Murdoch Vs. Allen Ginsberg's 'Moloch': The Mash-Up

7:14 PM PDT 7/15/2011 by Mitch Myers

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What happens when you substitute Rupert Murdoch for "Moloch" in Allen Ginsberg's haunting poem from "Howl?" Some 55 years later, the results are eerily telling.

Allen Ginsberg first performed his epic poem "Howl" at the Six Gallery in San Francisco on October 7th, 1955. A year later, the collection Howl and Other Poems, published by Laurence Ferlinghetti of City Lights Books, immediately became the subject of an obscenity trial.

Some 55 years after that, James Franco reenacted much of it for the silver screen in the movie Howl and the damning, sardonic prose was no less impactful (see clip from the film below).

Ultimately deemed not obscene by the honorable Judge Clayton W. Horn, Ginsberg's tome has since become one of the most famous poems of the Beat Generation -- and a telling one in light of recent events surrounding the News of the World hacking scandal; The haunting second section in particular, which pertains to the ancient Semitic deity Moloch.

What happens when you substitute (Rupert) Murdoch for Moloch? The results are downright creepy. Judge for yourself...

Murdoch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars!
Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old
men weeping in the parks!

Murdoch! Murdoch! Nightmare of Murdoch! Murdoch the loveless!
Mental Murdoch! Murdoch the heavy judger of men!

Murdoch the incomprehensible prison! Murdoch the crossbone soulless
   jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Murdoch whose buildings are
   judgment! Murdoch the vast stone of war! Murdoch the stunned
   governments!

Murdoch whose mind is pure machinery! Murdoch whose blood is running money!
   Murdoch whose fingers are ten armies! Murdoch whose breast is a
   cannibal dynamo! Murdoch whose ear is a smoking tomb!
   Murdoch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Murdoch whose skyscraper
   stand in the long streets like endless Jehovahs! Murdoch whose
   factories dream and croak in the fog! Murdoch whose smoke-stacks and
   antennae crown the cities!

Murdoch whose love is endless oil and stone! Murdoch whose soul is
   electricity and banks! Murdoch whose poverty is the specter of genius!
   Murdoch whose fate is a cloud of sexless hydrogen! Murdoch whose name
   is the Mind!