Today's Murdoch Media Wanker Of The Day is Greg Sheridan:
Of course, the very use of the term neo-conservative normally indicates a commentator is about to speak dishonestly. Often enough the term neo-con has betrayed a kind of low-wattage anti-Semitism with, as one wag put it, con standing for conservative and neo standing for Jewish.If we had an Australian version of Media Matters, somebody would go back and look at all the times Sheridan and his War Criminals friends have used the term "neo-conservative". And somebody might note the original dishonest commentators:
The term neoconservative was originally used as a criticism against liberals who had "moved to the right"... The first major neoconservative to embrace the term was Irving Kristol, in his 1979 article "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed 'Neoconservative.'"I know, I am shooting fish in a barrel here. But why isn't anybody else doing it? Has criticising the Murdoch media become as taboo as criticising Israel?
I mean, here we have the top political editor of possibly Australia's most influential newspaper spouting totally preposterous nonsense, such as that the USA responded to the attacks of 9-11 by "by tripling its overseas aid budget" and keeping its military budget "at normal peacetime proportions of its national wealth". Oh really?
Even if your definition of "US military budget" does not include Star Wars, Veterans Affairs, maintenance of nukes, or payments to mercenaries like Blackwater, and even if you redefine US military and economic support for puppet governments as "overseas aid", you still cannot make such an argument with a straight face. The only way you can do it is if - like the Bush/Cheney administration - you exempt the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (funded through supplementary spending bills outside the Federal Budget). And even then, you still need to ignore things like the black budget and military-related spending by the CIA, the FBI and other agencies.
In short, it is totally misleading B.S. So why is the senior political editor of a major Australian newspaper peddling such propaganda?
More importantly, why is nobody calling him on it?
PS: You won't find any anti-Semites at News Ltd! Today's O.O even pimps the new advertising campaign by Frank Lowy's Westfield shopping centers, complete with helpful westfield.com.au website links. Did I mention that Frank Lowy is a "prominent Jewish Australian businessman"?
