The Red Queen, in check. Rebekah Brooks answers questions.

Michael Wolf:

the support of Cameron, the tactical placement of Andy Coulson by Cameron’s side, and her cheek-by-jowl closeness to James Murdoch was part of a masterful design of reinventing herself as something dramatically larger, more significant and better compensated than a mere newspaper editor. And that, in her pursuit of this scheme, she was becoming the company’s uber political fixer and lobbyist. In other words, the exact nexus of all the issues Leveson has been empowered to investigate.
…
I don’t know Brooks well enough by any means to conclude that she is a sociopath, genius manipulator, or just an extremely dedicated careerist. But there is a certainly a baldness, even insouciance to her evasions and reinventions. Hers has been an extraordinary story, as rich as any, as intricately plotted as they come. And Robert Jay hardly began to get the flavor of it.

She is a figure far larger than mere press ethics. A novelistic construct. A self-imagined creature.

And now, she holds the Murdochs’ fate in her hands.

She escaped the hearing with no visible marks. Dan Sabbagh:

Brooks told the inquiry Cameron was one of a number of politicians, including George Osborne and Tony Blair, who sent her messages of support – indirectly, in the prime minister’s case – after she resigned at the height of the News of the World phone-hacking scandal in July 2011.

Lots of partying together, texts once a week, brief discussions that bore on the BSkyB bid, but nothing to put her in jail. She wasn’t asked about the matters for which she was arrested and will face trial: phone hacking and perverting justice. With questioning as poor as she got at the Levenson hearing, she might just skate.

Friday Cat Blogging

How The Charter-School Scamsters Bought Off The Black Elite

Bruce A. Dixon asks the question “Why Isn’t Closing 40 Philadelphia Public Schools National News?”, then proceeds to answer it as follows:

Ominously, the shredding of Philadelphia’s public schools isn’t even news outside Philly. This correspondent would never have known about it save for a friend’s Facebook posting early this week. Corporate media in other cities don’t mention massive school closings, whether in Chicago, Atlanta, NYC, or in this case Philadelphia, perhaps so people won’t have given the issue much deep thought before the same crisis is manufactured in their town. Even inside Philadelphia the voices of actual parents, communities, students and teachers are shut out of most newspaper and broadcast accounts.

The black political class is utterly silent and deeply complicit. Even local pols and notables who lament the injustice of local austerity avoid mentioning the ongoing wars and bailouts which make these things “necessary.” A string of black mayors have overseen the decimation of Philly schools. Al Sharpton, Ben Jealous and other traditional “civil rights leaders” can always be counted on to rise up indignant when some racist clown makes an inappropriate remark about the pretty black First Lady and her children.

Why? As Dixon goes on to mention. the millions of dollars showered upon people like Al Sharpton by charter-school backers (who include people like the WalMart Waltons and Erik Prince) might be a hint.

Towards the end Dixon mentions the following:

So the carving up of Philadelphia public schools IS a national story. It’s just one that corporate media won’t tell. Not in Philly, not in LA, not in Kansas City or anywhere, for fear that ordinary people might try to write themselves into a leading role. Polls show that the American people don’t want their schools privatized, and don’t believe education should be run by business people like a business. People want to take the money we spend on wars and bailouts and use it on education. Telling the story might give people the notion that the ultimate power is in their hands, not of mayors and chambers of commerce or the so-called “CEOs” of school system. It’s time that story was told, and more of us heard it.

Especially since even under the friendliest eyes, charters don’t do better than public schools.