Murdoch performance made me think of Nixon and Hitler

Published: July 28, 2011
ILLTYD HARRINGTON: ‘AS I PLEASE’

THE gravediggers are working late into the night around Wapping village, burying like plague victims bad stories. The perpetrators are now transformed into victims. James and father Rupert enter the Commons witness room not as supplicants but two lost souls in an alien atmosphere anxious to plead extenuation and, if pressed, their version of the truth.

Rupert apparently coached by lawyers and fine actors, followed their instructions. “Keep your answers short: yes or no. Don’t rush. You are an old man missing your afternoon snooze.”

It was a masterclass which could have been given by Lee Strasberg at his New York method acting institute.
Some naïve souls expected Götterdämmerung but had to make do with a custard-pie farce.

Rupert, propped up by Mrs Murdoch and manipulated by her poking her hand in his back, blurted out in a moment of exasperation: “The News of the World is only 1 per cent of our operation.”

It could have been lifted from the blurb on a bottle of household cleaner. It kills 99 per cent of all known household germs.

The deference of the committee had not been seen since the State Opening of Parliament at the Queen’s entrance when there is a beatific silence.

This lot were more like the village cricket team committee regretting having to be unfriendly to their all-rounder who had been misbehaving in the bar.

The humble moguls spread humility like Irish butter and nobody took up the challenge. It was all very much more in sorrow than in anger.

The Digger waited for a strong cup of camomile tea to be brought.

Shakespeare says of Henry V’s regeneration: “Consideration, like an angel, came. And whipped the offending Adam out of him”.

This hesitant, stooped, and remorseful man was next seen swaggering down Sixth Avenue in New York City on Thursday.

He was back in the land where I watched 10 tobacco barons solemnly answer no when asked if nicotine was addictive. A good lesson in searching for honesty.

The House of Commons committee room was a pressure-free comfort zone. Questions were read out in a tired litany.

Confrontation and forensic examination with a shadow of contempt is no longer in the political lexicon. I long for the extraordinary moment at the height of McCarthyite period when Army counsel Joe Welsh strode out of McCarthy’s committee: “I will not stay in the same room as you, a creature beneath contempt.”

Here it is not the fashion to be blunt. Murdoch and son had replied to their formal letters of invitation to the Conservative chairman in personal terms, “Dear John”.

There was no such a harmony when I witnessed a trial in Palermo. Two penitenti were accusing their former friends in the Mafia of murder and plunder and any crime you wish to put a name to. The accused on that occasion were contained in a metal cage screaming the most unpleasant curses and making gestures which would have terrified a crocodile.

The Pope in imitation of Christ washes the feet of criminals on Good Friday.

Don’t wait for Murdoch to turn up at the Scrubs with a bowl of hot water and soap.

As I looked at this extraordinary performance, I thought of all of those professions of innocence we have heard over the years.

The Godfather Don Corleone before the Senate: “I am an American citizen and a legitimate businessman.”
Or the sweating brow of the contrite Richard Nixon at Watergate: “There will be no whitewash in the White House.”

“I did not have sex with that woman,” President Clinton.

“I have no more territorial ambitions,” Adolf Hitler.

This hacking business has spawned 13 inquiries already. Scotland Yard thinks it will take 10 years to investigate telephone tapping.

Lord Saville’s inquiry into Bloody Sunday lasted 12 and a half years and cost £220million. The obvious conclusion was there on that very Sunday – a fundamental reform of the Northern Ireland police force.

Meanwhile, the cockroaches scuttle around frightened by the light that is shining on them even temporarily.

Rupert was followed by the Ballad of Little Nell, the orphan of the storm.

Rebekah had come. Here she was, the once, the all powerful she-god.

On her last appearance she slipped in that the News of the World did pay for information to impecunious policemen.

She looked as if she was ready to speak on behalf of the Save the Children Fund.

I watched all of this with a cousin who is a priest and suggested that she looked like our granny’s Victorian print of St Veronica. My cousin used to know about saints as they’re stacked up in Heaven.

He corrected me: “Veronica prayed constantly to the Lord that she might be marked with the stigmata of Christ’s wounds.”

After a period of marathon praying she showed her unmarked hands to the believing crowd: “I have them on my hands but on condition that I do not show them.”

The crowd went wild with excitement.

In the absence of Goya, the great Spanish painter who saw into the gangrene behind some faces, we might have asked Gerald Scarfe to do the necessary exposure.

Remember Diogenes, that ancient Greek who wandered around Athens carrying a strong lamp? When asked he said: “I’m looking for one honest man.”

Me? I’d settle for the French philosopher,  La Rochefoucauld: “Hypocrisy is the homage vice pays to virtue.”
Put that above the gate to Fortress Wapping.