As a youngster listening to the original “Eyewitness
News” broadcast in the New York area, I would smile and lean forward whenever I
heard short, dour reporter Milton Lewis tell the audience, “Now listen to this,”
in a confiding, “you’re not going to believe what I’m about to tell you” tone.
I experienced the same sensation when I read Jim
Rutenberg and Jonathan Mahler’s New York Times report this week that
three of Rupert Murdoch’s children have united against their father. They are arguing
in court against him changing the family’s “irrevocable trust” to ensure that
his anointed successor, eldest son Lachlan, will stay in charge of the
conservative multinational media empire.
Lewis’ “this” happens, in 1924, to be a plot twist
right out Succession. There’s little that the creators much-honored
comedy-drama did not imagine. Maybe they dismissed this idea in the
belief that their audience would never accept this kind of switcheroo coming
from a nonagenarian.
Murdoch is a nightmare spin on Dylan Thomas’ notion
that old age should burn and rave at close of day. Having assisted at the birth
of Trumpism, he finds himself unable either to embrace or evade his
handiwork.
However much he may carp about the former President,
his attempts to promote an alternative GOP candidate have foundered. He’s even
been dissed by Don Jr.: “There was a time where if you wanted to survive in the
Republican Party, you had to bend the knee to him or to others. I don’t think
that’s the case anymore.”
And now, this mess.
The discovery process in the litigation can only
reveal more embarrassing secrets, the kind he sought to avoid after reaching a
$787 million settlement in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against
Fox.
Or maybe Murdoch is beyond mortification at this point
in his life. After all, who else would marry for the fifth time at age 93 and
dare to risk comparisons with billionaire oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall, who
was a mere 89 when he wed Anna Nicole Smith?
Fox News and Murdoch’s New York print mainstays, The
New York Post and The Wall Street Journal, have been making great
sport of President Biden’s age-related difficulties. But Ailes came up with
that “old man time” phrase about his former boss eight years ago. What could that
line possibly entail now?
