Marcy, if you want to get all society and Europeany and so forth, then one subject that is very undercovered is social class. Watch the rhetoric in the U.S. and it’s all the rich vs. the middle class. That may well reflect the evolving binary division of wealth. But only yesterday did I hear Obama, for example, referring to the working class and even the poor. It was a rare reference.

Even Move-on in its vid-promo about the declining middle class, didn’t acknowledge directly that we have a multi-class, multiteiered society. The “middle class” (in Move-on’s romantic description of Ozzie and Harriet Fifties) has been shrinking. Well what has it become? Middle, working, and poor?

In any case, I think with your background you could do quite a bit with the subject of evolving social stratification, and “class” as reflected in life style, and mixed with gender and race politics. It’s not just economic, not just income distribution.

Just a thought, or two, for you to consider.

Good luck, Marcy! I’ll be following you over the fold, so to speak.

So it was Rebekah Brooks who called PM Brown to tell him that the Sun was going to publish the story about his son’s illness. She had to know this information was “dirty.” Off with her head! http://www.newsonnews.net/bbc/9997-bbc-newsnight-rebekah-brooks-complicit-in-gordon-brown-son-story.html

How about a classic British response: a white paper — to wash everything clean in the end?

First, of course, all the investigating and prosecuting has to go on, and this will take many months.

Second, the white wash. But who will survive the first step? So many people have been compromised for such a long time.

That’s what I surmise, too.

The things that are most interesting for U.S. politics in this involve the risk to Murdoch’s man in charge of the Dow Jones Co (Hinton) and the nominal person in charge in UK, Murdoch’s son. If both of those people were taken out in an investigation (possibly in both cases for perjuring themselves or for knowing things that they failed to act on), then who’s left to run the store — on both sides of the Atlantic — for the old man? I’m waiting to see if there are implications for FoxNews.

Uh-oh, SaitinWound, could it be that NoW has hacked FDL?

Marcy, I think a safer assumption is simply that Camerson knew his only route to the PM role was to curry favor with Murdoch personally. And he may well have hired Coulson for that general reason, without thinking in the concrete terms that you suggest.

That said, the more I read about this scandal (and The Guardian is the best source, I think), the more it seems that this government is on the brink of falling and they are now bailing water (with both Cameron and Clegg speaking critically of the BSkyB deal, etc.).

It’s always interesting to read tomorrow’s (July 10) news today. Thanks for the link.

Something fishy indeed. It has the flavor of the term “surgical strike.” We only cut into or cut out the parts that are threatening. No collateral damage to our society, our international reputation, the soldiers in uniform, and the unfortunate innocents who are taken out when our surgical efforts go awry.

I still recall vividly the headline of a Krugman article from December 2008: “Fifty Herbert Hoovers.” Worth a read still: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/29/opinion/29krugman.html

“Swipe” fees are aptly named. The banks basically threatened that if they can’t get their profits this way then they’ll use their monopoly power to get them some other way.

Hi Marcy. Back again I responded to your tweet earlier and made a starting donation. Now I’ve added some more. Since I didn’t go through the general FDL membership page, I’m not sure the two (small) donations will be added together or counted in your “new member” count. I hope they will be.

Hi Marcy. I made a starting contribution. You’re writing on one of my “favorite” topics.