Your RDA of Irony

Fraydom of the Press

Fox News wants you to know the other side of the story.  What seems to be a British scandal about a certain Corporation’s hacking phones and bribing policemen IS actually an attack on the First Amendment.  If you attempted to tell the Fox pundits that the British don’t have that First Amendment, they would claim that the attack must have succeeded.

But why wasn’t that Amendment in the Magna Carta?  I imagine that there was some discussion…

John:  Freedom of the Press?  I don’t care how the serfs stomp grapes.  Besides, Portuguese and French feet taste better than English ones.

Sir Rupert de Merdouche:  Na, yar iness.  I mayn tha writtin pross.

John:  Do you have a speech impediment?

Rupert:  Waaaalll…I wouldn’t drop the accent just for anyone but in this case…You know I own the largest syndicate of town criers, and we have always supported you.

John:  Yes. You actually convinced the public that Richard was a draft-dodger during the Crusades.  Why didn’t you just publicize that he was a sissy?

Rupert:  Because it would have been true.  Where’s the challenge in that?  In any case, here is how you can thank me.  I want to buy all the monasteries in England, so I can control the market in illuminated manuscripts.  And with this new Chinese printing press, I can outsource most of the monks.  Of course, you can count on our continued editorial support.  In the next edition of the Gospels, Jesus will personally endorse you.

John:  It is tempting, but some of your publications have been controversial.  Carnal Acts of the Apostles?  And you know the complaints about the page 3 topless women in the breviaries?

Rupert:  Your mother never looked better.

John:  Well, I did warn her about crossing you.

About this Amendment, I have a better idea.  What if I say nothing.  That way you’ll have no restraints at all.  You can drill peepholes in latrines, hide scribes in confessionals, whatever’s the limit of your conscience or imagination.

Rupert:  So this is more than just freedom of the press.

John:  It is freedom from responsibility.

 

  1. Tony H says:

    It turns out that Fox News works to even lower standards than the News of the World. While the News of the World assumes its readers are prurient, it doesn’t quite take them for morons:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9gOSsvLIO4&feature=player_embedded

    • Peg Pruitt says:

      Did I get this right? Fox is equating Newscorp which DID the hacking with other companies and the Pentagon who have BEEN hacked. Wow! Orwell would be proud.

      • Eugene Finerman says:

        Peg,

        Be fair. It is not as if Steve Doucy actually read Orwell. Doucy was formerly employed as a weatherman, and during the summer the temperature would be higher than his IQ. (That was probably true during spring and fall, too.)

        Eugene

    • Eugene Finerman says:

      Tony,

      Even by Faux’s standards, Steve Doocy is an imbecile. And even by p.r. standards, Robert Dilenschneider is evil. When he was the CEO of Hill and Knowlton, the company’s clientele comprised the Who’s Who of Pariahs: America’s most crooked union, the Rev. Moon and his totalitarian cult, and various South American tyrants. I referred to the company as Shill and Noshame.

      Eugene

  2. Tony H says:

    Noshame indeed! Sadly, some of the heat seems to be going out of the scandal now – well, you can’t have the head of Scotland Yard resigning every day, and it’s altogether too exciting when Hugh Grant sets himself up as a pillar of righteousness. But here’s a great quote, from a man who obviously loves words, from yesterday’s kangaroo court – James Murdoch: “There are thresholds of materiality where something has to be moved upstream.” Yum!

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