may not be able to strategise, bully or influence peddle his way out of the current scenario. The world appears to have news for Rupert and maybe some of what is bad news for him is good news for us all.