Murdochavellian

Sturm and drang reigned when Rupert Murdoch bought the Wall Street Journal. The guy whose cable TV network is not really even a news organization was buying a flagship national paper.

I think the results have been pretty uneventful. The news pages have not gone FOXNews. But I do claim that the editorial page photographs have gone a little NY Post. Gone are the romantic retro woodcut illustrations. They have been replaced by full color photos. And if the photo editor likes you, you do okay, Speaker Pelosi has a Nightmare-on-K-Street photo that repeats frequently, and a common photo of the President makes him look a little hectoring.

Today's photo of Pay Czar, however, is my new favorite. This is the guy who is telling you how much money you can make! Here he is seemingly caught in the act:

Now anybody who appoints, approves, or accepts a position of Pay Czar in the United States certainly deserves this and worse. I just find it funny. Less humor abounds in the attached Homan Jenkins, Jr. editorial:

Mr. Feinberg is an apt symbol indeed, for this gamble is built on the conceit that Washington can hector the recipients, whether auto companies, banks or homeowners, into behaving in ways that are "responsible." So far, however, human nature is proving a disappointment: Take the outbreak of tax fraud related to the government's emergency home-buyer's credit.

Nor is the larger gamble looking so good either. Banks continue to fail at an alarming rate, the dollar is under assault, and Washington is looking at a future of trillion-dollar deficits. One might have guessed it would take a decade of Obamanomics to produce European welfare state levels of youth unemployment, but at 18.5% we're there.

But the picture is great.

Media and Blogging Posted by John Kranz at October 28, 2009 1:07 PM