It has just come to my notice, following reports of the News Corporation annual general meeting in New York, that I have something in common with Rupert Murdoch.
We are both codgers – a delightful term usually adopted affectionately, to refer to an eccentric but amusing old man, not to be confused with an old duffer referring to an incompetent or stupid older person and occasionally directed at Rupert Murdoch.
Last year I was having my annual competency test to retain my driver’s licence which involves a very patient nursing person asking trivial questions to ascertain if you have all your marbles or at least some of them and having you gaze at a distant chart of wiggly alphabetical characters to determine the extent of your failing vision.
This was taking place in August last year and the simple questions included today’s date, my own date of birth, what season it was and the curly one: who is the current prime minister? This was at a time when Malcolm Turnbull was the prime minister with the overwhelming and vocal – albeit brief – support of his party, having just won a challenge from Peter Dutton 48 to 35: somewhat decisive you may think. But then the people’s favourite Peter [call me spud] Dutton had another urge to have a go as he evidently thought there may have been a miscount or that members of the party may have not understood what they were voting for – even the suggestion of voting instructions in Mandarin Chinese [a favourite ploy of the Liberal party] may have added to the confusion. So Pete again put himself forward and once again got trounced. In desperation the Liberal party, faced with the worrying prospect of a new leader in the form of a woman [Juie Bishop] making the cut, reached out to a man who we are told wasn’t even in the race and who staunchly supported Turnbull. A man who would become known as Scomo sounding more like a cleaning product for shower screens than a prime minister, who grinned a lot and who has a habit of saying ‘how good is that’ whenever there is a lapse in conversation.
So back at the surgery with the nurse looking at me expectantly for an answer, I told her that I wasn’t sure who the prime minister was right now and this had little to do with the onset of dementia and more the political state of the nation. She insisted on a response so, glancing at my watch, I told her I thought it was Malcolm Turnbull and waited for her reaction. As she was also of a certain age and probably didn’t follow politics closely, she accepted my answer. I then told her that it’s complicated and to demonstrate that I was a modern age ‘wake’ – whatever that means – codger I briefed her on the shenanigans going on in the Liberal party : she duly awarded me a pass and I toddled off to see if I could remember where I had parked my car : just as well they have those little buttons on your car key, you just hit the unlocked padlock symbol and bingo your car responds with a flash of lights as if to say ‘over here you silly old bugger’!
At the News, AGM Rupert was thrown a curveball in the form of a question from the floor by a proxy for Andrew Mayne – an Australian shareholder activist. Murdoch was asked about the company’s “stance on climate change”.
The questioner asked: “What do you believe is the global role of News Corp in the geopolitical climate? If you do believe in climate change, why [is it that] News Corp gives climate deniers like Andrew Bolt and Terry McCrann so much airtime in Australia?”
His answer was dismissive: “there are no climate change deniers around [News Corp] I can assure you.”
This from a man who has presided over a publishing and broadcasting empire that has become synonymous with climate change denial and obfuscation, fiercely disputing and mocking science and providing a global sanctuary and a platform for those who promote the primacy of coal and fossil fuel interests.
Did he have a senior’s moment, did he not hear the question, does he not read, listen or watch his own media outlets in the USA, the UK and Australia: or was he just telling porkies?
Do you think there are editorial meetings taking place right now at Newscorp Australia and Sky-after-Dark trying to read between the lines of what the oracle in New York may have been saying? Should Andrew Bolt, Chris Kenny, Peta Credlin, Paul Murray, Rowan Dean and the host of hangers-on who had previously signed an oath never to acknowledge climate change, clean out their desks and be escorted from the building – is the party over?
Or has the codger transitioned to an old Duffer no longer a fit and proper person to be heading up a global media organisation?
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Neither, he is a global corporate criminal
I always see a ‘codger’ as a grumpy old man who drools and wears piss-stained fawn trousers and keeps checkout operators bored shitless with pointless anecdotes while a queue of his contemporaries wait in line. I hope Rupert very soon falls into that scenario.
Surely you are not vaguely like the Great Pox. If Dali was to paint a nasty world globe, it might have a Murdoch haemorrhoid hanging off its arse, glowing with angry wilfulness, righteousness, the very fuhrer symbol of negativity in action.
News Corpse — Where the truth goes to die, the official propaganda arm of the fascist traitors that rule, fronted by repulsive rupert corporate criminal mudrake. Euthanasia would be too good for that rancid vomit.
Murdoch had the gall some years ago to claim that Australia was ungovernable while ignoring how media inc. NewsCorp, IPA, ON and LNP are constantly lobbing proverbial molotovs at any Labor or other policy for maximum disruption and confusion amongst voters.
Such pertinent questions of one permitted to destroy so many lives, when the rest of us have to answer to mindless authorities such trivial redundant questions just to keep our driver’s license. Like some others I know half my age, I often cannot find my car in a large multi-story car park, especially when there are multiple levels, half levels, north, east, south, and west wings and probably even a middle earth, a basement or two and a few roof tops in the sky, where you may not be in the same building you thought you were in, and not a natural landmark anywhere to be seen to orientate yourself to the four winds of the compass – But then politics, social order and public morality is just like that – screwed like a mangled banana!
I bet most people half our age could not write like this in good conscience, sense or wit – Bugger the pseudo-cognitive rides devised by brainless politicians, bureaucrats and psychologists we have to put up with, who wouldn’t know the difference between a meaningful social construct and what’s in their pants… Oh very well I was describing Rupert, Scott and Trump as well all in the same stroke of my pen. No doubt, they can all afford a chauffeur and half a million servants to sit the nursing test and change his nappy for him.
https://www.smh.com.au/national/very-disturbing-people-dressed-in-nazi-uniforms-confront-shoppers-at-supermarket-20191119-p53c5q.html
Nazis at your local shopping centre now.
I believe he dribbles a lot, but only on the electorate – or was it dribbles down his front when he snoozes in his chair and pisses all over the electorate the rest of the time?
Having read the comments here about an outstanding human being in our wicked old serially marrying morlock,I am duty bound to profess my undying admiration for the unmitigated trashing of several of our democracies.Probably the single most damaging figure of the last fifty years.What a man!
Beauty cuckoo, 64 years ago, I waltzed into a police station after testing my hockey friends on the road rules and the copper have me a paper and 15 minutes a licence, he just assumed I was the right age. So at 15 with no experience behind a wheel I had a C4.
Last year I went for a renewal they took a photo and gave me a new licence with an eye test in 2028.
This is safe as it is in the computer, the car is in my wife’s name so bob’s your uncle.
For those who know what C4 licence is will know I have been able to lie by the truth of my licence.
Every scientist knows that climate is continually changing and has done so for billions of years no deniers there. The left of the bell curve will have people who struggle to understand weather and cannot grasp climate beyond god.
John OCallaghan, just a fcking lying old fossil fool. Can anybody remember how many billions of dollars the lying old fart has invested in middle eastern oil? You know where he cheered on through his publications around the world all the ill conceived military action that led to the misery and death and suffering that we see in the Middle East today.