The "Yellow Kid" Of Our Age

(This link takes you to more information on what I’m referring to in the title, though you could also take it to mean someone who wants other people to fight and die in battles he’s unwilling to fight himself.)

It looks like Rupert Murdoch has done it again.

As noted here at Editor and Publisher (the story also appeared at The Huffington Post yesterday but has now strangely disappeared, and I was unable to retrieve it from the site’s questionable search utility), Murdoch’s New York Post ran a cover yesterday showing two simians with the faces of James Baker and Lee Hamilton, chairs of the seemingly-everywhere-now-in-the-media Iraq Study Group, superimposed on their bodies, with the headline caption of “Surrender Monkeys.”

I’m not sure it’s possible to document all the ways that this is objectionable, but I’ll try.

Remember how Bushco and its media acolytes pilloried France because they wouldn’t join the “coalition of the willing” prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq (with Jonah Goldberg and Bill Kristol of Murdoch’s “Weekly Standard” calling them “cheese eating surrender monkeys”…God, seems like so long ago now)? I always wondered why they never attacked Russia or Germany the same way, since all three of those nations have defended their country through horrific combat over centuries from before our nation was founded. And of course, it really isn’t necessary to ask whether or not Goldberg or Kristol ever served, is it?

And as much as we’ve decried the Iraq Study Group (its conception, its membership, its purpose, its final product, the barely-concealed flimsiness of the pretext rooted in utter partisan politics that this is somehow acceptable in lieu of actual presidential leadership), the fact of the matter is that it was created, ostensibly, to come up with some plan or approach to achieving some kind of a resolution in Iraq that would get our people out of there and keep the carnage inside Iraq from spreading outside its borders.

Ridiculing all of the above is one thing. Calling the group’s chairs “surrender monkeys” as a result of their effort is just a pathetic attempt to resurrect the same tired, childish, simplistic jingoism which was a big reason why we got ourselves into this mess to begin with.

And I would go one step further. If I were a parent, friend or family member of a son or daughter caught in that debacle, to say nothing of being that for someone killed or wounded, I would be even more sickened to see that cover of the Post yesterday. As highly imperfect as everything about the Iraq Study Group is, it represents at least some kind of an attempt to see our way out of there (again, highly flawed, but something that, literally, is better than nothing). And I would see Murdoch as a deranged old man who considers no body count too high to achieve some long-since-rendered-unrealistic goal of something approximating democracy and capitalist market expansion in Iraq.

And I would want to do something about that.

I don’t know that it’s possible to hurt Murdoch financially; my guess is that it would take a team a lawyers the rest of their lives to try and untangle his web of holdings, media companies, and affiliate organizations of one type or another located in this country and throughout the world. I’ve never seen a figure attached to his net worth. And being a piddly, filthy, unkempt liberal blogger, I don’t see how I could summon my meager business resources to do anything except deprive him of revenue that would probably be microscopic against his total combined assets.

But as an alternative to doing nothing, I’d like to propose some non-violent economic protest.

In this country, Murdoch’s News Corporation controls DirecTV Group, T.V. Guide, the T.V. Guide Channel, a 50 percent ownership in the National Geographic Channel (ugh…), SportSouth, and something called the SPEED Channel. And, as noted above, Murdoch owns the New York Post.

Oh, yeah, and he also controls All Things Fox: Fox News Talk, Fox Interactive Media, Fox Movie Channel, Fox Reality, Fox Soccer Channel, Fox Sports Net, and the Fox Television Stations Group.

So here’s what you do; you probably know already what T.V. stations are part of Murdoch’s empire, so don’t watch them, and don’t buy the products of sponsors who advertise on those stations. And, of course, don’t buy the Post either.

If you’re going to be serious about this, by the way, this means no more NFL Football with NFC games, no more high-profile sporting events including the World Series, no more Nextel/Winston Cup racing, no more Super Bowl, etc. (it’s a loooong list). And no more prime-time T.V. on Fox also, including “24,” “American Idol,” “The Simpsons” (doh!) and “The Family Guy” (watch it on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim instead, if you must). And that also includes a long list of movies on DVD as well (there are probably other media considerations here too numerous to mention).

This presents an enormous task, I realize. And even if you can’t go “cold turkey,” just try to deny yourself of something that can ultimately be traced back to this cretin. As I always say, the best revenge against these characters is to find some way to legally take their money.

I don’t know that it’s possible to hurt Murdoch in this way, but his material wealth can’t buy him everything. If he’s going to use his powerful media influence to decry any effort whatsoever to stop the killing in Iraq as that country disintegrates, then he should be recognized as the soulless, contemptible bastard that he truly is and we should summon the will for some sort of a gesture of protest.

And here’s one more thing you can do – don’t even consider voting for Hillary Clinton.