Cynical Soapbox: The News Corp. Phone Hacking Scandal

 Rebekah Brooks just got arrested in connection with the News Corp. media empire’s phone hacking scandal.Yay.Don’t get me wrong, I’m delighted she’s in jail, I hope she stays there forever, and I hope she takes all her accomplices and overlords and sniveling underlings with her.  Of course I care about their payoffs to Scotland Yard, and of course I’m disgusted with News Corp.’s behavior.But here’s the thing…I *wish* (oh, how I wish!) I could be surprised and disgusted and appalled and horrified at the behavior of the Fox Empire lieutenants.  I wish I felt shock at the notion that the head of Scotland Yard (who—breaking news—just resigned mere minutes ago) has been in News Corp.’s pocket for years.  I would love to be outraged about how News Corp.’s sociopathic emotional highwaymen manipulated that poor missing girl’s information, dicked around any police that may have been legitimately trying to find her, and grossly, maliciously, dismissed the grief that family felt before they knew their daughter had been murdered.Instead, I’m just.  Meh.  The concept of a megacorp feeling like they are above the law—and above all forms of human decency--just doesn’t surprise me.  We saw the major players in the banking scandals and Enron and Deepwater Horizon take a steaming dump all over the fabric of society and come out, for the most part, OK (you know, I know Enron’s Kenny-boy Lay was convicted, sentenced, and died in jail, but I wouldn’t be surprised even for a millisecond if we were to discover that his death was faked and he’s actually living on a yacht off the coast of Montenegro…I didn’t call this the Cynical Soapbox for nothin’).  These companies and the perpetrators who staff them have been bailed out, paid billions of dollars in tax refunds, not even required to pay a fair share into the tax system and (again, for the most part) not held responsible in even the slightest way for any of their finger-giving; why on Earth should I be shocked that a news corporation that has repeatedly lied/made shit up for public consumption, whose US agency has, for the past two years, been awarded the “Lie of the Year” by a non-partisan fact-checking organization, decided to delete potential evidence regarding the murder of a thirteen-year-old girl for their own personal gain?The fact that the News Corp. story broke thanks to the diligent investigative work done by intrepid reporter Hugh Grant only adds to its surreal-yet-WTF nature. I was amused when the guy from the Wall Street Journal resigned.  I laughed when Rebekah Brooks got arrested.  I did have a “Holy crap!” moment when the head of Scotland Yard resigned.  And the connections don’t stop there, so I can only hope it keeps going higher and higher.  Who’s next?  Murdoch’s kid?  The Prime Minister?Look, if Rupert Murdoch were to lose everything he ever worked for, if his empire crumbled around him, if he had no money and his family all deserted him and he were resigned to a life of selling pencils out of a tin cup on the street, and I saw him?  I would break his pencils in half and throw his fucking cup down the sewer.  I can hope for that, but my guess?  Is that he’s jockeying for his very own boat slip off the coast of Montenegro, and will disappear into the vast world, with his money and reputation intact.And here's a fun follow-up read:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/jul/15/usa-rupert-murdochFinally, here's a contribution from Paisleyfriend L.T. Ppits, indicating that perhaps Qaddafi has an opinion about Rebekah Brooks and her management style: