News Of the Worst

The News of the World, Britain's largest newspaper in terms of circulation, a newspaper so much a part of British popular culture it is mentioned in two British rock songs ("Polythene Pam" by the Beatles and "Back On the Chain Gang" by the Pretenders) and lent its name to the title of a Queen album (the one with "We Will Rock You" and "We Are the Champions"), is publishing its last edition tomorrow, after 168 years in publication.

The paper, which Rupert Murdoch bought at the beginning of his quest for British media domination (world media domination would come later), was found to have hacked the cell phones of British royalty and celebrities, and then it hit a new low by hacking phones of murder victims and families of slain soldiers and terrorist attack victims. The News Of the World even hacked the cell phone of a thirteen-year-old girl who was murdered and kept listening to and erasing messages left by her family, leading them to think the girl was alive.

Though Murdoch is shutting down the paper after Sunday, the only people who will lose their jobs as a result will be low-level reporters and editors, not the News Of the World executives who allowed about all this and have since left.

Oh yeah, Andy Coulson, a former News Of the World journalist and a former aide to British Prime Minister David Cameron, was arrested for being greatly involved the scandal.

This affair shows just how incestuous British politicians and media executives are with each other - even more so than the United States. For a long time, British political leaders have acquiesced to the demands of the U.K.'s commercial media and have let them get away with anything. Fox News and the New York Post look like the BBC and the Boston Globe, respectively, in comparison to the media operations Murdoch runs in the mother country. Fox News merely promotes an agenda and hires Republican insiders as commentators; News International, Murdoch's British affiliate, pretty much has politicians from both the Labour and Conservative parties kowtowing to it for support . . . but especially to Murdoch and his henchmen - and henchwomen, like Rebekah Brooks, a former News of the World editor who's now a News International executive editor and a close friend of Cameron. The politicians looked the other way while the News of the World perpetrated this disgusting and reprehensible hacking practice.

News International recently handed over to the police e-mails showing that, while at News Of the World, Andy Coulson was actively condoning payments to the police, not just for stories - common practice in the United Kingdom - but also payments for confidential information and other things that are illegal to pay the police for.

Murdoch's attempt at buying acquiring parts of BSkyB, a major British satellite television company and subject to review by the British government, is pretty much in trouble now. Pretty soon, Fox News in the United States is going to be investigated for lying about, well, just about anything, and I hope I'm around to see it.

The Sun Never Sets?

For the first time since World War II, a coalition government has been formed in Great Britain out of a failure of the parliamentary elections to produce a majority in the House of Commons. The result is an unlikely alliance between the center-right Conservatives and the left-leaning Liberal Democrats. New Prime Minister David Cameron has appointed Liberal Democrat party leader Nick Clegg as his deputy, and the Cabinet has been divided among members of both parties. The loss of confidence in Labour resulted in their failure to cut a deal with the Liberal Democrats, who held the balance of power, and the resignation of former Prime Minister Gordon Brown as Labour Party leader.

Putting country over partisan interests (unheard of in America these days), Cameron has achieved what Barack Obama in the United States has failed to do - achieve a bipartisan plan to tackle the economy. Cameron and Clegg had to give up various pledges from their campaigns, such as the Conservatives's promise to raise inheritance tax thresholds and the Liberal Democrats's desire to offer amnesty to illegal immigrants. But the Liberal Democrats get, among other things, a tax-free allowance on income taxes up to £10,000 ($14,861) and a capital gains tax increase (you will never see that in America). The Conservatives have won on one of their biggest goals, an attempt to slash the tackle the £160 billion ($237.8 billion) national budget deficit with £6 billion ($8.92 billion) in spending cuts.

On foreign affairs, Cameron is committed to maintaining a British presence in Afghanistan to help the Americans establish stability in that country, even though the war is increasingly unpopular in both Britain and the U.S. Nick Clegg and his "Lib Dems" have had to bend on their pledges to cede additional powers to the European Union, as the more skeptical Cameron is afraid (understandably so, given the turmoil in the Eurozone of late) of surrendering more British sovereignty.

So, when do the Limeys make the transition to a new government? They already have. Number 10 Downing Street is clear of Brown's belongings, and the Camerons have moved in. The Brits don't make a fuss about a new prime minister with galas, inaugural ceremonies, or processions like we do with a new President. The Brits save that stuff for the monarchy. (Says more about us than them, doesn't it?)

Once installed as the new prime minister of Great Britain, David Cameron spoke to the British people and, having apparently picked up a bad American habit of political hyperbole, declared that Britain's best days "lie ahead."

Wait. Britain's best days "lie ahead?" Hello? They lost their empire! Notice the dearth of warships bearing the Union Jack compared to those flying the Stars and Stripes? Swinging London took its last swing decades ago! British popular music has never been so irrelevant! The Brits don't even make their own cars anymore; all their automotive brands are foreign-owned! And the U.K.'s best days are still ahead?

Oh well, maybe Cameron's performance in office will revive British comedy. :-D

London Calling

The British parliamentary elections are today, and they've taken an astonishing development. In this campaign, the leaders of the two major parties, the Conservatives and Labour, along with the leader of the Liberal Democrats, held an American-style debate on television. The leader of the party that wins the most seats in Parliament normally becomes the prime minister of Great Britain; he or she is ceremonially appointed by the Queen (who does everything ceremonially) based on the electoral results.

The debates mirrored the press-conference style joint job interviews we Americans mistake for a debate in the literal sense - so much, in fact, that I groaned at the idea of the Brits importing yet another bad American idea (as with hip-hop) and adopting it as their own. But an unforeseen development has taken place.

Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has gotten a lot of favorable press and free publicity for holding his own against and sounding fresher than Labour Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative Leader of the Opposition David Cameron in the debates. His party have been given another look by the British public, and his party stands to make a more than respectable showing in today's voting. The party manifesto, for lack of a better word, goes like this:

"The Liberal Democrats exist to build and safeguard a fair, free and open society, in which we seek to balance the fundamental values of liberty, equality and community, and in which no one shall be enslaved by poverty, ignorance or conformity. We champion the freedom, dignity and well-being of individuals, we acknowledge and respect their right to freedom of conscience and their right to develop their talents to the full. We aim to disperse power, to foster diversity and to nurture creativity. We believe that the role of the state is to enable all citizens to attain these ideals, to contribute fully to their communities and to take part in the decisions which affect their lives."

This ain't no Tea Party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around.

The Conservatives had been leading for weeks over Labour, in power for thirteen years, but the Liberal Democrats have been surging as a result of Clegg's debate performance. Still, a third of British voters are undecided, so the election could go any way. While the Liberal Democrats may not win a majority in the House of Commons, they may win enough seats to deny the major parties an outright majority and force a coalition government to be formed. And this is all because of a third-party leader having a great debate performance.

In the United States, the equivalent of a coalition government would likely be formed if a third party won enough seats in both houses of Congress to influence the major party caucuses and forced the presidential election into an Electoral College deadlock to be decided by the House (which would choose the President) and the Senate (which would choose the Vice President). Don't hold your breath. The electoral system in America is set up to make it impossible for third parties to prosper due to arcane ballot laws requiring more signatures for a petition to get on the ballot than a minor party candidate could ever hope to get. Third parties in the U.S. have historically managed to only siphon off enough votes from a major party candidate to deny him a victory.

The one time a viable third party seemed plausible is when Ross Perot ran for President in 1992 as an independent - his movement would become the Reform Party - and participated in the debates with Republican President George Bush and Democratic challenger Bill Clinton. (Based on Perot's standing in the polls, the debate commission let him in the debates. They had to.) Perot won 19 percent of the vote in that election without being a spoiler; he took as many votes from one major candidate as he did from the other. A new, viable party seemed within reach. Reality, of course, soon set in.

This is why I continue to believe that the British, for all the problems they have, are superior to us. They've been able to produce a system that allows for a third voice to be heard in public affairs and encourages greater participation in the electoral process. And then there's America, where we don't even allow a second voice to be heard in public affairs. On the one hand, as Bill Maher has said, we have one party that's beholden to corporate interests . . . and on the other hand, we have the Republicans.

With the use of televised debates -first pioneered in America half a century ago - the British have taken the American innovation of representative democracy and improved upon it, much like they did with rock and roll. But they still can't match American hip-hop.

Which is nothing for us to brag about.