Via Jesus’ General comes this toecurlingly awful rapping fundie granny.
Forgive her, she knows not what she does. Fo’ shizzle.
(Can’t say I’m surprised at the existence of GodTube, especially in light of the daft hubris that produced the laughable Conservapedia)
Or maybe the latest edition should have extra pockets for all that Murdoch dosh?
I can’t imagine who’d actually buy this Hillary Clinton talking doll, especially as it doesn’t really look like her. Mind you, the the Laura Bush talking doll (Xanax not included) has caught that dead-fish, glazed stare perfectly.
Item 3051803
Price $29.95Our First Lady talking dolls are crafted to historical accuracy, each having 25 voice clips recorded in the first lady’s voice. A biographical pamphlet and certificate of authenticity are included and presented with the dolls in collectible patriotic packaging. 12 in. Stand included. Assembled in USA.
Unfortunately it doesn’t say what the 25 voice clips are. Maybe this:
• I am particularly horrified by the use of propaganda and the manipulation of the truth and the revision of history,
Sure you are, Hils. Or this:
•Vote for me, I’m female! And I’m not Black!
Oh all right, you got me, I made the last one up.
I think it can safely be asserted that who owns the media is equally if not more important than who the politiciians are: indeed it can be argued that it’s the media that chooses the politicians.
In all, 16 of the top 30 media owners are from the US. The other countries with media owners in the top 30 are Japan (with four representatives), France and the UK (with three each), Germany (two) and Italy and Mexico (one each). Non-American companies on the top 30 list include Axel Springer, Bertelsmann, BSkyB, ITV plc., Fuji TV and Televisa.
The top 30 media owners in the report generated a total of $215bn in media revenue. Two online companies, Google and Yahoo made it into the top 30, ranked number 13 and 15 with revenues of $6bn and $5.2bn respectively
Mass media ownership transcends international borders and the polioy decisions and editorial influence of owners now has worldwide scope. Take Rupert Murdoch for example, whose overwhelming grip on American public discourse just tightened with his purchase of the hawkish, rightwing Wall Street Journal.
But is it even really Murdoch’s grip any more? Is he, to use a vulgar American phrase, pussy- whipped by a nubile young wife? Many western journalists would like us to think so.
Murdoch is in his seventies and has a much younger Chinese born wife, Wendi Deng, who’s causing much media paranoia over whether China, in addition to being one of the world’s largest creditor nations and buying up western banks, is planning to take a massive slice of worldwide media control with Deng as some sort of proxy.
Or it could be anti-Chinese racism and mysogyny, an occidental fear of the Yellow Peril, focused onto one woman, Deng. There’s plenty of evidence for that.
Private Eye has had fun for years with Wendy Deng, casting her in typical neocolonial style as a Dragon Lady who uses her sexy oriental (Did they say she’s oriental, by the way? And sexy?) ways and remorseless physical demands to shag her ageing husband to death and grab his billions for the seething communist hordes of China.
Here’s typical public schoolboy racism from Private Eye in 2003:
“Never Too Old”
by Dame Silvie KrinThe story so far: Multibillionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch has married a fragrant young oriental beautyfrom the land odf birds-nestsoup.
Now read on…
“I got great news for you Lupert.” purred the lovely Wendy Deng as she entered the gymnnasium of their 48th storey Manhattan penthouse apartment.
“You mean you’re going to switch off this lousy rowing machine and give me an ice-cold tinnie?” puffed the sweating septuagenarian tycoon, as he tried to keep up with the machine’s remorseless demands,
“First guess wrong,” hissed his peach-skinned paramaour, as she turned up the machine to Olympic Standard (Bronze) Level.
You get the drift, and besides, I’m not copying the whole thing out.
As much as I enjoy and admire Private Eye (I’ve been a regular reader for over 20 years), let’s face it, in its attitudes to women and minorities it ican often be paternalistic, colonial and crass, the cuteness and likeability of Ian Hislop on HIGNFY notwithstanding. So if I didn’t absolutely dismiss the rumour (because leaving ethnicity aside she is young and he is old and it’s been known) I suspected the motivation behind it.
But then I started to google and to read stories about how recent Murdoch decisions have favoured Chinese state interests and how his media interests in China itself collude with state censorship; and how a meticulously researched and sourced profile of Deng was suppressed by the publisher that commissioned it when Murdoch sold his stake; and how a series of publications in their turn declined to publish, for no other apparent reason than they feared to offend Rupert.
Oddly enough the only place the profile is available in full online is China’s New Century Weekly – in Chionese – it’s come to something when China will publish something western journalists are too scared to.
Murdoch has attacked anyone who seeks to write about his wife on the grounds that Deng is a private person; which is a bit flimsy considering Deng is now Chief of Strategy at MySpace China, an arm of Murdoch’s empire, and they have two daughters who will potentially inherit a substantial slice of media control in their own right, aside from anything Deng herself inherits when her husband predeceases her, as he’s almost bound to do barring medical miracles. Even the Murdoch billions can’t cheat death.
Deng, with that amount of potential clout, is no private person. She makes decisions that affect millions:
Myspace China to Move Servers to China
Mon, Jul 23, 2007 Myspace | web 2.0In a recent interview with local media, Luo Chuan, the CEO of Myspace China, which is part of News Corp, (Public, NYSE:NWS), said the company will move its servers to China. According to Luo, the server move will be enhance the site’s appeal to local audience while keeping the China site connected to Myspace’s global database. However, the process will be technically and financially challenging and there is no set schedule for the server move. Source: 163.com
This decision of course will give the Chinese government ultimate physical control of the servers should they so choose and a hell of a lot of leverage over MySpace in terms of censorship.
Deng would like more decision making power and the question of who will control News International on Murdoch’s death is a typically toxic dynastic stew of ex-wives, alimony, alowances, inheritances, jealousy, sibling rivalry and a gliimpse of parent/child conflict.
A simmering debate over the trust that owns the family’s 28.5 percent voting stake in the News Corporation surfaced with the resignation last week of Lachlan, Mr. Murdoch and Mrs. Mann’s elder son, from his job at the News Corporation, where he was seen as a potential successor to his father.
The precipitating reason for Lachlan’s departure, he has told several people, was his father’s undermining of his position within the company over a long period.
[…]
People close to both father and son have also acknowledged, however, that tensions over the trust were a factor, and those tensions stem from the conflicting maternal ambitions of Ms. Deng and Mrs. Mann.
Last year, Mr. Murdoch told his children that he wanted to change the trust to give his two daughters by Ms. Deng, Grace, 3, and Chloe, 2, a greater role in the trust, which currently has an interest in the News Corporation worth $6.1 billion.
But Mr. Murdoch’s four adult children – three with Mrs. Mann and one with his first wife – have a say in the trust and are its primary beneficiaries, and they must approve this change.
[..]
Mr. Murdoch raised the issue of including his youngest daughters in the trust last year at a family meeting in New York, where one person close to the family said the debate was lively.
Oh, I bet it was lively.
It certainly sounds as though Deng may be trying to gain control of News International for herself and her children by Murdoch. It’d all be great fun, like a bastard sitcom mashup of Dallas and Dynasty with Drop The Dead Donkey, if it weren’t future control of worldwide tv, radio, newspapers and the internet we were talking about.
But let’s come back to Rupert’s latest purchase of the Wall St. Journal and what motivated it. Was he really pushed into by Deng as proxy for Chinese interests or was the motivation much more human – embarassment and retaliation at Deng’s past being revealed?
1. Until the details were published in the Wall Street Journal, Murdoch apparently did not know much about Deng’s past, including the affair and marriage with Jake Cherry, which secured her a US visa. One WSJ journo describes Murdoch as “ashen-faced” at their next meeting. As Ellis writes, Murdoch got a rude taste of his own tabloid journalism medicine. I can’t help wondering if that has anything to do with his current bid for the Journal?
A past Deng apparently has, according to commenters at the Wendi Deng Watchers Club:
At the tender age of 18, she freely walked into Guangzhou hotel rooms to sleep with a 50-year old married American (Jake Cherry) who spoke a language she didn’t understand (English) and was introduced to her by his then-wife (Joyce Cherry). On top of that, she suckered Jake Cherry into persuading his then-wife (Joyce Cherry) into sponsoring her into the U.S., where she lived rent-free in their home with their children, ate their food (with them), went places with them, took everything the Cherrys gave her (and also things meant for their daughter), ALL THE WHILE CONTINUING ON WITH HER AFFAIR WITH JAKE CHERRY IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES!
Whatever the truth of thiose allegations Deng certainly has Murdoch wrapped around her finger; her influence in News International is profound and will only increase if she gets her way. But in this she is no different from the many other women worldwide (cough, Huffington, cough) who marry for power, whatever their nationality. It wouldn’t be the first time a young woman with a bit of a past snares a rich old man at an opportune moment, but I do think an enormous amount of the hoohah about Deng the Dragon Lady as a Chinese double agent in the heart of the western free-market system is exaggerated and inspired by a mixture of envy, stereotypical male ideas about Chinese and Asian women and a fear of China itself.
There is truth there in that Deng has given Murdoch access to Chinese markets but the non-Murdoch media depiction of her as an evil oriental genius I think is a projection of journalists’ own misogyny, ingrained racism and worries about the potential power she is likely to wield on the demise of her husband.
Given the shrewdness and alleged lack od scruples with with she’s operated to her own advantage so far, Deng should certainly not escape scrutiny – and the claim by her husband that she is a private person and not up for discussion or beyond criticism, when he has made her a public person, is completely risible.
Yes, scrutinise Deng with a big magnifying glass, but scrutinise what she does, not what she is.
Today’s Read Of The Day has to be Vanity’s Fair’s bitchfest about the deeply authoritarian and monetarily doubtful Republican presidential cadidate and former NY mayor Rudi Guliani‘s social-climbing puppy-butcher of a current wife (she can’t think she’s permanent, given his history, the former Junior Leaguer and latterday surgical staple sales rep lJudy Nathan.
If you think what I just said was harsh…
There have been so many different Judiths. As her second husband, Bruce Nathan, has told friends, “She is in an ever changing mode upward.”
I sense Mrs Giuliani is not popular in NY social circles. Mind you it says a lot about those social circles that it’s her pushiness that bothers them so, and not her deliberate cruelty to helpless animals.
Q: When does the Post become touchy-feely about animal welfare? A: When it helps torpedo a Giuliani. Turns out that in the seventies, Judith then-Nathan used to shill for a medical-supply firm that put surgical staples on live dogs during sales demonstrations. Ew. [NYP]
You’d think cruelty to dumb creatures would be a plus when choosing a President, if Bush is any guide – maybe the spousal puppy-torture won’t impede Rudi’s progress at all, may be it’ll endear him and the missus to the ’24’ loving, torture endorsing wingnut base. On the other hand, it was frogs that Bush blew up alive with firecrackers and frogs are icky and puppies are cute, big-eyed and utterly adorable, so it could go the other way.
But why is the wife of a candidate even important? She’s not up for election, he is.
As if to emphasise the US media’s full-on, no-holds barred approach to political spouses and in stark contrast to the Vanity Fair article, the Independent’s Mary Djevsky considers the role of ‘first ladies’ in the persons of the very public Cherie Blair and the subfusc, stay-at-home mother, Sarah Brown:
ASarah Brown has so far made an even more stellar job than her husband of not being a Blair. For a start, she has been nigh-invisible, except at the ceremonial opening to his premiership. She has kept their children out of camera shot, her shopping to herself, and her public outings to solo appearances for charity. Should she return to paid work – and some nifty property reassignments by her husband have secured her an income and him a tax saving until she does – she could do so without press or public outcry, so long as she steered clear of anything remotely seen as a conflicting interest. Mrs Blair was vilified not for her professional life, which many rather admired, but for seeming to exploit her spousal role for profit.
Ah, that spousal role … Why, in this day and age, is it still thought necessary for a national leader to be travel with the spouse? Where royalty is concerned, it is understandable. It is the stuff of feudalism and fairy tale that a king has a queen. Through the Empire until not so very long ago, you could also argue for the practice. Tours could be long and tedious; evenings empty and natives hostile. In the Cold War, spousal travel was to keep the public figure out of trouble in countries where the authorities habitually sought advantage by springing “honey traps”.
Yes, why? I can see there’s a case to be made for spouses accompanying politicians on foreign trips – great insight can be had into fellow leaders when you see how they relate to their significant other in a social situation. It all adds to international understanding – but that can happen regardless of gender. So why the focus on female spouses, aside from their numerical preponderance?
Politicians are, let’s face it dull. In the case of political wives it sometimes seems as though it’s all about what what the media wants, the husbands play up to it and the wives go along in deference to their husbands’ ambitions (or to their own). take Fred Thompson and his trophy wife, for instance. But if he thinks America is ready for a walking bleached blonde boobjob in the WH, he can think again).
Obviously what the US media would like is for every politician to have a devoted, photogenic handmaidem contsntly to hand for eyecndy purposes, preferably a twentyish vestal virgin with no past whatsoever, a good rack ( but not too good, cf Mrs Thompson) and no voice either, who looks good in posh frocks (which she is to find at her own expense).
Conversely, many political wives are blatantly using their husbands as proxy for their own political ambitions. Cherie and Hillary both spring to mind, and so too does the now-infamous Judy Giuliani.
They know and we know that despite their considerable individual intellects and achievements it’s unlikely they would have become QC or Senator respectively, had they not gained name recognition and influence by being married to who they were married to. In the case of Clinton it’s enabled someone who’s been a Senator for barely five minutes, who’s never run any government body or even a city or state, to potentially step into one of the most difficult jobs in the world; in the case of Cherie Booth/Blair she’s had the opportunity to make massive amounts from speaking fees she would never have got as a simple human rights and employment lawyer; Nathan somehow find herself catapulted from being a sales rep for Bristol Myers Squibb ( which was when the puppy-torture occurred) to becoming a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the $216 million Twin Towers Fund, appointed by Giuliani. No nepotism there then.
The feminist view is that couples are individuals; I don’t disagree; who could, it seems obvious. You cannot tie one spouses’ achievements to that of the other – but then again how can you not in political terms, when nepotism like this is so ingrained in the political culture?
I can think of only one female politician who’s turned the tables on the man-as-proxy for wife’s-ambitions pattern and that’s recently sacked Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, who channels her partner’s political ambitions by putting him on the payroll. She continues to employ husband Leo as her ‘PA’ at public expense, despite the fact he’s now over retirement age.
He may not be decorative, but at least he’s useful and boosts the family income too. But that’s just as nepotistic as Cherie and her QC – was Leo’s name ever on the ballot? Who voted him into Parliament?
Many male American politicians also hire their spouse: look at the number who’ve put their wives on the office or campaign payroll (or even in some instances on a lobbyists’ payroll). yet those same politicians will complain should those pouses be attacked for it as citing ‘privacy’, as did Beckett when challenged.
If only if the media, political spouses themselves and the voting public could be honest – if we’re electing couples, we’re electing couples. Lets put them both on the ballot.
The current virulent media stew of mysogyny, prurience and backdoor ambition in regard to political spouses benefits no-one and turns politics into little more than a prom king and queen contest. It benefits political women least of all – they are consequently cast as always the adjunct to the man, the coattail-grabber, the golddigger. How many political male spouses is that said about?
That said, Judy Nathan Giuliani is still puppy-torturing slime.
This past week the Girl Guides published the results of a survey of their members that asked what new skills they wanted to learn.
Unsurprisingly the media at home and internationally focused on one item alone – that guides chose ‘practice safe sex’ as an additional skill.
Here’s a couple of typical responses at Free Republic (sorry, won’t dignify them with a linlk)
“This is such a repugnant move on the part of the Girl Guides that it should make decent people want to puke.
In their monthly magazine mailed out to the membership I wouldn’t be surprised if it featured advertisements for sex toys. No rucksack should be without one!”
“I nearly did puke when I heard about this. I actually threw up in my mouth.”
I can guess the reason the Freepers feel nauseous: it’s the conflicted guilt they feel for envisioning young trainee sluts in hot uniforms doing unspeakable things the moment they read ‘girl guides’ and ‘sex’.
How very revealing indeed that the first commenter’s immediate mental connection with girl guides was ‘sex toys’. But then that’s the right wing all over -they say they’re all about protecting girls and women but really it’s about keeping them ignorant and thus easier to mould to mens’ sexual and domestic desires.
I’d also point out that it’s older guides, aged 16-25, who chose the subject – above the age of consent, here and in the US (well above in the case of Idaho, where it’s 14) . But reality’s no barrier to the wingnuts’ fevered imaginations.
Anyway, the list of wanted skills is actually quite interesting and is broken up by age group:
SKILLS WISH-LIST – AGE SEVEN TO 10
Surf the web
Name 10 European countries
Ride a bike
Care for a pet
Which are actually rather sweet. Don’t forget these are additional to the skill badges the guides already do but if anything need be added, I’d say road safety. Or what to do in a flood.
AGE 10 TO 15
Prepare a healthy meal
Change a light-bulb
Say hello in foreign languages
Stand up to boys
I’d add basic bike mechanics for that bike they learned to ride earlier, or how to build your own pc. Girls should learn how things work and how to fix them; competence gives confidence, and might actually help a bit with ‘how to stand up to boys’.
It might also, in the light of recent severe weather events be useful to expand the survival badge to include what to include in an emergency pack, how to cope without power in 6 feet of water, how to make sandbags, purify drinking water and recognise the syptoms of cholera and typhoid…
AGE 16 TO 25
Practise safe sex
Write a CV
Hold on to a job
Plan a holiday
What struck me about that last list is the sharp difference in aspiration between it and the 10-15 list: the latter are all outward looking practical skills, the former totally self-focused – to me it reads like the wish-list of someone working in a dead-end call-center job and going out at the weekends. You can almost see the horizons narrowing.
What should be added to that list is self-defence: what to do if someone pulls a knife, or someone gets shot or if one of your friends is tasered by overzealous cops on an injuncted National Trust or Friends of the Earth protest – also a badge for how to clean up contaminated river sludge from household appliances and disinfect carpets. Or how get a fire going from sodden charcoal and make a cup of tea.
The guides unsurprisingly focus on girls but lest I be accused of misandry I think that everyone needs to learn how to survive in a crisis and every single skillset mentioned here applies equally well to boys.
Especially ‘how to stand up to boys’.
But last weeks floods and the continuibg recovery issues show very clearly that it’s not just modern society today’s young women need to survive in but an an increasingly unstable physical world too.
I know I sound like a stereotypical stuffy great aunt but I’m dismayed at the lack of practical physical survival skills that young people today are taught: parents are just too busy surviving financially or weren’t taught themselves, Ray Mears’ enduring popularity notwithstanding. Sometimes it seems as though teaching children these practical skills in schools is seen as away of empowering children to defy authority. Better to keep the youth pliant and quiet, it’s thought, but if childrens’ urges to take risks leads them has no oulet they’ll confront danger in other ways many of them illegal and/or lethal.
We have a massive resourrce of survival knowledge to draw on from what our grandparents learned from their harsh wartime experiences in times of terrible danger, privation and crisis That knowledge is in danger of being lost as the last wartime generation gradually dies off, but there has to be a way to draw on it to the benefit of today’s youth: they too are threatened, as their grandparents were, by world instability, creeping fascism and men with guns – so they should have quite a lot in common.
Snark aside, whatever you feel about the jingoist and imperialistic origins and the structure and ethos of the scouts and guiding movements and their largely ( at least in the UK) middle-class membership and aspirations, nevertheless it has to be a good thing to teach the young how to survive in a modern society, for as long as that modern society lasts.
