Rupert Murdoch
Rupert Murdoch recently bought a house in New York that used to be owned by the Rockefellers' for $44 million dollars in cash. There are a couple of things about this that are badass:
$44 million. In cash.
The fact that the house used to belong to a Rockefeller. This shows that Rupert Murdoch understands his spiritual ancestors, his role in the world. Every era needs an evil, heartless plutocrat in can blame its problems on. And Rupert Murdoch is that plutocrat.
Rupert Murdoch is awesome because he's the closest thing the world has to an actual James Bond villain. If there's one man in the world who might ever possibly build a device to control the weather and freeze us all unless the governments of the world pay him several billion dollars and recognize Fox News's copyright of the phrase "Fair and Balanced," it would be Rupert.
The man has amassed a giant fortune and news empire through consistently pandering to the lowest common denominator and relentless yellow journalism, in true William Randolph Hearst fashion. He got big in Britain by putting topless girls on page three of The Sun and the Daily Mirror. Unfortunately for us all, he was unable to use this tactic in the U.S., so he had to latch on stuff like the non-existent killer bee threat to get a foothold over here.
Of course, he also owns the Fox networks, which have given the world some great TV shows, but mostly tasteless sitcoms and horrible reality shows about gold-digging idiot whores. And then there's Fox News. Rupert must have gotten up one day and said, "I don't like liberals, so I'm going to start my own news channel where blowhards like Bill O'Reilly can yell at them all day. I'll put a few liberals on to keep a semblance of balance, but they'll all be weak shrill, chinless she-males like Allan Colmes. And I'll throw in a few freaks like Geraldo and Greta Van Susteren to kill time. Excellent." It's not really the politics of Fox News I find badass as much as Murdoch's ability to start up his own blatantly obvious propaganda news network.
Rupert Murdoch is badass because for all the talk to about evil corporations around today, even those clowns at Enron can't compete with a good old-fashioned robber baron like Rupert. He's a super-rich, selfless jerk who doesn't even attempt to hide it. He's Mr. Burns come to life with his own propaganda machine. He's awesome.
