Tuesday, July 19, 2011

TOP STORY >> A Murdoch News Corp. should hire

By GARRICK FELDMAN
Leader executive editor

Wendi Deng Murdoch, who jumped to her husband’s defense when a British comedian threw a shaving-cream pie at the mogul yesterday, is the one Murdoch who deserves to run the beleaguered media empire.

Her husband Rupert, 80, was dozing off when he and his son James were testifying before a British parliamentary committee about their company’s lawlessness. The prankster rushed up to Murdoch and managed to get shaving cream on the great man’s suit.

Wendi punched the dastardly man, who was soon escorted out of the hearing room. She’s half Rupert’s age, fast on her feet and obviously trained in self-defense. She also acts as a nurse to the often confused Murdoch, who appeared medicated and had trouble hearing the questions from the parliamentarians.

She tried to stop the elderly tycoon from banging on the table while he was talking. Even after the shaving-cream incident, a shaken Murdoch insisted he was the best man for the job to straighten out the mess at the teetering News Corp.

The late British journalist Auberon Waugh caught on to Rupert Murdoch’s shenanigans 30 years ago, calling him “a national menace.”

Back in the early 1980s, Waugh described a typical Sunday issue of the porn-filled News of the World, which Murdoch shuttered two weekends ago because of the hacking scandal.

Waugh found these headlines on an Easter weekend when it was edited by Bernard (Slimey) Shirmsley — Slimey indeed:

“My seven lovers in one week, my two debs in one bed,” “Night of terrors for a naked civil servant,” “Massage girl’s dog chewed up his underpants,” “The sleeping wife and stranger in her bed,” “The hot blood of an ice-cream salesman,” “His Highness the Aga Khan was my first real lover, but it was Edward VIII who made me pregnant,” “We expose the shocking truth about G.A.Y.M.C.A,” “Secrets of girls who don’t love men...Our own Olympic games orgies by model Della,” “Frantic antics of Juicy Jackie and Sexy Sue.”

Those were the good old days of celebrity trash for cash before cell phones and computers.

Few people in this country know that the thrice-married Murdoch, despite his Fox News family-values fakery, is a pornographer: He knows naked pictures still sell, and loves to print them on page 3 in the London Sun and in his other tabloids. But he has expanded beyond paying for celebrity gossip and let his staff go straight to the source through hacking into phones and computers.

No wonder they’ve called him the Dirty Digger all these years.

The scandal that’s bringing down the Murdoch empire and much of the British establishment—including two top Scotland Yard officers and probably Prime Minister David Cameron — is now spreading across the U.S. The Dirty Digger’s employees have hacked into competitors’ computers and possibly cell phones of 9/11 victims.

The Murdochs have subverted Britain’s institutions for decades, from the media to politics, from the monarchy to the police, so it’s not surprising they would also hack and bully on this side of the Atlantic.

Although Murdoch and his son, who heads the company’s European and Asian operations, had hoped to contain the damage, the catastrophe is bringing down all their key executives. News Corp. will probably go on without a Murdoch running the company, which was founded by the old man more than half a century ago.

News Corp., which includes the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and Fox, should then set higher standards, renounce the thuggish and criminal behavior and give a large portion of their profits to charity.

Only when they head out to pasture will News Corp. reform itself and become a more responsible media company.