Someone's daughter in case everyone had forgotten.
CHOKE (Canada) Lotion 1994
5 minutes ago
Monday, 25 July 2011
John Yoo Makes Tortured Defense Of Corporations Secretly Buying Elections
The proposed executive order making disclosure of political giving history a condition to being awarded a federal contract makes some of the Nixon-era “dirty tricks” look almost quaint by comparison. [...] As the Supreme Court has made clear, anonymous political speech enjoys “an honorable tradition of advocacy and of dissent,” and anonymity serves as a shield “against the tyranny of the majority.” Any president who seeks to undo this centuries-old American constitutional right by the fiat of an executive order would be prudent to reflect on the ultimate outcome when Richard Nixon and John Dean tried, using their infamous enemies list, to accomplish that precise objective.If there is anyone in the universe who should think twice before criticizing a government lawyer for enabling a president to break the law, it is John Yoo. And while Yoo certainly spares no adjective in arguing that preserving the integrity of American democracy is an impeachable offense, he might also want to consider actually reading what the Supreme Court has to say about disclosure laws before drafting articles of impeachment against President Obama.
In an obscure case called Citizens United v. FEC, the Supreme Court held that “disclosure could be justified based on a governmental interest in ‘provid[ing] the electorate with information’ about the sources of election-related spending.” President Obama’s proposed executive order provides the electorate with information about the sources of election-related spending. So Yoo’s entire argument can be rebutted in exactly two sentences.
Elsewhere in his essay, Yoo comes to the defense of poor, innocent corporations that may lose their ability to deceive their customers and investors:
After disclosure of a contribution by the retailer Target to MN Forward, a conservative Minnesota political group that supported a gubernatorial candidate who was opposed to gay marriage, proponents demanded that Target also support pro-gay candidates. Target refused. MoveOn organized a widespread boycott and flash mobs appeared at Target stores; the retailer countered by suing protesters. In the seconds it took for a Facebook video of the boycott to go viral, Target’s established reputation as a gay-friendly company was shredded. After institutional investors protested the “misalignment” between Target’s Minnesota political spending and its professed corporate values, Target announced that future political contributions would require the approval of an internal policy committee.In other words, Target misled the public by calling itself a gay-friendly corporation, when it actually was secretly funding an anti-gay effort. Yet, because of disclosure, it was no longer able to maintain this charade and forced to end its two-faced practices. In Yoo’s twisted understanding of the world, this is a great tragedy and not a compelling argument for why disclosure laws are necessary.
Given Yoo’s role in the Bush administration’s torture policy, asking him to express a legal opinion is a bit like asking Don Draper for advice on marital fidelity. Even so, Yoo’s defense of corporate America’s power to secretly buy elections is weak even by his own tragically incompetent standards.
John Millhiser @'ThinkProgress'
Vatican recalls Irish papal envoy after Cloyne report
The Vatican has recalled its special envoy in Ireland after a damning report on the Catholic Church's handling of child abuse by priests.
Vatican radio has reported that Papal Nuncio Giuseppe Leanza is being called back to Rome to discuss the impact of the recent Cloyne Report.It showed how allegations of sex abuse by priests in Cork had been covered up.
The report led to angry condemnation of the Vatican by Prime Minister Enda Kenny in the Irish Parliament.
In a blistering attack, Mr Kenny accused the Church of putting its reputation ahead of child rape victims.
He told the Irish parliament that the report into how allegations of sex abuse by priests in Cork had been covered up showed change was urgently needed.
"The rape and torture of children were downplayed or 'managed' to uphold instead the primacy of the institution, its power, standing and 'reputation'," the taoiseach said last Wednesday.
At the weekend, the prime minster said he had received thousands of messages of support from around the world - many were from the clergy, he said.
He said this reflected the way people felt about the Catholic Church's role on clerical child abuse.He told an audience at an annual cultural event in County Donegal at the weekend that the messages showed how people felt.
Mr Kenny said he was "astounded" at the number of clergy who contacted him after his speech on the Cloyne Report.
"The fact that I have had thousands of messages from around the world speaks for itself about the impact and the way people feel," he said.
"The numbers of members of the clergy who have been in touch in the last few days to say it is about time somebody spoke out about these matters in a situation like you are, has astounded me."
Mr Kenny received a standing ovation after he finished delivering the annual lecture at the opening session of the summer school.
A statement is expected on the Vatican website at midday.
@'BBC"
Dewanatron
The story of Brian Dewan and Leon Dewan, the most unique grassroots electronic music pioneers in recent memory.
The special purpose of Dewanatrons, which are modern solid-state analog instruments, is to grow music live in collaboration with the operators who guide them.
(Thanx Samantha!)
The special purpose of Dewanatrons, which are modern solid-state analog instruments, is to grow music live in collaboration with the operators who guide them.
(Thanx Samantha!)
With friends like that...
rjtklein Richard Klein
Norwegian terrorist sees climate change as marxist agenda and supports Monckton in his 'Declaration': http://scr.bi/oFdnRr (p. 646-49)
Accidental Chinese Hipsters
I can only guess that A) somebody’s grandchild has a good sense of humor, or that B) he is a fan of bananas, as it is totally reasonable for a person to be.
Mike Mystery of HK sent this to me with a poem:
I’m waitin’ for my man,
Des Voeux road West in Sheung Wan,
Iphone camera springs to my hand,
Cause something tells me that he ain’t heard of the band.
Our photographer also told me that he ran across four lanes of notoriously dangerous HK traffic to get this, and that he was almost hit by a tram in the process. An admirable yet scary move! All you guys out there, please creep on the elderly and otherwise fashionable with at least some measure of caution.
ViaMike Mystery of HK sent this to me with a poem:
I’m waitin’ for my man,
Des Voeux road West in Sheung Wan,
Iphone camera springs to my hand,
Cause something tells me that he ain’t heard of the band.
Our photographer also told me that he ran across four lanes of notoriously dangerous HK traffic to get this, and that he was almost hit by a tram in the process. An admirable yet scary move! All you guys out there, please creep on the elderly and otherwise fashionable with at least some measure of caution.
(Thanx Stan!)
Ceramic Buddha Machines
The experimentalists at Fm3 continue to impress with their commitment to unorthodox music delivery when the trend remains digital and ephemeral. Back in April they announced a new line of ceramic-bodied players for their series of Buddha Machines, that essential collection of ambient loops in a case the size of a box of matches. The new players will be available at the end of the year. Being ceramic they’re probably a little less portable than the plastic versions, and might also be more fragile. For durability and retro cachet I would have opted for Bakelite if that material is still being manufactured anywhere. (It seems it is, thanks Wikipedia.)
Back in the digital and ephemeral world, Fm3 also have a Buddha Machine app for iPhones and iPads. If that seems to defeat the object of the loops being encased in a box of their own you do at least have the option of mixing six of the machines at once. For an idea of how far the mixing and extrapolation of these sounds can be taken, Robert Henke’s two ambient mixes of Buddha Machine samples from 2007 and 2008 are still available as free downloads on his website.
John Coulthart @'feuilleton'
#fuckyouwashington
So I was angry. Watching TV news over dinner — turning my attention from scandals in the UK to those here and frankly welcoming the distraction from the tragedies in Norway — I listened to the latest from Washington about negotiations over the debt ceiling. It pissed me off. I’d had enough. After dinner, I tweeted: “Hey, Washington assholes, it’s our country, our economy, our money. Stop fucking with it.” It was the pinot talking (sounding more like a zinfandel).
That’s all I was going to say. I had no grand design on a revolution. I just wanted to get that off my chest. That’s what Twitter is for: offloading chests. Some people responded and retweeted, which pushed me to keep going, suggesting a chant: “FUCK YOU WASHINGTON.” Then the mellifluously monikered tweeter @boogerpussy suggested: “.@jeffjarvis Hashtag it: #FUCKYOUWASHINGTON.” Damn, I was ashamed I hadn’t done that. So I did.
And then it exploded as I never could have predicted. I egged it on for awhile, suggesting that our goal should be to make #fuckyouwashington a trending topic, though as some tweeters quickly pointed out, Twittercensors moderates topics. Soon enough, though, Trendistic showed us gaining in Twitter share and Trendsmap showed us trending in cities and then in the nation.
Jeff Howe tweeted: “Holy shit, @JeffJarvis has gone all Howard Beale on us. I love it. And I feel it. Give us our future back, fuckers. #FUCKYOUWASHINGTON.” He likes crowded things. He’s @crowdsourcing. He became my wingman, analyzing the phenom as it grew: “Why this is smart. Web=nuance. Terrible in politics. Twitter=loud and simple. Like a bumper sticker. #FuckYouWashington.” He vowed: “If this trends all weekend, you think it won’t make news? It will. And a statement. #FuckYouWashington.”
And then I got bumped off Twitter for tweeting too much. Who do the think they are, my phone company? Now I could only watch from afar. But that was appropriate, for I no longer owned this trend. As Howe tweeted in the night: “Still gaining velocity. Almost no tweets containing @crowdsourcing or @jeffjarvis anymore. It’s past the tipping point. #FuckYouWashington.”
Right. Some folks are coming into Twitter today trying to tell me how to manage this, how I should change the hashtag so there’s no cussin’ or to target their favorite bad man, or how I should organize marches instead. Whatever. #fuckyouwashington not mine anymore. That is the magic moment for a platform, when its users take it over and make it theirs, doing with it what the creator never imagined.
Now as I read the tweets — numbering in the tens of thousands by the next morning — I am astonished how people are using this Bealesque moment to open their windows and tell the world their reason for shouting #fuckyouwashington. It’s amazing reading. As @ericverlo declared, “The #fuckyouwashington party platform is literally writing itself.” True, they didn’t all agree with each other, but in their shouts, behind their anger, they betrayed their hopes and wishes for America.
@partygnome said: “#fuckyouwashington for valuing corporations more than people.”
@spsenski, on a major role, cried: “#fuckyouwashington for never challenging us to become more noble, but prodding us to become selfish and hateful…. #fuckyouwashington for not allowing me to marry the one I love…. #fuckyouwashington for driving me to tweet blue.”
@jellencollins: “#fuckyouwashington for making ‘debt’ a four letter word and ‘fuck’ an appropriate response.”
@tamadou: “#fuckyouwashington for giving yourselves special benefits and telling the American people they have to suck it up or they’re selfish.”
@psychnurseinwi: “#fuckyouwashington for having the compromising skills of a 3 year old.”
I was amazed and inspired. I was also trepidatious. I didn’t know what I’d started and didn’t want it to turn ugly. After all, we had just witnessed the ungodly horror of anger — and psychosis — unleashed in Norway. I’ve come to believe that our enemy today isn’t terrorism but fascism of any flavor, hiding behind anger as supposed cause.
But at moments such as this, I always need to remind myself of my essential faith in my fellow man — that is why I believe in democracy, free markets, education, journalism. It’s the extremists who fuck up the world and it is our mistake to manage our society and our lives to their worst, to the extreme. That, tragically, is how our political system and government are being managed today: to please the extremes. Or rather, that is why they are not managed today. And that is why I’m shouting, to remind Washington that its *job* is to *manage* the *business* of government.
The tweets that keep streaming in — hundreds an hour still — restore my faith not in government but in society, in us. Oh, yes, there are idiots, extremists, and angry conspiracy theorists and just plain jerks among them. But here, that noise was being drowned out by the voices of disappointed Americans — disappointed because they do indeed give a shit.
Their messages, their reasons for shouting #fuckyouwashington and holding our alleged leaders to higher expectations, sparks a glimmer of hope that perhaps we can recapture our public sphere. No, no, Twitter won’t do that here any more than it did it in Egypt and Libya. Shouting #fuckyouwashington is hardly a revolution. Believe me, I’m not overblowing the significance of this weekend’s entertainment. All I’m saying is that when I get to hear the true voice of the people — not the voice of government, not the voice of media, not a voice distilled to a number following a stupid question in a poll — I see cause for hope.
I didn’t intend this to be anything more than spouting off in 140 profane characters. It turns out that the people of Twitter taught me a lesson that I thought I was teaching myself in Public Parts, about the potential of a public armed with a Gutenberg press in every pocket, with its tools of publicness.
* * * For an excellent summary of the saga as it unfolded on Twitter, see Maryann Batlle’s excellent compilation in Storify, as well as Gavin Sheridan’s Storyful. CBS News Online’s What’s Trending was the first in media to listen to what was happening here. David Weigel used this as a jumping off point for his own critique of Washington and the debt “crisis” at Slate. Says Michael Duff on his blog:
: MORE: Handelsblatt writes about the Twitter movement.
Jeff Jarvis @'BuzzMachine'
That’s all I was going to say. I had no grand design on a revolution. I just wanted to get that off my chest. That’s what Twitter is for: offloading chests. Some people responded and retweeted, which pushed me to keep going, suggesting a chant: “FUCK YOU WASHINGTON.” Then the mellifluously monikered tweeter @boogerpussy suggested: “.@jeffjarvis Hashtag it: #FUCKYOUWASHINGTON.” Damn, I was ashamed I hadn’t done that. So I did.
And then it exploded as I never could have predicted. I egged it on for awhile, suggesting that our goal should be to make #fuckyouwashington a trending topic, though as some tweeters quickly pointed out, Twitter
Jeff Howe tweeted: “Holy shit, @JeffJarvis has gone all Howard Beale on us. I love it. And I feel it. Give us our future back, fuckers. #FUCKYOUWASHINGTON.” He likes crowded things. He’s @crowdsourcing. He became my wingman, analyzing the phenom as it grew: “Why this is smart. Web=nuance. Terrible in politics. Twitter=loud and simple. Like a bumper sticker. #FuckYouWashington.” He vowed: “If this trends all weekend, you think it won’t make news? It will. And a statement. #FuckYouWashington.”
And then I got bumped off Twitter for tweeting too much. Who do the think they are, my phone company? Now I could only watch from afar. But that was appropriate, for I no longer owned this trend. As Howe tweeted in the night: “Still gaining velocity. Almost no tweets containing @crowdsourcing or @jeffjarvis anymore. It’s past the tipping point. #FuckYouWashington.”
Right. Some folks are coming into Twitter today trying to tell me how to manage this, how I should change the hashtag so there’s no cussin’ or to target their favorite bad man, or how I should organize marches instead. Whatever. #fuckyouwashington not mine anymore. That is the magic moment for a platform, when its users take it over and make it theirs, doing with it what the creator never imagined.
Now as I read the tweets — numbering in the tens of thousands by the next morning — I am astonished how people are using this Bealesque moment to open their windows and tell the world their reason for shouting #fuckyouwashington. It’s amazing reading. As @ericverlo declared, “The #fuckyouwashington party platform is literally writing itself.” True, they didn’t all agree with each other, but in their shouts, behind their anger, they betrayed their hopes and wishes for America.
@partygnome said: “#fuckyouwashington for valuing corporations more than people.”
@spsenski, on a major role, cried: “#fuckyouwashington for never challenging us to become more noble, but prodding us to become selfish and hateful…. #fuckyouwashington for not allowing me to marry the one I love…. #fuckyouwashington for driving me to tweet blue.”
@jellencollins: “#fuckyouwashington for making ‘debt’ a four letter word and ‘fuck’ an appropriate response.”
@tamadou: “#fuckyouwashington for giving yourselves special benefits and telling the American people they have to suck it up or they’re selfish.”
@psychnurseinwi: “#fuckyouwashington for having the compromising skills of a 3 year old.”
I was amazed and inspired. I was also trepidatious. I didn’t know what I’d started and didn’t want it to turn ugly. After all, we had just witnessed the ungodly horror of anger — and psychosis — unleashed in Norway. I’ve come to believe that our enemy today isn’t terrorism but fascism of any flavor, hiding behind anger as supposed cause.
But at moments such as this, I always need to remind myself of my essential faith in my fellow man — that is why I believe in democracy, free markets, education, journalism. It’s the extremists who fuck up the world and it is our mistake to manage our society and our lives to their worst, to the extreme. That, tragically, is how our political system and government are being managed today: to please the extremes. Or rather, that is why they are not managed today. And that is why I’m shouting, to remind Washington that its *job* is to *manage* the *business* of government.
The tweets that keep streaming in — hundreds an hour still — restore my faith not in government but in society, in us. Oh, yes, there are idiots, extremists, and angry conspiracy theorists and just plain jerks among them. But here, that noise was being drowned out by the voices of disappointed Americans — disappointed because they do indeed give a shit.
Their messages, their reasons for shouting #fuckyouwashington and holding our alleged leaders to higher expectations, sparks a glimmer of hope that perhaps we can recapture our public sphere. No, no, Twitter won’t do that here any more than it did it in Egypt and Libya. Shouting #fuckyouwashington is hardly a revolution. Believe me, I’m not overblowing the significance of this weekend’s entertainment. All I’m saying is that when I get to hear the true voice of the people — not the voice of government, not the voice of media, not a voice distilled to a number following a stupid question in a poll — I see cause for hope.
I didn’t intend this to be anything more than spouting off in 140 profane characters. It turns out that the people of Twitter taught me a lesson that I thought I was teaching myself in Public Parts, about the potential of a public armed with a Gutenberg press in every pocket, with its tools of publicness.
Everybody knows you guys are running the clock out, waiting for the next election. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t go on TV to scare the shit out of us every day and then expect us to wait patiently for 2012. You can’t use words like “urgent” and “crisis” and then waste our time with Kabuki theater.
Either the situation is urgent and needs to be solved now, or it’s all just an act that can wait for 2012. This isn’t 1954, gentlemen. The voters are on to you now. We know you’re playing a game and we know you’re using us as chess pieces.And then there’s this reaction from no less than Anonymous: “@jeffJarvis you’ve started a shit storm. Nice going.”
That’s why #fuckyouwashington is trending on Twitter. We’re tired of being pawns.
Every politician in Washington needs to pay attention to this outrage, and remember who they’re working for.
: MORE: Handelsblatt writes about the Twitter movement.
Jeff Jarvis @'BuzzMachine'
Sunday, 24 July 2011
Russell Brand on Amy Winehouse
Frustratingly it’s not a call you can ever make it must be received. It is impossible to intervene.
I’ve known Amy Winehouse for years. When I first met her around Camden she was just some twit in a pink satin jacket shuffling round bars with mutual friends, most of whom were in cool Indie bands or peripheral Camden figures Withnail-ing their way through life on impotent charisma. Carl Barrat told me that “Winehouse” (which I usually called her and got a kick out of cos it’s kind of funny to call a girl by her surname) was a jazz singer, which struck me as a bizarrely anomalous in that crowd. To me with my limited musical knowledge this information placed Amy beyond an invisible boundary of relevance; “Jazz singer? She must be some kind of eccentric” I thought. I chatted to her anyway though, she was after all, a girl, and she was sweet and peculiar but most of all vulnerable.
I was myself at that time barely out of rehab and was thirstily seeking less complicated women so I barely reflected on the now glaringly obvious fact that Winehouse and I shared an affliction, the disease of addiction. All addicts, regardless of the substance or their social status share a consistent and obvious symptom; they’re not quite present when you talk to them. They communicate to you through a barely discernible but un-ignorable veil. Whether a homeless smack head troubling you for 50p for a cup of tea or a coked-up, pinstriped exec foaming off about his “speedboat” there is a toxic aura that prevents connection. They have about them the air of elsewhere, that they’re looking through you to somewhere else they’d rather be. And of course they are. The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of the day with some purchased relief.
From time to time I’d bump into Amy she had good banter so we could chat a bit and have a laugh, she was “a character” but that world was riddled with half cut, doped up chancers, I was one of them, even in early recovery I was kept afloat only by clinging to the bodies of strangers so Winehouse, but for her gentle quirks didn’t especially register.
Then she became massively famous and I was pleased to see her acknowledged but mostly baffled because I’d not experienced her work and this not being the 1950’s I wondered how a “jazz singer” had achieved such cultural prominence. I wasn’t curious enough to do anything so extreme as listen to her music or go to one of her gigs, I was becoming famous myself at the time and that was an all consuming experience. It was only by chance that I attended a Paul Weller gig at the Roundhouse that I ever saw her live.
I arrived late and as I made my way to the audience through the plastic smiles and plastic cups I heard the rolling, wondrous resonance of a female vocal. Entering the space I saw Amy on stage with Weller and his band; and then the awe. The awe that envelops when witnessing a genius. From her oddly dainty presence that voice, a voice that seemed not to come from her but from somewhere beyond even Billie and Ella, from the font of all greatness. A voice that was filled with such power and pain that it was at once entirely human yet laced with the divine. My ears, my mouth, my heart and mind all instantly opened. Winehouse. Winehouse? Winehouse! That twerp, all eyeliner and lager dithering up Chalk Farm Road under a back-combed barnet, the lips that I’d only seen clenching a fishwife fag and dribbling curses now a portal for this holy sound. So now I knew. She wasn’t just some hapless wannabe, yet another pissed up nit who was never gonna make it, nor was she even a ten-a-penny-chanteuse enjoying her fifteen minutes. She was a fucking genius.
Shallow fool that I am I now regarded her in a different light, the light that blazed down from heaven when she sang. That lit her up now and a new phase in our friendship began. She came on a few of my TV and radio shows, I still saw her about but now attended to her with a little more interest. Publicly though, Amy increasingly became defined by her addiction. Our media though is more interested in tragedy than talent, so the ink began to defect from praising her gift to chronicling her downfall. The destructive personal relationships, the blood soaked ballet slippers, the aborted shows, that youtube madness with the baby mice. In the public perception this ephemeral tittle-tattle replaced her timeless talent. This and her manner in our occasional meetings brought home to me the severity of her condition. Addiction is a serious disease; it will end with jail, mental institutions or death. I was 27 years old when through the friendship and help of Chip Somers of the treatment centre, Focus12 I found recovery, through Focus I was introduced to support fellowships for alcoholics and drug addicts which are very easy to find and open to anybody with a desire to stop drinking and without which I would not be alive.
Now Amy Winehouse is dead, like many others whose unnecessary deaths have been retrospectively romanticised, at 27 years old. Whether this tragedy was preventable or not is now irrelevant. It is not preventable today. We have lost a beautiful and talented woman to this disease. Not all addicts have Amy’s incredible talent. Or Kurt’s or Jimi’s or Janis’s, some people just get the affliction. All we can do is adapt the way we view this condition, not as a crime or a romantic affectation but as a disease that will kill. We need to review the way society treats addicts, not as criminals but as sick people in need of care. We need to look at the way our government funds rehabilitation. It is cheaper to rehabilitate an addict than to send them to prison, so criminalisation doesn’t even make economic sense. Not all of us know someone with the incredible talent that Amy had but we all know drunks and junkies and they all need help and the help is out there. All they have to do is pick up the phone and make the call. Or not. Either way, there will be a phone call.
exilestreet Mona Street
#fuckyouwashington for the 40 year war against drugs that you will NEVER win
#fuckyouwashington for the 40 year war against drugs that you will NEVER win
Jon Cruddas MP in conversation with Owen Jones
On Monday 4th July, in a special Young Fabian event, Jon Cruddas MP quizzed Owen Jones, author of Chavs: The Demonization of the Working Class, a recent book of the week for both The Independent and The Times.
You can find Jon's review of the book in the Independent here.
There is a blurb of the book here, plus selected quotes from reviews by Polly Toynbee, Carole Cadwalladr, and Suzanne Moore among others.
You can now listen to that evening
HERE
You can find Jon's review of the book in the Independent here.
There is a blurb of the book here, plus selected quotes from reviews by Polly Toynbee, Carole Cadwalladr, and Suzanne Moore among others.
You can now listen to that evening
HERE
End of a nightmare for U.K. media
Rupert Murdoch gives evidence on the News of the World phone-hacking scandal to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, in Portcullis House in central London Tuesday, July 19, 2011. (AP Photo)
We have awoken from a nightmare in Britain to discover that it was all true but that it is now over. Rupert Murdoch and his children will never be able to restore their family's profound malign influence over British society and politics.Murdoch's power in Britain relied upon two media--newspapers and satellite television--that played distinct yet complementary roles in his empire. Murdoch owns four newspapers: two tabloids, the Sun and (until it was shuttered in the most recent phase of the phone-hacking scandal) the News of the World; the Times and the Sunday Times.
These he used to manipulate politicians up to and including the prime minister. The papers would also intimidate and bully his enemies. The Times and the Sunday Times were more nuanced and subtle in tone than the brash populist tabloids (or redtops, as we also call them). But they shared a unified line on Murdoch's pet political issues. His most persistent bugbear was the European Union and its single currency, even though the opinion of a US citizen whose companies pay virtually no taxes in Britain thanks to elaborate tax avoidance schemes should have carried little or no weight.
The Murdoch papers' key purpose, especially that of the daily, the Sun, was to determine the outcome of Britain's parliamentary elections. Whether they truly did so is debatable. But the perception was immortalized with the paper's headline the day after Labour's election defeat in 1992, "It Was The Sun Wot Won It."
Since then Conservative and Labour politicians (including Tony Blair and Gordon Brown) have gone out of their way to cultivate Murdoch and win the support of his papers. When Murdoch was in town or Rebekah Brooks on the phone, prime ministers jumped to attention--their spines permanently fixed in craven stoop. The papers were less successful in making money than in spreading fear and intimidation...
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