• SheeEttin@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      His son Lachlan Murdoch is taking over. Lachlan has been co-chair of News Corp since 2014, and a director before that. Given that Rupert is 92, I’m sure that Lachlan has already been calling the shots for a long time. This is not really a change.

    • Son_of_dad@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      I’m assuming he’s still running he company and this is just for appearances or financial reasons. There’s no way he won’t have control of what they do or say

    • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Things always change. They just never get “perfect” because a new problem is always around the corner. Life is certainly no utopia though, nor will it be any time soon. We will not live to see the end of problems.

      That’s what it seems like people are hoping for anyway, some kind of problem-free world. It is unrealistic.

        • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          No, I just see 40 years on a scale bigger than my own lifetime. Again, I don’t expect to live to see the end of these problems. I will probably die of old age before they are all completely solved. Just like many other problems were actually solved before I was ever born.

          • NOT_RICK@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            You sound like someone at a book club talking about the book they didn’t read. Murdoch was the one causing the problems. His son will likely continue to use his father’s media empire to lie and manipulate.

            • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              No, he’s not a cause. He’s a symptom. This is an example of “great man history”, where Murdoch is seen as somehow special, and if we had prevented him from fucking shit up, things would be fine.

              I would argue that if he didn’t do it, someone else would’ve, because it’s a systemic problem, and he is just one example of it, just like Trump. They are not the cause of illness, but a symptom of illness.

              • _cerpin_taxt_@lemmy.world
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                8 months ago

                Dude literally created the 24 hour news cycle and the dogshit that has been destroying the US for the last few decades. You think all those people would have gathered on January 6th without Faux News telling them the election was stolen?

                • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  Murdoch was responsible for a lot of horrible shit, Jan 6th for sure, but he did not create the 24 hr news cycle.

                  Why is everyone suddenly trying to pretend I’m defending Rupert Murdoch? I said things do change. That is not the same as liking Rupert Murdoch. I’m not in a kids sub, so wtf is going on…?

                • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  I’m not really confident enough to say. Like all things with society, its very complex, an equation with dozens or hundreds of variables, not just a few.

                  There’s a lot of theories though, income inequality and expanding corporate influence are commonly attributed factors. It’s really the rise of populism that we’re looking at, and that’s ultimately rooted in citizen dissatisfaction. That’s what opens the door for people like Murdoch and Trump in the first place.

            • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              We’ve solved a lot of problems in the past few decades, just not all of them, and we added new ones on top.

              Stop hoping for a problem-free world. Your children, if you choose to have some, will see problems of their own. Some will be those we’ve failed to address. Others will be brand new.

          • Endorkend@kbin.social
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            8 months ago

            The problem of people like Murdoch have been around since time memorial. Patently bad people have always and likely will always exist.

            It’s only how much influence they are able to have that ebbs and flows over time.

            And we’re back in a period where these people have a whole lot of power.

            • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              Excellent point. This is how I view it as well. The problems that they bring are not without solutions.

      • pyromaster55@lemmy.world
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        8 months ago

        I’d be happy to see a world where people don’t actively create problems for others due to greed, ignorance, or bigotry.

        We got enough problems from natural disasters, disease, accidents, etc. If people could just not be dicks and not fuck each other over constantly that would be cool.

      • darq@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        That’s what it seems like people are hoping for anyway, some kind of problem-free world. It is unrealistic.

        I think you are mistaken. People are upset for a lack of progress. How the pace of improvement is endlessly kneecapped.

        We won’t live to see the end of our problems. But there are several problems in our lives that could be ended very, very quickly if we actually gave a damn.

        • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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          8 months ago

          While I understand there’s been some very disappointing backsliding in the past decade or so, in order to see no progress anywhere you need to cherry pick your examples to actually avoid areas of improvement.

          I blane clickbait media and its doomerism.

          • darq@kbin.social
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            8 months ago

            Do you not understand how people work or something?

            Nobody is saying there has been “no progress anywhere”. But they’ll still be upset when there is little progress, or backsliding, on issues that affect them or that they are passionate about.

            It’s really quite condescending to waffle on about how suffering people need to look at the big picture, and how it’s unreasonable to expect their suffering to be alleviated during their lifetimes, when there really isn’t a good reason why they should be suffering as much as they are to begin with.

            • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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              8 months ago

              I was specifically responding to someone who said “things don’t change”. It sure sounded to me like “no progress anywhere”. Sorry if my response upset people, but I simply cannot agree that things don’t change.

              • darq@kbin.social
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                8 months ago

                I was specifically responding to someone who said “things don’t change”.

                The actual message was:

                I’m hoping things will change. Things will not change.

                Yeah I think people are upset because you are attacking positions nobody is taking, and disparaging progressives in the same breath.

                • Candelestine@lemmy.world
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                  8 months ago

                  I’m not disparaging progressives in the slightest, I’m saying we get some wins sometimes. We do succeed in improving things sometimes.

                  So, what’s the difference between “things don’t change” and “things will not change”?

    • CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml
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      8 months ago

      Even if he does, it doesn’t really matter. He already caused immeasurable damage to the world, destroyed who-knows-how-many lives and got to live well into his 90s in unimaginable opulence.

      Plus he’s stepping down on his own terms, nobody ousted him. None of his enemies ever managed to take him down, and he’s got his legacy all set up. When he does eventually die, it’ll most likely be in a comfortable hospital bed surrounded by some the best doctors in the world making sure it goes as well as it possibly can.

      He dedicated his entire life to being an evil bastard and he completely, utterly won. I don’t think there’s anything much that could even hurt him at this point.

  • Rapidcreek
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    8 months ago

    I’m not sure you could point to any other single person who has had a more damaging impact to the country than this piece of crap. In any case, it will probably get worse.

      • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
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        8 months ago

        Harry Anslinger!

        Yup. One of my favorite scumbags to tell people about.

        Marijuana was Anslinger’s golden ticket. He used his office to trumpet the association between weed and violence, so that it could be criminalized. “You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother,” he was known to have said. McWilliams explains that in this effort, “Anslinger appealed to many organizations whose members were predominantly white Protestant.”

        From the beginning, Anslinger conflated drug use, race, and music. “Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men,” he was quoted as saying. “There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz and swing result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

        https://timeline.com/harry-anslinger-racist-war-on-drugs-prison-industrial-complex-fb5cbc281189

        Let’s include Ehrlichman as a runner up though!

        “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people,” former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman told Harper’s writer Dan Baum for the April cover story published Tuesday.

        “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.”

        “Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

        https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/index.html

        https://www.businessinsider.com/nixon-adviser-ehrlichman-anti-left-anti-black-war-on-drugs-2019-7

  • SeaJ@lemm.ee
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    8 months ago

    His son is also a giant piece of shit but that is not exactly surprising.

  • DarkGamer@kbin.social
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    8 months ago

    I have a hard time thinking of someone who has done as much damage to democracy, truth and decency worldwide as Murdoch. He’s a truly deplorable person. May he fade away and no longer darken our futures.

  • DominusOfMegadeus@sh.itjust.works
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    8 months ago

    “Rupert Murdoch created all of this and so much more across America and the globe,” Hemmer said. “His life’s work has left an indelible imprint on the global media landscape. His contributions are both innumerable and extraordinary and we thank him for letting us be a part of it all.”

    • anchor Dana Perino

    I love how nothing in this paragraph says that he was a good person, good leader, or contributed anything beneficial to anybody, ever.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    I saw his name and was looking forward to reading an obituary. Unfortunately he’s still going to be pulling the strings behind the scenes.