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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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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