Newt Gingrich Yells "Fire!" (Again.)

I saw this today on HuffPo:

In an interview with Newsmax, Gingrich said that the "secular elites" haven't taken seriously "threats to America," and that Elena Kagan has "no real appreciation of the danger of Sharia," because she "welcomed Saudi money" while serving as the Dean of Harvard University Law School.
"Radical Islamists are people who want to impose on the rest of us Sharia, which is a form of medieval law which would fundamentally end America as we've known it," Gingrich said. "There are disturbing signs that some places ... you see judges succumb to this line of reasoning." He called on "isolating and defeating radicals," while "modernizing" moderates.

Then I remembered something I read a few months ago on ThinkProgress:

Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp — the parent company of Fox News — making him the largest shareholder outside the family of News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch. Alwaleed has grown close with the Murdoch enterprise, recently endorsing James Murdoch to succeed his father and creating a content-sharing agreement with Fox News for his own media conglomerate, Rotana.

So...using Newt's twisted logic, his home network--Fox News--must have "no real appreciation of the danger of Sharia."

Glenn Beck's gonna freak!

Rupert Murdoch's Internet Check-Out Line.

Because I'm a news junkie, I'll read just about anything on the Internet, always mindful to consider the source. That simple pearl of wisdom acts as a wonderful chaperone when I click on any of Rupert Murdoch's slanted and trashy News Corp. properties. Visiting the websites of the New York Post or FOX News is the cyber-equivalent of reading the tabloids in a grocery store check-out line; you know it's bullshit, but it passes the time and it's free.

With newspaper advertising revenues at an all-time low, and with Rupert being Rupert, the Aussie a-hole plans to soon begin charging to read his newspapers online. That's like ponying up for Weekly World News down at the market instead of sneaking a quick peek for nothing.

From Michael Wolff on Newser.com:

Is Rupert Murdoch too old to matter? In the face of the worst downturn in the history of the newspaper business—what everybody except Rupert believes is a structural rather than cyclical decline—he bought the Wall Street Journal, built the world’s largest newspaper printing plant just outside of London, and is still talking about buying the New York Times. Yesterday, his company, News Corp., posted the biggest losses in its history. In response, my Uncle Rupert—who as recently as a year ago, when we last spoke, had yet to go, unassisted, onto the Internet—announced that he would shortly make his newspapers available online only if you paid for them.

Well, I'll say this, he’s swimming against the tide.

His uphill fight is probably even greater than it might appear. Not only is he, among all media executives, the most technically disinclined (actually, totally illiterate), but his company, of all the big media enterprise, is the most technically backward and maladroit. He may now employ more reporters than anyone else in the world, but they use the oldest computers. He may have some of the world’s most trafficked news sites, but they are also the slowest and most inept. Technology, at News Corp., has always been regarded as one of those things, like fancy hotels, or long-form writing, that are not part of the company culture...

What’s more, he believes this new world, like the older one in which he succeeded, is a tabloid world: “When we have a celebrity scoop, the number of hits we get now are astronomical,” he said, unmindful that his scoop, on the Internet, is a second away from being everybody else’s scoop. “We'll be asserting our copyright at every point,” he added, like a man getting ready to go to war (say in Iraq or Vietnam)...

At this point, however, for him to continue to own the news, for the world to go on existing in large measure in Rupert Murdoch’s version of the news, you are going to have to pay him per click.

You might. I won't.

The New York Post: All Crass, No Class.

That's an actual headline from Rupert's trashy tabloid.

What a shock!

You stay classy, NY Post...

Song To Rupert.

From HuffPo:

Singer/songwriter Jill Sobule was introduced to News Corp chairman Rupert Murdoch at last year's All Things Digital conference (D6). To commemorate that occasion and kick-off this year's conference, Sobule serenaded Murdoch at the event in Carlsbad, California Tuesday night.

(Here are the lyrics:)

Rupert, I met you last year

At this conference

Do you remember me?

Rupert, they took our picture

You gave me a warm hug

It was really disconcerting

I've never been a big fan

The op-ed of the Wall Street Journal

I can't stand

But that night, Rupert

You were the man.

Rupert, you took me back to your room

Showed me your iPod

You love Olivia Newton-John

We drank Foster's

We got so pissed

You told me your secret

That you voted for Obama

You said you've got a secret plan

You hired Glenn Beck to ruin the Republicans

Oh, Rupert

You are the man.