Frank Furedi, and perversity for the sake of stupidity ...

(Above: wondering about that promised page 3 of Rupert Murdoch topless? Here it is).

Another day in Murdoch la la land, and what do we find.

Well in the digital edition - before the paywall introduces bliss, peace and quiet throughout the intertubes - The Australian leads with an astonishing "exclusive" by Dennis Shanahan, entitled "Inappropriate' lobbying by ABC (sic, inverted commas, sic).

It turns out that sensitive wilting Federal cabinet ministers have been hurt and bewildered by vicious, vile personal lobbying by ABC cardigan wearers, when all the sweet things want to do is award the Australia Network tender to Sky News.

Amazingly the wretched one-eyed ABC lobby group the Friends of the ABC has directly written to actual ministers, and Mark Scott has telephoned a few people. This has left Mr. Ferguson and Ms Roxon completely aghast, and how refreshing it is to see The Australian take such a disinterested interest in the matter.

Shanahan has now "exclusively' revealed that the ABC has been more aggressive than the commercial bidder in its lobbying, which was unusual, according to unnamed senior government sources. However the pond can now "exclusively' reveal that the commercial bidder has also lobbied the government. Will there be no end to this lobbying and to the completely inappropriate torment of hapless government ministers, who only want to do the right thing, and hand everything over to Rupert Murdoch?

Oh pass me the irony jar, I feel like spending up big.

So what else have we got? Well there's Greg Sheridan, so called foreign editor, and inter alia, expert climate scientist and economist, rabbiting on in his usual way in Bizarre impost will damage economy. It turns out that Sheridan knows more than that wretched bunch of economists who voted Tony Abbott's direct action plan off the island, and instead decided that a carbon tax had at least something going for it, which you can read about in PM trounces Abbott in economists survey. (sic, I know the economists own the survey, and hence deserve an apostrophe, but today The Australian and the pond have declared war on subbies and grandma).

I guess this puts Sheridan in bed with Tony Abbott with his view of economists and the dismal art, and provides an expert commentary on the quality of the economists rather than the merits of the argument. Alternatively, '"bizarre" might best be used describing the bizarre meanderings of Sheridan, which happen also to be at odds with the anonymous editorialist, who comes up with Putting a cap on bad policy, wherein the anon edit suggests that Tony Abbott might consider devising a rational, long-term policy in the matter of carbon.

But no one reads the anon editorialist, not when they can gain the splendid insights of Arthur Sinodinos in Dubious path to reduced carbon - and yes, when Arthur talks of dubious non-market based paths, somehow he avoids talking about Tony Abbott's distrust of economists and market-based policies. It turns out, you see, that the current government scheme is a "good dose of Abbott-style direct action."

But it's in the matter of News Corp versus the world that The Australian excels itself. Yesterday The Punch broke its silence with Tory Sheperd's News of the World scandal doesn't make us all hacks - shorthand summary 'it wasn't us, and we didn't do it', aka the Bart Simpson defence - and today the Oz tops that as Stephen Brook cogently explains the true extent of illegal conduct by UK newspapers in Papers of every stripe resorted to black arts - shorthand summary, 'everybody's doing it, so why shouldn't NOTW do it too', aka known as the Bart Simpson explanation for why there are plenty of paws and no cookies in the jar.

But wait, there's more, and now it's time for your free set of verbal steak knives, as Frank Furedi explains how it's all the fault of the evil elites in Outraged cultural elites name and shame the evil tabloid hackers.

Yes, once more the elites have conspired to do down that gentleman Chairman Rupert as he quietly, unostentatiously goes about the business of giving the punters what they want. To make up this narrative, you have to fling about grand words like "cosmopolitan", and "elites" and variants thereupon, to the point of nausea.

People in the pub are not having animated debates about the News of the World's heinous behaviour. Rather it is the Twitterati and those most influenced by the cultural elite who are drawn to the anti-Murdoch crusade.

Actually the scandal has been festering for years, what with previous endless tidbits about politicians, royalty and celebrities being hacked, but the only time anyone noticed was when people in pubs (remember, the twitterati never attend a pub, and nor do cultural elites) noticed that the hackers had hacked a dead girl's phone, deleted messages, confused a police investigation, and doubtless caused much anguish to the dead girl's family. Pure tabloid gravy.

Naturally in the name of the common people Furedi doesn't give a flying fuck about such effects on the common people. Nor for that matter, it seems, the impact on the police, who played footsie, took money, and even on one occasion found scribbling for Murdoch a suitable outlet for literary ambitions.

No, it's all dressed up in the cant of elite v. masses, thereby avoiding the favourite tactic of newspapers to ascertain the will, the voice, of the masses.

The Poll!

Well it seems that 83% of punters think that News International should have apologised earlier for the phone hacking scandal, and 73% of respondents said that Rupert Murdoch would have too much control of the media if the BSkyB buy-out went ahead (here). And according to another poll for ITV, 82% think Rebekah Brooks should go, 49% think David Cameron's handled the affair badly, 77% worry about a corrupted police force, and 72% think the buy-out should be reconsidered. (here).

Oh dear, and we do so love our Newspolls in the antipodes. The masses have spoken, and they are at one with the 'leets.

But back to Furedi, who in a finely woven, intricate argument, ends up at this point:

The News of the World turned the cultivation of outrage from below into an art form. And paradoxically, its demise is largely due to the outrage from above directed against it by its opponents. The group-think, group-speak moralising of the crusade against the Evil Murdoch Empire is the cultural elite's equivalent of the anti-pedophile name-and-shame campaign.

Of course he only does it to shock. Or perhaps to tease. He doesn't do it to make any sense of the matter, that's for sure.

Really the pond does understand the practising of perversity for the sake of perversity - it does it all the time - but for perversity for the sake of stupidity, you really need to turn to the likes of Frank Furedi.

What a pity he's too minor a fish to have had his phone hacked and his personal details revealed for all to salivate over ...

Not to worry. At the end of it all, Furedi ends up with a grand cliched stereotype of the first water, worthy of a cultural warrior on elitist crack:

A powerful mood of cultural dissonance prevails in British society today. Under the surface, there is an increasingly uneasy relationship between conflicting values and lifestyles. Sometimes it appears as if the cultural elite and "the rest" live in entirely different worlds. Such dissonance is particularly striking in relation to how the tabloids are perceived.

For the cosmopolitan elites, the tabloid is a lowlife and degenerate form of media, which could only possibly be considered satisfying or interesting by morally inferior people. For the millions of people who buy these papers, they are merely sources of news and entertainment.

Yep, it's perversity for the sake of stupidity.

Whenever I read people banging on about cultural elites - especially in an elitist rag pitching to the AB demographic in the antipodes - I feel like reaching for my gun (Glock please), but when you get to the stratosphere with Furedi, only a grenade launcher will do.

So here it is in simple English.

No one objects to tabloids being a source of news and entertainment, except scousers outraged by the treatment of Liverpool FC (damn you Sun, damn you to eternity) and fans appalled by the treatment of Lady Gaga.

But when criminal actions are condoned, and the corruption of police excused because it might have an affect on tabloid culture and Rupert Murdoch's profit, that's when you get morally inferior people.

Actually tabloid readers are better than that, and have a better understanding of the world and right and wrong than Frank Furedi, who in his contortions, and distortions, and humbuggery and academic quotations, and pious self-justifications, truly comes across as that most wretched, damned object ... a member of a cultural elite, and worst of all, one of those self-serving cultural elitists who just wants to sell out to Rupert Murdoch.

Now can we all just get back to a quiet beer in a pub of your choice, and a quiet chuckle about the Murdoch empire?

After all, there's pure quiet elitist pleasure and comedy gold in the tapping of a dead girl's phone ...

(Below: Steve Bell having a quiet chuckle. More Bell here at a dangerously elitist site).