Joe Hildebrand

Joe Hildebrand began by tweeting “I just want to say I think it’s great that Sydney Airport is providing so many jobs for the mentally handicapped.”

This prompted a reasoned, articulate rebuke from columnist Stella Young, herself a disabled Australian. Her column was noteworthy in that it eschewed shaming, or demands for firing, in favor of a simple plea for empathy: (the whole thing is more than worth a read)

Like the countless people who make thoughtless jokes about disability, I don’t think Joe Hildebrand was conscious of the ableism inherent in his silly joke. But it was there. And the thing with speaking from a position of privilege is that you’re not often asked to think about how your language affects other people – and when you are, it seems everyone jumps up and down complaining about how the system is oppressing their freedom of speech, with little thought for those whom the speech routinely oppresses.

Much like the homosexual community has to deal with people (okay, mostly teenagers – the rest of us have finally cottoned on that it’s more than a little bit homophobic) referring to things that are a bit shit as ‘so gay’ in our post-ironic society. I find it hard to imagine Hildebrand referring to the staff at Sydney Airport as ‘so gay’ – so why is it still okay for disability to be treated as synonymous with subpar performance?

Hildebrand’s tweet is offensive because it uses disability as a shortcut to mean “crap”. And in doing so, he reveals a subtle and no doubt unconscious contempt for disabled people that is still rife in our culture. At best, it displays a blatant ignorance of the very real barriers faced by people with disability, some of which, ironically, are employment and air travel. At its worst, it assumes that jokes like these are okay – because they’re not about anyone important. Perhaps it’s assumed that people with intellectual disabilities won’t ‘get it’ anyway. That they can’t be hurt by a joke they don’t understand.

Young’s message appeared to have gotten through, as Hildebrand retweeted a link that described the piece as “passionate and articulate.”

Yeah, not so much. Hildebrand followed up that tweet with these:

Just want to say how sorry I am for using the words “mentally handicapped” in a tweet. That was really retarded of me.

Just want to say I’m sorry for offending so many people by using the word “retarded” in a tweet. That was really Irish of me.

Sorry I just offended so many people by using the term “Irish”. Just having a blonde moment.

Then, just to be sure everyone knew he was specifically spitting on Young’s rebuttal, he retweeted this:

@mostlyFilth @Joe_Hildebrand your series of faux pas today has been pretty gay.

If Hildebrand is anything like Rush Limbaugh, the courage he displays in the face of the mentally disabled, the wheelchair-bound, the Irish, and the gay ought to stand him in good stead with his audience.

This brand of “defiance” crops up quite a bit here, but the thing that people like Hildebrand or Rush Limbaugh fail to realize is that what they call “language policing” is really just an attempt to let people know when they’re being assholes, and affording them the opportunity to stop.

(h/t Kate Doak)

So what did the Aussie billionaire have to tweet about on his first big day?

To break it down from the Twitterese, Murdoch says he loved Matt Ridley’s The Rational Optimist, he thought Steve Jobs‘ biography by Walter Isaacson was interesting but unfair, he’s having a blast at sea with his young daughters, he read a piece in his own newspaper on Ron Paul, who he said had a lot of libertarian appeal, had an Alexander Hamilton shout-out and gave props to George Clooney for his film The Descendants.

(h/t Brian Stelter)

In a statement, Lachlan says that, while he did introduce O’Chee to Chris Mitchell (the executive in question), he does “not recollect dining with Chris Mitchell at the Pier Nine restaurant 13 years ago.”

RELATED: James Murdoch Resigns As Director Of News International’s UK Newspaper Boards

The allegation is included in lawsuit brought by News Corp shareholders against the corporation. Lachlan Murdoch, however, maintains claims that he had been at the table during the alleged 1998 conversation at Australian restaurant Pier Nine are merely a “fabrication”. Nonetheless, they have managed to spark an ongoing investigation by the Australian Federal Police.

h/t The Sydney Morning Herald

He remains News Corp’s deputy chief operating officer.

News Group Newspapers Limited is the former publisher of News of the World, which shuttered amid allegations of phone hacking and remains the center of an ongoing investigation.

RELATED: Rupert And James Murdoch Don’t Actually Like Each Other?

The London Evening Standard spells out what this means as far as the Murdoch family is concerned:

His decision means no member of the Murdoch family now sits on the boards of the flagship UK papers. Rupert Murdoch used to be a director of NGN and TNL but stepped down after his son took over as NI executive chairman in 2007. James Murdoch has also quit at least one other subsidiary, News International Holdings.

h/t London Evening Standard

One by one, several members of the dinner party stood up with signs and Sesame Street costumes, each with various protests and demands. According to the Associated Press:

Activists repeatedly interrupted Murdoch as he gave a keynote speech at a downtown San Francisco hotel about how technology could help transform the nation’s public education system.

“Equality in education, not privatization!” one woman shouted as security guards escorted her out of the ballroom of the Palace Hotel, which hosted the National Summit on Education Reform.

“Corporations own all the media in the world. Why should they not own all the education as well?” activist Joe Hill yelled sarcastically. Hill, who was dressed as the “Count” character from the TV show “Sesame Street,” also was pushed out of the meeting room.

Murdoch seemed to take it in stride, calling the protesters “interesting” as they were removed from the premises by security. He can also be seen smiling in the video during repeat interruptions of his speech. Watch the video below:

[h/t]

According to Sky News, court proceedings will be taking place in New York City… and could mean bad news for company head Rupert Murdoch, given that, “as a US-based organization, News Corp and its directors could be held responsible.”

You’ll recall that fellow mogul and gazillionaire Ted Turner recently predicted that Murdoch would likely have to step down amidst the scandal.

h/t Sky News

“Nobody likes to pay more taxes,” said Turner. “At least, except Warren Buffett likes to pay more taxes. He’s the only one.” Turner also wisely pointed out that it’s easy for someone who is a multi-billionaire to have half of his (Or her. Or my.) earnings taken away, but someone who is but a billionaire would be left with a mere 500 million dollars!

Moving on to the matter of Murdoch, Turner says he feels that the News Corp. Chairman will likely have to step down due to fallout from the company’s phone-hacking scandal.

Have a look at the interview, courtesy of Bloomberg TV:

According to the Associated Press, Murdoch’s pay package from News Corp totaled $11.5 million, but refused to accept the additional $6 million.

“In light of the current controversy surrounding News of the World, I have declined the bonus that the company chose to award to me… While the financial and operating performance metrics on which the bonus decision was based are not associated with this matter, I feel that declining the bonus is the right thing to do.”

The report explains that two-thirds of the bonus depends on company growth compared to forecasts, while the other third is based on other miscellaneous factors. Rupert Murdoch, James’ father, received a $12.5 million bonus for the same fiscal period.

h/t Associated Press

According to Reuters, Needham cited “[w]eakening markets, new government investigations, growing legal costs, and a witch hunt for the Murdochs” in deciding to downgrade the company’s stock. As of this posting, News Corp stock is trading at $15.52, down from a high of $18.13 in July, days before the phone hacking scandal became a worldwide story.

Needham analyst Laura Martin suggested that litigation costs have not been “adequately reflected in Wall Street models,” and gave one explanation for why investors would still be so bullish on News Corp.

“We believe Wall Street underestimates the resolve of powerful personal enemies of the Murdoch’s and political enemies of NWSA’s conservative media outlets.”

Martin also expected media rivals of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal to be more aggressive and “exhibit sharper elbows” in the upcoming election year.

h/t Reuters

Shares of News Corp. rose Thursday–up more than 18 percent by 1:10 p.m.–as traders reacted to Rupert Murdoch’s quarterly earnings conference call Wednesday afternoon. On the call, Murdoch vowed to remain in place as CEO despite the ongoing investigation into the company’s involvement in phone hacking, and reported a healthy profit. “We have the most robust balance sheet in our history,” Mr. Murdoch said, reporting 2.7 billion dollars in earnings for the fiscal year that ended June 30, up from 2.5 billion the year before.

As The New York Times reports, it was Murdoch’s first time meeting with reporters since his testimony before a panel of the British Parliament last month:

The earnings report — which showed growth across News Corporation’s vast holdings in film, television, publishing and satellite broadcasting — was a testament to the company’s size and diversity.

Yet Mr. Murdoch spent much of his time on Wednesday answering for malfeasance in a small corner of his media empire: The News of the World, the Sunday tabloid he recently closed in Britain after widespread voice mail hacking by its employees was revealed.

He pressed the point that none of the issues at The News of the World had affected the other parts of News Corporation.

“There’s been no material impact on our operations outside the closure of News of the World,” he said. And he once again insisted that the acts were an aberration and not the kind of behavior that he or the company would ever condone.

Some observers noted the return of a more fiery Murdoch than was on display in London–a public performance that drew sympathy not just for Murdoch’s seeming ignorance of some business details, but also for the shaving cream pie thrown at him. Wednesday, as Reuters described Murdoch, he seemed “more lucid about the company’s operations and more combative toward inquisitors than he was last month before Parliament.”

At one p.m., shares of News Corp. stock were trading at 16.81 (up 2.6), still well shy of the 52-week high of 19.08.

As Calabresi reports, their friendship is pretty solid:

Dinh and Bharara met their first week of freshman year at Harvard when they landed in a seminar together. “The topic of the day was whether the framers of the Constitution conceived man as good or evil,” Dinh told me in 2007 when I interviewed him for a profile of Bharara, who was then leading the Senate investigation into the firing of U.S. attorneys by Bush administration political figures. “We ended up debating and arguing through the night until we went to breakfast and argued some more and then went to lunch,” Dinh said.

From there they became good friends. Bharara was best man at Dinh’s wedding. Professionally, they went to opposite parties but have stayed close. “He’s been my best friend through Whitewater and through impeachment and through the USA Patriot Act, and God knows what kind of hurt he took from his Democratic friends,” Dinh said in my interview with him, praising Bharara even as he took the lead on the U.S. Attorneys investigation. “So I’m glad there’s a little bit of payback time now,” Dinh said.

So is there a conflict of interest or murky ethical territory at play in the fact that both men are investigating the same company from different sides? Calabresi notes that it is “unclear” whether either of the two has considered recusing himself from his investigations, even though the U.S. Attorney’s manual allows for “discretionary recusal in cases where there may be an appearance of a conflict.” And according to the rules for companies listed under the NASDAQ exchange, independent directors cannot have a relationship that “would interfere with the exercise of independent judgment in carrying out the responsibilities of a director.”

Neither man would comment on their friendship or whether they’ve considered recusing themselves, but a spokesperson for Dinh said the two have not discussed the latter.

h/t Time

In a statement put forth by the company, Viet Dinh, one of its independent directors, explained that the idea to withdraw a bid at this time was Elisabeth’s:

Elisabeth Murdoch suggested to the independent directors some weeks ago that she felt it would be inappropriate to include her nomination to the board of News Corp. at this year’s annual general meeting as had been announced by Chairman and CEO Rupert Murdoch at the time of the acquisition of Shine Group earlier this year… Both Elisabeth and the Board hope this decision reaffirms that News Corp. aspires to the highest standards of corporate governance and will continue to act in the best interests of all stakeholders, be they shareholders, employees or the billions of consumers who News Corp. content informs, entertains and sometimes provokes every year.

As our sister site Mogulite explains, the younger Murdoch’s apparent plan to “back away slowly” from her family’s scandal-plagued enterprise does not negate the fact that News Corp. was recently slapped with a lawsuit by the Amalgamated Bank, which accuses the company of resorting to nepotism.

h/t Broadcasting & Cable

h/t

In the story, “How Bad Is News Corp.?,” Wolff describes a company that takes care of its friends, and goes after its “enemies.”

And partly, it’s because the fundamental currency of the company has always been reward and punishment. Both the New York Post and Fox News maintain enemy lists. Almost anyone who has directly crossed these organizations, or who has made trouble for their parent company, will have felt the sting here.

As the hacking investigation that led to the end of the U.K. paper News of the World and the active investigation by police and Parliament, Wolff suggests the “mob-like structure” of News Corp. may not be seen as metaphor by investigators in the U.S.:

But just because it’s a metaphor doesn’t mean it isn’t the real thing, too.

Well-sourced information coming out of the Department of Justice and the FBI suggests a debate is going on that could result in the recently launched investigations of News Corp. falling under the RICO statutes.

Kuttner left News of the World in 2009 without explanation:

Kuttner’s role as the public face of the News of the World proved to be key to the tabloid under the editors, Rebekah Brooks – then Rebekah Wade – and her replacement, Andy Coulson, both of whom were reluctant to talk to the media.

When Brooks’s “Sarah’s Law” campaign caused public hysteria in some towns and cities across the UK, prompting some Portsmouth residents to burn the homes of suspected paedophiles, it was Kuttner who faced the cameras.

He also played a role in the paper’s dealing with Sara Payne in the years after her eight-year-old daughter, Sarah, was abducted and murdered in July 2000.

It’s believed Kuttner’s arrest brings to 11 the number of people facing charges in the inquiry.

Rich paid a visit to Joy Behar‘s HLN show to discuss his experiences further and to issue a warning that the “whole Murdoch culture” evidenced by the News of the World hacking scandal has spread to the United States:

Well, I think that we’re deluding ourselves if we think the whole sort of Murdoch culture has not spread to America. We’re reading all this sort of exotic stuff about having British police on the payroll. Bernie Kerik was on the Murdoch payroll. He had a huge advance from Harper Collins. And you know, the piece I’ve written in New York that’s out today, I talk about the bullying things that they do. It’s not just about politics; it’s not just about Fox being right-wing. It’s about them going after people who are personal enemies, Bill O’Reilly having producers stalk people on the street.

Rich believes the Murdoch empire allegedly lashes out in this because it is motivated by “power and money, punishing enemies that they don’t like, for reasons that could be personal or business, not just political.”

“It’s thuggery,” he concluded, agreeing with Behar’s assessment of Murdoch. “And I think this scandal is going to play out like Watergate for a couple of years. We’ll see where all of it lands in this country.”

Have a look at the segment, via HLN:

In 1976, at the dawn of his career, Rich found himself working for the Post when the paper was sold to an Australian business mogul who was, at the time, little-known in the States. The crux of Rich’s piece lies not in bolstering the “us versus them” narrative espoused by many in the “mainstream media,” but on zeroing in on how the Murdoch empire systematically abuses power in order to further an agenda, even if this abuse should happen to break the law:

This defense is a smoke screen. The real transgressions of the Murdoch empire are not its outré partisanship, its tabloid sleaze, its Washington lobbying, or even what liberals most love to hate, the bogus “fair and balanced” propaganda masquerading as journalism at Fox News. In fact, these misdemeanors are red herrings—distractions from the real News Corp. corruption that now threatens to bring down its management and radically reconfigure and reduce its international corporate footprint. The bigger story is this: An otherwise archetypal media colossus, with apolitical TV shows (American Idol), movies (Avatar), and cable channels (FX) like any other, is controlled by a family (and its tight coterie of made men and women, exemplified by the recently departed Rebekah Brooks) that countenances the intimidation and silencing of politicians, regulators, competitors, journalists, and even ordinary citizens to maximize its profits and power and to punish perceived corporate, political, and personal enemies. And, as we now know conclusively, some of this behavior has broken the law.

Frank highlights two specific instances of his personal brushes with those working under Murdoch, ranging from merely annoying to threatening:

The Post would not be my last brush with Murdoch’s minions. An emissary tried to rehire me for his other new purchase in New York—this magazine, which he wrested unscrupulously from its founder, Clay Felker, in 1977 and owned until 1991. (I declined.) Years later, when I became a Times columnist who frequently criticized various Murdoch organs, I was harassed by a “blind” fictional “Page Six” item that had me leaving my wife for a Broadway director. That was a mere warm-up for a full-frontal assault from Bill O’Reilly. After I came to the less-than-novel judgment that Mel Gibson and his 2004 movie The Passion of the Christ were anti-Semitic, O’Reilly, whose one novel had been optioned by Gibson for a film, attacked me on six different installments of his prime-time Fox News show, The O’Reilly Factor, sometimes displaying my photograph. I would have laughed off his blowhard provocations—“Hollywood and a lot of the secular press are controlled by the Jewish people” was a ­typical hypothesis—had they not incited the most explicitly violent and virulently anti-Semitic threats of my career. It was only one of two times in seventeen years as a Times columnist that I sought security advice. (The other was when I wrote critically about Scientology some years earlier.)

Throughout his article, Rich provides a veritable trove of examples demonstrating retaliation on the part of those employed by Murdoch’s various outlets and ventures, from the petty and juvenile to the heinous and, in some cases, potentially dangerous — and quite possibly illegal. As for News Corp’s hand in politics, Rich describes a relationship between the company and the Republican party that’s akin to a “business partnership,” Rich feels as incomparable to other political figures appearing on Fox news’ competitor, MSNBC.

Rich’s “exposé,” so to speak is worth being bookmarked today to read in full, but here’s his basic takeaway: That further and widespread investigative reporting is needed to make the public — and law enforcement — aware of the unethical journalistic practices and illegal activities allegedly promoted and carried out by Murdoch’s companies, both overseas and in the U.S.:

If Murdoch is to be undone in America, as in England, it won’t be politicians who take the lead. It will take aggressive journalism, law enforcement, and civil actions to force jettisoned News Corp. executives to sing.

h/t NY Mag

Current TV host Keith Olbermann, writing for The Guardian, describes the experience of being hired–and fired–by Rupert Murdoch. “From my vantage point,” Olbermann writes, “the most important fact remains that, after my exit, Rupert had to keep paying me not to have to work for him: $800,000 over the next eight months. It was the best job I ever had.” Olbermann, who was hired by Murdoch to be part of an expanded Fox Sports cable effort that included Olbermann hosting a nightly show to compete against ESPN’s legendary SportsCenter–an effort Olbermann describes as one of Murdoch’s “first abject failures in American television.” Olbermann says the failure was the result of multiple mistakes on the part of bosses at News Corp.: “for once, Murdoch’s mafia failed him.”

In the column, Olbermann accuses Murdoch of insisting on Olbermann’s firing for reporting about News Corp’s intent to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers:

It was a great story – and a great journalistic quandary. My bosses suggested we should run it past Murdoch’s personal public relations department, and the answer came back that provided I made it clear that none of the sources were from inside the company, and provided I run the official Murdochian denial, I should report my scoop. Mr Murdoch, we were told, never interfered in the news.

Silly me: I believed him.

Olbermann says within days of running the story, he was an ex-Fox Sports host. “Less than three weeks later, my business agent got a call from the man in charge of Fox’s baseball coverage. I was no longer going to be its studio host. A few hours later, he phoned again to say that my now weekly cable show had been cancelled. The next day I was told to come in and clean out my office on the Fox lot in Los Angeles.”

For Piers Morgan–and his bosses at CNN–the recent interest in his time as a tabloid newspaper editor in London (including, for a time, at the now-closed News of the World) has made for some fascinating television, most notably an on-air debate with a British MP who’d mistakenly accused Morgan of “bragging” about printing stories based on phone hacking (she’s since conceded she “mis-read” Morgan’s book, and has apologized). But as The Wall Street Journal reports this morning, Morgan’s time in the tabloid trenches was carefully explored before he was hired to replace Larry King–including a “careful reading” of the very memoir that MP Louise Mensch seemed to have skimmed. “Before signing him,” The WSJ‘s Lauren Schuker writes, “CNN executives carefully read his books and thoroughly questioned him about his journalistic habits and ethics, a person close to the network said.”

The background check included detailed questions about the events that led to Morgan’s dismissal as editor of London’s Daily Mirror amid a scandal involving photos of British war dead that soldiers insisted were fakes. CNN was satisfied with Morgan’s answers, and he got the job. The WSJ quotes a “person close to the network” who says “he wasn’t hired to be a news anchor or correspondent; he was being hired as a personality—that dictated the standards…he came off as a guy who had been chastened by his past and as someone who had the intelligence to grow and learn from it.”

That “smoking gun” that was supposed to link CNN’s Piers Morgan directly to phone hacking and other outrageous practices of the U.K. tabloid press? Well, not so much. As we reported Tuesday, a British blogger claimed to have a recording of Morgan that–he said–”contracts” Morgans flat denials that he ever “hacked a phone, told anybody to hack a phone or published any story based on the hacking of a phone.” As it turns out, that recording’s a 2009 interview Morgan gave to the BBC, appearing on a radio show, Desert Island Discs.The host, Kirsty Young asked Morgan about “all that nasty down-in-the-gutter stuff” that Morgan was exposed to by being a tabloid newspaper editor. He never says that he personally was involved in any of it.

Here’s his answer from 2009:

To be honest, let’s put that in perspective as well. Not a lot of that went on. A lot of it was done by third parties rather than the staff themselves. That’s not to defend it, because obviously you were running the results of their work. I’m quite happy to be parked in the corner of tabloid beast and to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to, and I make no pretence about the stuff we used to do. I simply say the net of people doing it was very wide, and certainly encompassed the high and the low end of the supposed newspaper market.

In a statement to Mediaite, Morgan says there’s nothing in that interview that contradicts what he’s said about hacking:

Millions of people heard these comments when I first made them in 2009 on one of the BBC’s longest -running radio shows, and none deduced that I was admitting to, or condoning illegal reporting activity. Kirsty asked me a fairly lengthy question about how I felt dealing with people operating at the sharp end of investigative journalism. My answer was not specific to any of the numerous examples she gave, but a general observation about tabloid newspaper reporters and private investigators. As I have said before, I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, nor to my knowledge published any story obtained from the hacking of a phone.

Here’s the original interview, from the BBC, via Newsweek/The Daily Beast:

The Daily Beast initially reported the story with the headline “Piers Morgan Admits to Phone Hacking in Nearly Forgotten Interview on BBC Radio Program,” though that isn’t entirely accurate (they’ve since then edited it to reflect that Morgan admits to “Dodgy Practices,” but not any in particular). That Morgan does not admit to the unethical behavior du jour in a two-year-old interview does not make the clip not newsworthy, however, as he openly admits to what his interview describes as “nasty, down in the gutter stuff.” “I’m quite happy to be parked in the corner of tabloid beast and to have to sit here defending all these things I used to get up to,” he tells the anchor.

He notes that his recklessness in youth “brought a sense of slight abandonment about the reality of what you were doing to people,” and while unspecified suspicious behavior went on, “not a lot of that went on… a lot of that was done by third parties.” He goes on to say that, as the tabloids benefited from the behavior, this did not exonerate them, and that it went on in both “the high end and low end of the newspaper market.”

The interview also has Morgan discussing a fascinating meeting with a teenaged Prince William, who demanded to know why the tabloids had treated his mother they way they did. He says he told the Prince that he was “public property” and had to learn to deal with it. “He didn’t know that his mum used to ring me up on a daily basis to give me stories on her rivals… its a two-way street,” Morgan argues.

It may not have delivered what the Daily Beast originally intended it to, but the interview is certainly a must-listen to understand Morgan’s perspective on the matter, and highlights the pervasiveness of the sort of behavior that may take down News Corp. Listen to the clip (via Daily Beast) below:

Lewis said Murdoch’s publications simply “had the nerve to do” what no one else would…and that wasn’t quite illegal, i.e. naked women in newspaper and phone hacking. And while we wouldn’t quite put Fox News in that same category, as both Maher and Lewis seemed willing to do, the reach and influence of Murdoch’s media empire was and is undeniable, and seemingly across the board, bold (sometimes to a terrible fault) decisions and personalities helped make it so.

Maher, unsurprisingly, took things a step further. He described the editorial process of a Murdoch media entity as: “creat[ing] some bogeyman so the bad guy isn’t the rich corporations who are really fucking them,” even calling this tactic “poison in the minds of the common man.” Oh, and according to Maher, Murdoch’s also an evil genus. And according to Lewis (and Maher, to an extent), Murdoch isn’t necessarily a right-winger, but he does have a particular ideology: “Money, power, influence.” Ideology or not, Murdoch certainly built up vast reservoirs of all three throughout his career…only to potentially lose some of that money, power, and influence now (and with reason). Video below, via HBO.

In a clear sign the U.K. hacking scandal has indeed landed on this side of the Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal reports Friday the Justice Department “is preparing subpoenas as part of preliminary investigations into News Corp. relating to alleged foreign bribery and alleged hacking of voicemail of Sept. 11 victims, according to a government official.” The WSJ‘s source says subpoenas “would broadly seek relevant information from the company,” which owns the Journal.

The FBI has also begun a “preliminary inquiry” into the allegations that 9/11 victims’ phones may have been hacked, but this morning’s news is another significant step:

The issuance of subpoenas would represent an escalation of scrutiny on the New York-based media company. While the company has sought to isolate the legal problems in the U.K., it has been bracing for increased scrutiny from both the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to people familiar with the company’s strategy.

Wallace first defended Bachmann and her extraordinarily vigorous campaign, as Imus launched this humorous assault:

“Michele Bachmann addressing that bus wreck going on in her head every morning, that thirty car pile-up. These migraines. She’s got a bunch of ideas, like Bob Dylan, she’s got a bunch of ideas in her head that are driving her insane, doesn’t she?”

Yet Imus got slightly more serious wondering if anyone in News Corp. told Wallace not to cover the hacking controversy on his show. Wallace denied ever getting such a directive, but did admit he didn’t think his show was the best place to talk about the story:

“We didn’t talk about it on Fox News Sunday last week, it was – no reason other than, I’m not sure there’s a lot to discuss on a Sunday morning talk show. . . . Generally there needs to be two sides to the argument for it to be effective, but we’re not shying away from it and Special Report has covered it in depth.”

Imus accepted Wallace’s argument here, yet when Wallace also praised the performance of Rupert Murdoch and cautioned “I’m not saying that to be a toady,” Imus couldn’t help but chuckle.

Watch the clip from Fox Business below:

And, yet, that’s precisely what the Times of London did when it ran an editorial cartoon, marked “Priorities…”, that depicted three starving, ethnically ambiguous children sitting nude in the sand. One of the doe-eyed children looks mournfully out at the viewer, cradling his distended stomach and announcing that he has had “a bellyful of phone-hacking.” Any guesses as to what company owns the Times of London? If you guessed “News Corp,” you’re a winner!

Can we agree that eradicating childhood hunger is still a global priority and that outlets diligently, even obsessively, covering the phone hacking scandal were probably not devoting too many headlines to the plight of starving, saucer-eyed children in the first place? Although, hey. Maybe the Times of London can change the tide by donating to charities fighting to end hunger, or devoting an issue to poverty instead of offering up condescending, out of touch editorials that only work to reflect poorly on its already beleaguered employer.

h/t @emmagkeller

We were able to ascertain this information by travelling through a dimensional rift that we found a few weeks ago in the handicapped stall in Mediaite’s men’s room. It allows us to enter and observe alternate realities that are very similar to ours except for a few key details. So far, we’d only been using the portal to watch seasons four through six of Arrested Development (for the curious, four and six are a little disappointing but five is freaking hilarious!) but, this time, we decided to employ it for a loftier goal.

When we entered the dimension where the pie had met its intended target, the first thing we noticed was that none of the TVs in our office were tuned to Fox News, a rarity back home. I asked Parallel Jon (who looks just like me except for a goatee which, in my opinion, he can’t pull off) the reason behind this and he handed me a copy of the Wall Street Journal, apparently its last ever printed edition. The front page contained a giant headline, “RUPERT MURDOCH CLOSES NEWS CORP. AFTER GETTING PIE ON FACE”.

Reading the article was interesting. It quoted Parallel Murdoch thusly:

“When I was sitting there being interrogated and accused of malfeasance by the British Parliamentary, I really wasn’t paying attention. I mean, who cares what some stuffy suits have to say? But, when I got shaving cream on my face, that’s when I really learned my lesson.”

The article went on to quote Parallel Murdoch as explaining that he and his son would be turning themselves into British authorities and that, while he was away, all of his assets would be handed over to UNICEF. Sure enough, when we turned the television to the channel that used to be Fox News, it was now a telethon to end world hunger. From what we gathered watching it, the sizable Fox News audience had contributed enough money in one day to feed three out of seven continents.

We flipped through more channels and eventually came to BBC World News which was reporting on Parallel Marbles’ political ascent. It turned out that all of those people he mentioned in our world’s Guardian, the ones who wanted to pie Rupert Murdoch but couldn’t, actually exist and are a powerful political block. In just one day, they had had Marbles declared Prime Minister as well as Sexiest Man Alive and Totally Awesome Comedian. The BBC was interviewing one of them as we watched.

“Jonnie knew just what to do. Clearly, the best way to get back at Murdoch for everything his company did was to interrupt that stupid hearing by those powerful people who could bring down his entire empire and throw shaving foam at him. It’s so obvious! It was kind of like Martin Luther nailing his Theses to the church door. But, y’know, with shaving foam.”

This was all a little too much for us. We had to turn off the television and get some fresh air. However, when we got outside, we bumped into a person with entirely green skin. It turned out it wasn’t a person at all but rather an alien from the planet Brazon 5. His name was Zorgolax and he explained to us what he and his fellow aliens were doing on earth:

“We Brazonites have been watch this planet for many years, hoping to come down here and welcome you humans to the intergalactic community. However, we did not yet think you were ready. Yesterday though, when we saw that old man get a pie on him on TV, we realized it was finally time. Now we’re here to teach humans space travel, cure all diseases, and bring you on exciting space adventures with rad lasers and stuff.”

At this point, the group of us joined Zorgolax to travel the universe a bit (his lasers are indeed rad) and then finally returned, tired and happy, back through the portal and into our own dimension.

So what did we learn? Well, clearly, the world would be much, much different if Jonnie Marbles had been able to see his symbolic gesture through. What may have seemed silly to some of us was actually an absolutely noble move by a man who should be revered. Jonnie Marbles needs to be considered a hero and not at all a moron who forced himself into one of the most important stories in the world and wasted everyone’s time.

That’s right: a hero.

Carr suggested that Murdoch “apologized for everything and took responsibility for nothing.” Colbert immediately responded proudly, “that’s a leader!” As the conversation shifted to whether Fox News could also be implicated in the scandal, Colbert humorously rose to the network’s defense, claiming, “I’m not sure the Fox & Friends can hack into their own voicemail . . . they’re just not technically-savvy.”

Carr was most excited though that this story will continue to give him and his fellow newspaper reporters a lot of “juicy” things to write about, as he sarcastically (or perhaps openly) admitted that the business he is in is “based on the misery of others.” And with that as a goal, he even conceded that Murdoch and his newspapers often explain that best.

Watch the clip from Comedy Central below:

“This individual was incredibly powerful, many of these politicians fawned over him. They believed he was able to swing general elections with the newspapers that he owns,” said Bashir, reporting from London, where Parliament Wednesday was again taking up the scandal and questioning Prime Minister David Cameron. “A fairly aggressive and antagonistic debate today in the House of Commons,” Bashir said.

Watch it here, from MSNBC:

Morgan did a sarcastic laugh, then said, “I’m gonna hack you in a minute.”

Considering the size and scope of the NOTW brouhaha, Morgan took the remark in stride, but it was still unusual to see a news personality taking a ribbing from a stand-up comic on a game show. Can we see Louie Anderson heckling Geraldo Rivera on Family Feud next?

Here’s the clip, from NBC:

MP Louise Mensch brought up Morgan during the Rupert Murdoch testimony earlier today, specifically referring to a portion of his book The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade that seems to indicate Morgan knew of phone hacking. The excerpt in question specifically reads, “Apparently, if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear your messages. I’ll change mine just in case, but it makes me wonder how many public figures and celebrities are aware of this little trick.”

Mensch suggested that this implied Morgan knew about phone hacking, but on Twitter earlier, Morgan denied this was the case. Well, on The Situation Room today, Morgan and Mensch were brought together, and the results were nothing short of electrifying.

Wolf Blitzer introduced the segment by first asking Mensch to elaborate on her comments about the CNN host, but she said that she “can’t comment about it outside of the committee room.” Morgan, who was calling in during the segment, minced no words in giving his thoughts on Mensch’s reluctance to repeat her earlier accusations.

Well, I’m amused by her cowardice in refusing to repeat that allegation now… As she may be already aware, she came out with an absolute blatant lie during those proceedings. At no stage in my book or indeed outside of my book have I ever boasted of using phone hacking for any stories.

Morgan again insisted that during his tenure at both The Daily Mirror and News of the World he never hacked phones to get a story or published any story that was obtained through illegal phone hacking. But Morgan directed his comments back at Mensch, and absolutely ripped into her for not repeating her earlier words to his face (so to speak):

What she did today was… a deliberate and outrageous attempt to smear my name, CNN’s name, The Daily Mirror‘s name. And to have the breathtaking gall to sit here calmly and say “I can’t possibly repeat that because I haven’t got privilege” is an outrage. And I call on you to repeat it, show some balls, repeat what you said about me and then maybe go and buy a copy of my book The Insider and see where in that book, these claims that you made today in a televised committee watched all over the world, where that claim is in that book. because it isn’t there.

Mensch refused to respond to Morgan’s remarks, and after a commercial break, Morgan re-joined Blitzer on camera this time. Morgan argued that Mensch misunderstood the excerpt of his book. He claims he only brought up the issue of phone hacking in his book because someone he knew told him how easy it would be, and encouraged him to change his pin number. He also questioned Mensch’s “parliamentary privilege” defense, dismissing it as “a rather mysterious entity.”

Blitzer drew the conversation away from Morgan’s umbrage at Mensch and towards his personal relationship with Rupert Murdoch. Morgan credited the mogul for making him one of the youngest newspaper editors in the country, and referred to Rebekah Brooks as “one of my oldest friends.” His take from today’s Parliamentary hearing was that Murdoch had no idea that any phone hacking took place, and had he known, he would have cracked down on any illegal activities sooner.

Morgan also addressed Murdoch’s management style and how the boss rarely interacted with his underlings:

When [Murdoch] says he didn’t have much day-to-day contact with these papers, that’s true. I spoke to the editors of News of the World maybe once a week, maybe once every two weeks. He never asked me about methodologies of stories, he didn’t have time… I had editors, I have managers, I have lawyers, I have accountants. They do all the box ticking here. My job is just to get an overview of what’s going on.

When you run a company of 50,000 people, it is a bit ridiculous to expect Rupert Murdoch to be all over the microdetail of how each individual part of the company gets run. As he said, he may have been let down by other people that he charged to look after this detail, and big mistakes were made. And when it came to the phone hacking of the young missing girl and so on, utter outrages. And everybody shares that view.

Blitzer closed the segment by letting viewers know Morgan would have more on the story on his program tonight, so it’s clear that although most of the press he’s getting is not very favorable, Piers Morgan is suddenly a popular media topic, and everybody wants to hear his unique and very personal take on an issue that has captivated viewers all over the world.

Watch the video of the entire exchange below, courtesy of CNN:

On this morning’s edition of

The conversation was directed specifically to recently-named Squawk Box co-host Andrew Ross Sorkin, who is also known as a well regarded financial reporter for Fox News enemy The NY Times. While there are likely individuals that exist in the the world who believe that Fox News should be prosecuted “just for the way that they present the news,” as Kernen suggests, those individuals are also likely to be taken as seriously as the tin foil hats that protect them from Fox’s mind-control signals. In other words, Kernen makes a classic straw man argument in an effort to go to bat for his competitor, Fox News.

Watch the clip below, courtesy of CNBC:

(H/T Gabe Sherman)