It’s amazing Rupert Murdoch is still alive.
Firing Tucker Carlson may be the only decent thing the 92-year-old has done in his entire long life, and as always, he did it for money. Rumor has it the old man got tired of the expensive lawsuits (to find out who the source is, click here). That’s about money, too.
The rightwing, government-hating, Australian-born multibillionaire sure looks like he’s on his last legs. In early July 2022, according to Vanity Fair, he was hospitalized in London with “a serious case of Covid-19,” and he’s had a long list of other health problems, including “a broken back, seizures, two bouts of pneumonia, atrial fibrillation, and a torn Achilles tendon” (see story here).
Look, Rupert Murdoch is a crappy person, both in business and politics, and to his own family; Vanity Fair explains why in detail, and I don’t feel a need to go into it here. But I don’t wish for anyone to suffer, and I certainly didn’t gloat after reading he had “to spend the night on a gurney under a tent in the parking lot” of a Caribbean hospital (because the hospital had burned down) after a fall on his son Lachlan’s 140-foot carbon-fiber yacht (maybe a smaller boat would be better?).
This was when he broke his back, and after he was flown (on a private jet, of course) to a UCLA hospital, “he was in critical condition” and “kept almost dying.” That was in 2018, and I can’t say I’m sorry he survived to fire Tucker Carlson five years later. Carlson is a toxic demagogue who’s in it for the money, too.
This is when doctors “examining the X-ray … saw Murdoch had fractured vertebrae before …. Murdoch explained it must have been from the time his ex-wife Deng pushed him into a piano during a fight, after which he spent weeks on the couch,” Vanity Fair says. It seems he’s had an interesting life, and not in a good way.
After the boat accident, “Murdoch was in terrible shape” and his then-current (now ex) wife Jerry Hall had to “spoon-feed him for months.” Then, in 2019, he tripped in his mansion over a chessboard Lachlan gave him as a birthday present, tore his Achilles tendon, and he was stuck in a wheelchair “for months” (maybe a smaller house would be better?). And “was in and out of the hospital with pneumonia and seizures.”
While he was recuperating, he and Hall played cards a lot, and he usually lost. It sure sounds like being Rupert Murdoch, despite all the money and power, really sucks. (He eventually divorced her, or she divorced him.)
The Vanity Fair article goes into detail about how Murdoch hated Trump, but empowered him, because as usual he only cared about the money he’d lose if Fox viewers turned off their TVs. Murdoch is a whore, a mercenary. He’s also an ugly old man who has no business appearing in public wearing nothing but swim trunks (see photo, left). Oh, and his kids hate each other, too.
The author of that article says, “After interviewing dozens of people for this story, I was struck by how sad all the Murdochs seem.” He writes that Murdoch “built a $17 billion fortune” (Wikipedia said it’s $21.7 billion, but that was before the Dominion settlement, so it’s probably just $21 billion now) “out of a small newspaper company he inherited from his father. The only thing that mattered was profit. But amassing that wealth required Murdoch to destroy virtually anything he touched: the environment, women’s rights, the Republican Party, truth, decency—even his own family.”
As far as I’m concerned, the Republican Party and his family are expendable. But the environment, women’s rights, and above all truth and decency, are not. Make no mistake, Murdoch isn’t a good guy. He’s not admirable in any way. He’s despicable. This little blog belonging to a dead scientist I write for has more honor than Murdoch’s entire vast media empire. It’s not that hard to do. He has no excuse.
About the only worse person I can think of offhand is the one he put in the White House, Trump. It’s not known for sure that Trump hates his children, but he has no loyalty to anyone else, including Murdoch. When “Rupert called Trump … to tell him to accept defeat graciously and … that this stolen election stuff would drag everyone down, … Trump refused. Trump threatened to start his own channel and put Fox out of business.” That actually wasn’t much of a threat, because Trump is no businessman, and his media ventures flopped (like everything else he touches).
What you have in Murdoch and Trump is two larger-than-life cartoonish figures who’ve wreaked havoc and caused a lot of damage to the good things about our country. And this isn’t Murdoch’s country, so he had no business doing it.
They’re both old men. One of these days they’ll be dead, and a lot of people will say “good.” (I don’t wish for that; I’d be satisfied if they retired.) A couple generations from now, people will look back on these times the way we do with Willie Hearst and Mussolini. But they may wonder why history keeps repeating itself. And if the past is any guide, those future generations will have their own Murdoch and Trump to contend with, because rotten people keep rising to the top in all societies, including ours.
Maybe sociologists or anthropologists can explain it. I can’t.