SEX , MONEY, POWER = DIVORCE, PRENUPS, POSTNUPS

Rupert Murdoch divorces Wendi Deng.   Did she not see it coming?  

 What has caused Rupert to strike first?

The first shot, in anger, fired by Murdoch himself, in a sudden filing of divorce action against his third wife may have been a reflex reaction to the releasing of rumors of Wendi’s friendship with former British Prime Minister Tony Blair. 

Blair Murdoch & Deng Triangle

Murdoch known for striking first, punches harder after being struck, apparently had a black eye the day before the filing.  Wendi, notorious for her famous left hook to a pie thrower two years ago could have been the cause, for she has been known as a home-wrecker.

Wendi, a fast learner had become more competent, perhaps more than he bargained for.  Upstaged by her, he regarded her as a hyper-social irritation with a challenging Chinese accent.  Murdoch grew tired of hearing how Wendi is an excellent networker.

This is a story about a man, while devoting his life to being indestructible, seems to be more beset by emotional turmoil and confusion with great angst and an unrequited quest for happiness.  Murdoch’s first wife, Patricia Booker, a flight attendant were married for 11 years and had a daughter Prudence.   He divorced Booker in 1967 and within months Murdoch married his second wife Anna Murdoch, a journalist working in his Sydney  newspaper, The Daily Telegraph.

Murdoch with Anna

Now tired of Anna after 34 years, mother to his three children, who had been ill for several years.   They lived in this big house in Hollywood.  Lonely, he was known to have wandered down Fox offices in Los Angeles, every night desperately looking for people to have dinner with, Murdoch executives learned to have the excuses ready. He promised to retire but what he was really looking for was to up his game

Murdoch has always put his business interests first and has taken huge gambles and created whole new industries.  In the process, his opponents claimed, he manipulated governments, lowered standards and sidestepped regulations, to become the world's first truly global media mogul.

Then, on a trip to Star TV, his Hong Kong based television company, he met Wendi Deng 28, a graduate of Yale business school and already the mascot and heartthrob of the Star office.  Patterns in life are a key to understanding a man’s regular manner of performance.  It seems he mixes staff with pleasure.

His marriage to Wendi within months of divorcing Anna celebrated in his yacht “Morning Glory” in New York, invigorated him.  At 68 when they got married, he felt rejuvenated by the youthfulness, the freshness and energy plus the excitement perhaps turned him on. And of course she became an adoring audience that could spar with him on an equal basis.   Besides the fact that he was pushing business in China, he needed her connections.

Her hyper neurotic personality of fast talking, fast acting with her strong Chinese accent in broken sentences were hard to follow but captivating.  Murdoch allegedly told a friend in 2009, “I don’t understand a word she says”. 

Born with a fiery ambition, cunning mind, a home wrecker, brash, and like a tigress who snares her prey with great executional skills.  She has been branded as a “gold digger” “trophy wife” and lately “tiger wife”.  Whatever that has been thrown at Wendi Deng Murdoch, she has shown exceptional skills at leapfrogging when cornered. 

In contrast, Murdoch inherited his newspaper business from his father, the Sunday Mail and the News and continued to purchase other media outlets over the years.   He bought The Sun and News of the World in the UK and prior to his election invited Tony Blair to Australia. The Sun to the surprise of many, endorsed Blair at the 1997 election. Murdoch only backed winners and made it ruthlessly clear that once the Labour Party's fortunes declined, it would switch allegiance.

He had a tendency to fall out with his editors and interfered too much.  His papers have been frequently accused of political manipulation, distorting news to ensure his political allies won elections.   He has been called vulgar and a cynic who has degraded standards of journalism by pandering to a sensation seeking public.

But his papers were frequently accused of political manipulation, distorting the news to ensure his political allies won elections.

Wendi Deng circled in red

Whereas Wendi, the low level factory worker’s daughter, had her beginnings in Shandong, China as a Subei ren, a vernacular term for the robust, rosy cheeked folk of northern Jiangsu, known for being blunt, blithe and uncouth. These traits are still there, just polished by beautiful homes, fine clothes and her powerful and jet set friends, which mask the true motivation lurking behind her personality make-up.

“Emotional sadness builds character.”  She was quoted about the trying times the family are going through right now with Murdoch’ s  News Corp phone hacking scandal involving top echelons of parliament, the police and the newspaper industry.   Those words are very telling of her own childhood.   Being the youngest of three girls, her family was very tough on her.  Rigorously disciplined, her parents made her study a whole textbook during the summer holidays so that she would be ahead in class for the following school year.   They pushed her very hard to work both at home doing chores and at school.  The oppression, the strictness and harsh enforcement on girls in China and at home, is the key to her consuming desire to claw to the top.

Wendi Deng’s arrival in the US in 1988 was carefully orchestrated.  Initially wanting to improve her English, she attached herself to the Cherry family.  Jake Cherry, then 50, was an engineer for a Sino-American joint venture in Guangzhou.  His wife Joyce at 42, tutored Wendi before returning to Los Angeles with the couple’s two children.  Jake stayed on to finish his contract.   Wendi, as Jake’s interpreter became close and as 19 year olds do, leveraged her youth on an unsuspecting lonely older married man.  She abandoned her medical studies and seized the opportunity by asking Joyce to apply to local US colleges on her behalf.   The Cherry’s sponsored her student visa and  upon arrival shared a room with their daughter in California.    Two years down the line Joyce discovered that Jake and Wendi were having an affair so she kicked them both out of the house.  In 1990, the two got married.  Two years seven months into the marriage, Jake turfed her out when he discovered Wendi was having an affair with a younger David Wolf. Jake became disposable after having obtained her a Green Card seven months earlier.

Just like a predator waiting patiently for the kill, she goes about finding the most susceptible areas in high-powered men, generally despised by others.  Much like the qualities of a Honey Badger, that has a ferocious reputation reflecting its tendency to attack animals larger than itself and is seldom preyed upon.

As an intern at Sky News in Hong Kong, she took advantage of people’s naiveté and niceness.  Her English was limited so she schmoozed off colleagues playing up the unworldly mainlander making her way up .  To get noticed, she needed a way in, and would poke her head at Management doors, and say “Hi., I’m Wendi, who are you?”  It was excruciating, it made some people uncomfortable but she would get away with it, in fact she perfected it. Before long, she figured that her target was now Murdoch.  Wendi wormed her way in by showing her capabilities in interpreting China. 

The country and culture intrigued him and in the process he fell in love with her.  Murdoch needed her straightforwardness, her daring and challenging business savvy ways.   Courtship ensued and within a few weeks divorced Anna.

Wedding aboard "The Morning Glory" with Charlotte Church

Their wedding ceremony aboard the “Morning Glory” his yacht in New York harbor was performed  by Jacqueline Silbermann then New York’s Supreme Court Justice  attended by 82 guests including singer Charlotte Church who performed three ballads for the couple. 

An insight to his media-might behavior over a 13 year old upcoming singer. Over the Leveson Inquiry into press standards, it revealed that Murdoch unbelievably offered a fee of £100,000 for Charlotte Church to sing at his wedding,  then said, if she waived it, his newspapers would look upon her favourably.  She took the favour under duress of her Manager.  Murdoch insisted she sang his favorite, Pie Jesu, regardless of its funereal overtures, because he liked it. She felt betrayed when the press later printed unfavorable stories about her.

To find another dimension of this tigress, Wendi is known to protect her family fiercely, and takes parenting her two daughters Grace and Chloe seriously. Wendi and Rupert are incredibly family orientated, a strict mother, she brings them up to take nothing for granted.  She wants them to have a spiritual life, insomuch as Blair became Grace’s Godfather, she takes them to Church and Sunday school regularly, some thing she did not have in her early childhood.     On weekends she makes dumplings with her girls, they way she was taught to make them as a child.

She has said, “Rupert did such a good job with his big children, I really make sure that my girls understand the importance of education.   I don’t want them to be spoilt, I want them to behave well by example.  I believe if you are nice to people, children will follow.”

Interviewed together on TV Wendi admitted to being very strict at home. "In Chinese culture, if I am strict to you and criticise you, it means I love you."

To which Murdoch replied: "Oh yes, she is very tough, very tough, she has taught our two little girls to speak perfect mandarin, everybody at home speaks mandarin except me. So they only tell me what they think I need to know."

With the pre-nup and post nup, and the addition of two children, a deal was struck between his other children in exchange for cash to divide the trust six ways instead of four but refused Wendi’s two children to vote.   Scared of Wendi’s uproar, he kept silent and only mentioned it during an interview on Charlie Rose, provoking an expulsion from his house with a domestic row. Returned home pleading this was not the case, and now has a new plan for Grace and Chloe to inherit power in the company. It seems that both Wendi and Murdoch are two nasty people incapable of niceness in their marriage.

Marriages are doomed when the very core ingredient of love and respect gets damaged.   Love can re-appear but respect once trampled on, can never be retrieved.  Playing with his ageing vanity, dyeing his orange hair, new Prada suits promising youthfulness, she also put him on kooky diets, and mocked Rupert’s Viagra in Vanity Fair. Her mimicry, albeit with a Chinese accent at other Murdoch family members, is testament to impertinency that has crept into their relationship.   Murdoch did not want to appear that his marriage was falling apart, it was an issue of pride, and also important for him not to fail at what everyone said would fail.

What's more, the most damaging results of the hacking scandal for Murdoch had been an increasing breach with his children and an urgency, on his part, to calm the internecine feuding. Wendi, again, was the odd person out, even the expendable one in the Murdoch clan.

With his media empire under siege from the phone bugging scandal, one can only add to the cantankerous, irritating, argumentative and difficult octogenarian having to come out with  “We are Sorry” Ad campaign,  “for the serious wrongdoing that occurred." 

One critic said, “Remorse and repentance are not the same thing and there is not much sign of the latter”

The satirical magazine Private Eye predicts the likely scenario of  Wendi screaming “What plee-nup? I don't lemember anything. Just like you, Lupert, I lemember nothing!' Her ironic cackle of laughter resounded around the panelled walls like the cry of a triumphant banshee across the wild Mongolian plains.'"

The Honey Badger Queen has just devoured her victim, spat out the bones, and is now on to her next bigger prey.  

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