Franken-Lies-And-the-Lying-Liars-Who-Tell

Angered by Murdoch's apparent lack of support for their totalitarian regime, China retaliated
by banning the ownership of satellite dishes. Murdoch knew which side his rice was
buttered on, and switched to a more, shall we say, pro-totalitarian point of view. "The truth
is-and we Americans don't like to admit it-that authoritarian societies can work," he told critics.
And to show the Central Committee that he had just been kidding about that "unambiguous
threat" business, he cheerfully removed the BBC from his Star network. The
BBC, it seems, had covered the Tiananmen Square unpleasantness, and according to Murdoch
"was driving them [the totalitarian Chinese regime] nuts." So, goodbye BBC, hello satellite
dishes in the world's largest potential media market.
But some good came of this whole thing. Murdoch launched a multimillion-dollar
joint venture with the People's Daily, the official state newspaper. The venture produced CbinaByte,
an on-line news service that helped bring official Chinese government propaganda
into the Digital Age.
Now, please understand that I'm not saying Rupert has a procommunist bias. Just a
pro-getting-money-and-power-no-matter-who-gets-hurt bias. Most of the time, this bias
makes him indistinguishable from someone with a straight-up right-wing bias. He has been a
tireless supporter of conservative politicians from Margaret Thatcher to Newt Gingrich, who
have returned his favors with tax breaks and shady deregulations. But as you can see from his
self-serving support of a murderous, Godless, communist regime, Murdoch's bottom line is
less about politics and more about the bottom line.
Roger Ailes, however, is someone you can always rely on to stick to his conservative
Republican guns. There is absolutely no question about this guy. He is a rock-ribbed, dyedin-the-wool
Republican through and through. Want a guy who will bash the Democrats with
everything he's got? You want Roger Ailes.
That's why when Rupert Murdoch needed help starting a conservative cable news
channel, he knew the right man for the job. The man who had been the GOP's preeminent political
consultant. The man who had helped elect Nixon, Reagan, and George H. W Bush. The
man who's been called the Dark Prince of right-wing attack politics. It was Ailes, along with
his Dark co-Prince, Lee Atwater, who directed the Willie Horton attack against Michael Dukakis
(and it was Ailes who said "the only question is whether we depict Willie Horton with a
knife in his hand or without it"). It was Ailes who produced Rush Limbaugh's ill-fated TV
show. And so it was Roger Ailes who was the right choice for Murdoch's right-wing channel.