Big Fish, Little Fish

The concentration of power continues. The few control the many. Rupert Murdoch is in serious negotiations to buy the Wall Street Journal.

This is yet another example of gigantism crushing the moderate size enterprise. Last night I was watching the History of the Brooklyn Dodgers on HBO and it was the same old story. (By the way, I met Jackie Robinson when I was 11 years old.) The Dodgers were always playing the all-white Yankees in the World Series and there we saw the continuation of the big fish swallowing the small fish (the Yanks always won) not unlike the great white shark swallowing baby walruses.

We are seeing this again with Rupert Murdoch who will not be happy until he owns every newspaper in the world. Authoritarianism and power are crushing the small creatures. The mom and pop newspapers (even though Dow Jones is a big company, but not as big as News Corp.) are around no longer. In addition to Rupert earning more money and gaining more power with the purchase of the Journal, Murdoch has some new ideas for the paper. He wants to change it to a scandal sheet with sex and sizzle. I would not be surprised if there are topless girls on the front of the paper, more features on Paris Hilton and a Page Six-like gossip column on the after-work prowlings of young stock traders. If he is smart he will start taking high-priced hooker ads and will become the Hustler of Wall Street.

Rupert is the Hitler of the printed world yet he will not be stopped because even though he is old and decrepit, he hires his zombie children to run his enterprises so we will be living with Murdoch Monarchy/Monopoly for a very long time.