Diary: Palin – the white cat purring on Murdoch's lap

Matthew Norman on Monday
Monday, 29 November 2010

How to put the seal on media history's most remarkable career and cement the gnawing suspicion that you are the most powerful person on the planet? The answer for Rupert Murdoch is now plain. He apparently intends to put Sarah Palin in the White House, and this must give those of us who have glibly dismissed her chances in a general election, if not of winning the Republican nomination, excruciating pause for thought.

The extent to which the mother of Track, Trig, Thick, Thwack, Thump, Twit and Twat is Rupert's creature becomes clearer by the week. She is a contributor to Fox News and HarperCollins, a News Corp company, is bankrolling a publicity tour for the latest magnum opus heavily concentrated in key early primary states.

Yet more revealingly, The Wall Street Journal is swinging behind her as well, or "also too" as the Tina Fey version has it. This is of course purest coincidence. That noble title retains absolute independence from its owner's political inclinations. If a WSJ leader concluded, of a Palin article criticising quantitative easing (one The New York Times's Frank Rich impertinently dismissed as "transparently ghost-written"), that she "is way ahead of her potential presidential competitors on this policy point ... and shows a talent for putting a technical subject in language that average Americans can understand", good for it. She may not be able to see the Federal Reserve from her house, but she can certainly see the value of being the white cat purring on Murdoch's velvety lap.

Although the odds against her being elected the first Madam President remain reassuringly long, let us never forget that the first and perhaps only rule of human existence is that Rupert usually gets what he wants.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/diary/diary-palin-ndash-the-white-cat-purring-on-murdochs-lap-2146217.html

sent out from the dark tower by the wicked sorcerer Murdoch.