By D.C. Snoopster
The Daily Call (11/15/11)
LONDON – A recent committee hearing by members of Parliament regarding the extent of illegal phone hacking, surveillance and other illegal behaviors by conservative publishing billionaire icon Rupert Murdoch’s family owned News International took an unexpected turn early last week.
The normally staid decorum was rocked when Labour’s Tom Watson questioned James Murdoch about the illegal phone hacking scandal that has outraged Brits and tarnished the already dodgy reputation of Murdoch news enterprises. Murdoch, and his father, Rupert, have expressed shock and surprise at each revelation of an ongoing scandal that has revealed the family’s news operations hacked phones of some 6,000 people ranging from the British Royals to the grieving family members of dead soldiers and a murdered young girl.
At each turn, both Murdochs claimed no knowledge of the widespread phone hacking.
Watson asked the junior Murdoch if he was familiar with the code of “omerta” – where people “bound together by secrecy” pursued their objectives “with no regard for the law” and suggested that was “an accurate description of News International in the UK”.
Murdoch sat upright, ran a hand through his well-oiled hair, straightened the lapels of his sharkskin suit and with a bejeweled pinkie finger tapped the witness table, “Absolutely not. I frankly think that is offensive and that’s not true.”
Undeterred, Watson pressed on, “You must be the first mafia boss in history who didn’t know he was running a criminal enterprise.”
Murdoch glowered at the MP.
Reached at his BaDaBing Gentlemen’s Club, New Jersey mafia family boss Tony Soprano said he found it “offensive as shit” that anyone would even think to compare him to a Murdoch journalist.
“There’s absolutely no comparison between my family’s waste management business and supposed mafia involvement and the crappola that News International crew pulls,”. Soprano said, snapping a pool cue in two. “I mean, these are the same goombahs responsible for Fox News for Chrisakes.
“It’s a personal insult to me and all Italian people that the mafia would be compared to Murdoch’s operation. I mean Italians invented cappuccino for God sake!”
Clearly not worried about omerta, Soprano continued.
“So, yeah, sure, we run some numbers and been known from time to time to recycle electronic goods that fall off the back of delivery trucks and, yeah, so, okay, a few former business associates have turned up in the bay, but, hey, we’d never get as dirty as a Murdoch slime ball editor,” Soprano noted. “None of my capos or soldiers would ever, ever stoop so low to hack the freakin’ phone of a dead kid’s family.
“I mean we have a nice little family business here and a reputation to protect, unlike some families that are just shit from the get-go.”
(Note: All quotes from James Murdoch and Watson noted above are from British press reports. The details are just a little, shall we say, embellished.)
