REX BABIN, EDITORIAL CARTOONIST WITH THE SACRAMENTO BEE, PROBABLY HAS THE RIGHT IDEA in suggesting as above that bookstores would be better off putting Evita Reincarnate's pseduo-memoir Going Rogue: An American Journey in the Fiction shelves for the sake of Truth in Advertising.

As if that weren't enough, it's worth noting that you-know-who's religious beliefs are of the apocalypto sort as brings to mind:

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KEITH RUPERT MURDOCH, A/K/A "THE DIRTY DIGGER," SEEMS TO HARBOUR A KNOW-NOTHING BRAND OF DOUBLETHINK in response to recent suggestions that he may have pulled off a major flip-flop vis-a-vis whether News Corporation's corporate, let alone editorial, policies condone racism, bigotry and intolerance--especially the sort which can be excused as True Patriot Love in All Thy Sons Command if and when pushed.

We'll leave the details to the weekly roundup e-newsletter from Media Matters for America, as discussed this under a most alliterative heading of "Rupert's 'racist' revisionism":

Last week, Media Matters chronicled News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch's humanitarian efforts to help recuperate ailing Fox News superstar Glenn Beck by going on TV and announcing that Beck was right to call Obama a "racist." It was a curious comment for several reasons -- Fox News had already dismissed Beck's statement as an expression of opinion and not the position of the network, and people were already painfully aware that Beck hadn't faced any repercussions for his outburst. So in throwing his lot in with Beck, all Murdoch did was essentially confirm that outlandish attacks on the Democratic president are nothing short of official policy over at Fox News.

Then, of course, came the inevitable denial, in which Murdoch's spokesman stated without elaboration that his boss "does not at all, for a minute, think the president is a racist." Perhaps he was unaware that when you say things on TV, lots of people see it (unless, of course, you say it on Fox Business Network).

So you can understand why we were feeling a bit confused. Does Rupert Murdoch think President Obama is a racist or not? Well, there was only one way to get an answer -- ask Rupert himself. And that's exactly what we did. Confronted by Media Matters and asked which comment of the president's he considered racist, Murdoch responded: "I denied that absolutely. ... I don't believe he's a racist."

Well, that clears things up.

Wait. Actually, no ... it doesn't.

It's funny, in a way, to watch all this play out. Murdoch and his Fox News underlings know that even they have lines they can't cross, such as lobbing accusations of racism at the president, but they do it anyway, seemingly unable to help themselves. And when they do get in trouble, their response is always the same -- deny you said that thing that millions of people saw you say, make sure absolutely no one faces any consequences whatsoever, and move on to the next ridiculous story about Obama, which this week was the hyperventilating obsession over Obama's bow to the Japanese emperor.

Fox News would like everyone to believe that they operate under some sort of journalistic standard. If you want to be extremely generous and grant that this standard does in fact exist, then it's irreparably broken. Misbehavior is rewarded, accountability is nonexistent, and the ethical cues coming from upper management are hardly worth emulating.

(But then again, let's not forget that such racism and misogyny on News Corp's part may be global in nature, going back to his Australian mass-circulation tabloids whence Page Three originated ... and eventually moving to Great Britain following his purchase of the long-established [and rather ironically-named] Sunday gazetta News of the World in 1967, to be followed two years later with his purchase of The Sun ... @ about which time Page Three was introduced to British readers, eventually becoming a household term for soft-porn cheesecake imagery having no valid editorial value other than distracting attention.

(Not bad when the target audience of what the British call "red-tops"--as in mass-circulation tabloids specialist in little more than sport, crime, astrology and celebrity goss--is largely poor, undereducated, less sophisto and easily open to ideas which, unbeknownst to them until too late, may be dangerous to public interest or could otherwise conceal connexions to weird and unwholesome elements acting against the Nation. Which pretty much describes Fox Prolefeed's core audience here in our "morally superior" United States as much as those buying The Sun and/or the News of the World in Great Britain or even News Corp's mass-circulation tabloids "Down Under" such as the Herald-Sun in Melbourne, the Daily Telegraph in Sydney or the Courier-Post in Brisbane.

(And, for that matter, comparable to Monty Python's "Whizzo Butter" sketch as introduced the rather obnoxiously loud elderly women known to Old Pythonians of all nations as "Pepperpots":)