David Carr: "The deal would give him ... a seat at the gentlemen’s table"



Clearly, Rupert Murdoch, though we chide him mercilessly on this blog, is a genius at discerning the zigzag trajectory of The Media Cosmos (cue: Monteverdi). Rupert operates, though, in such an aggressively operatic manner that we feel compelled -- compelled! -- to bonfire his vanities with some fava beans and a nice Chianti (Said with an air of restrained laughter).

Today, on Murdoch, growly-voiced New York Times columnist David Carr says, among other things, that:

"Despite his allaying words to the contrary, Murdoch would operate The Journal, including its editorial operations, as he sees fit. As Mr. Murdoch himself has said throughout his relentlessly acquisitive career, he buys things to run things."

Further, Carr asserts that Murdoch wants a level of respectability that he has yet to achieve. Huh? Isn't he already a "Master of the Universe (Spending, along the way, we cannot fail to note, '$44 million for a Fifth Avenue penthouse previously owned by Laurance S. Rockefeller - the most expensive residence ever sold above 14th Street'"? From Carr in the Gray Lady:

"The price that Mr. Murdoch is offering — $60 a share — is a multiple of ego, not earnings. He may have some other super-secret plan to squeeze more value out of the company, but the deal would give him something that, for all of his stellar business achievements, he’s never achieved in this country: a seat at the gentlemen’s table.

"...perhaps buying Dow Jones presents Mr. Murdoch with a dilemma he hasn’t quite faced before. Being the rustic from Australia whose media interests now span the distance from London to Beijing is a fine thing. But owning The Journal — the historical, respectable, ink-and-stippled Journal — signifies a kind of arrival, a yearning for respectability that owning one of the country’s great newspapers confers."

And to be sure the sepia-colored "House of Murdoch" Shakespearean succession-of-Kings drama (The Corsair pours himself a tawny glass of Madeira) continues, behind the scenes. (NYTimes)

(NYMagazine on The Dao of rupert)