The Emperor, his son and their old clothes. 22.07.2011.

Source: The Independent

Notes on the Select Committee hearing in which James and Rupert Murdoch were questioned for a couple of wasted hours by a collection of, on the whole, rather supine investigative M.P.s.


Although there was palpable anger in the room, it seemed to melt away before the professed Emperors of Pulp, like the sigh of a spent wind.

A respectable amount of handwringing and bluster to keep at bay the quiet seething of the Committee was meted out by the Murdochs, Junior and Senior, both cut from the same diamond and having arrived fresh from a training programme on how to deal with the questions they were going to be asked. In the end, when the magic hours allowed by English parliamentary law had been filled by dark posturing and circuitousness, it was as though the two men had merely been slapped with a couple of wet fish.

In fact, the hearing was a chance for the Murdochs to do a bit of grandstanding; to cast some sneering remarks before the Great British Public( (those who were interested enough to watch online). Talking about what for any of us would be an astronomical sum of money paid out for any reason, James Murdoch, the scion of the elder, gnarled-but-got-all-his-marbles old man tossed a vague recollection of hush-money to the waiting committee 'I don't recall exactly how much'. This was code for 'we deal in billions. Talking about a few million is, frankly, beneath our contempt'.
The News of The Screws was dangled every now and then by the King Lear-like figure of Ruper Murdoch to focus the contempt in the room, finally being offered up as a sacrificial lamb, though not without the petulance of a rich man losing one of his smaller yachts...Murdoch Senior was eager to point out the loss of the 250,000 readers. Numbers mattered,particularly at this juncture in the sense that they could be deployed to denote loss or else pre-eminence.

Throughout the long session (this was no shareholder meeting and was doubtless prepared for by a 4a.m bowl of porridge and a gym workout by Senior) oldness was wheeled out as required, though not, you understand, the kind of oldness that signified loss of power or decrepitude, rather the oldness of a lion with a thorn in its paw.
The Old Pretender did resort to using old age as victimhood on occasion to buy him some thinking time as money clearly could not plug the gap at such moments. He appeared not to hear the questions asked but then belied his hearing loss with barbed answers after the sage-like pauses.
The father/son angle was fully exploited with Senior and Junior holding their position in dock, and by touches on the arm across the pillories. Senior bowed his head most of the time (apparently in contrition or fatigue but in reality with the concentration of a bull preparing for the next charge).
Their suits had been carefully chosen, even though they were the Emperor's old clothes. Both wore sky-blue ties (to denote innocence) and pleasing, pacific, dark-blue pastel shades, one slightly darker than the other, you see, to signify that they were not in league,or partners in grime but merely relatives. Senior's suit had a faint pinstripe running through it to suggest- well, seniority (and legalese, of course). The pre-Committee training session had clearly instructed them both to place one hand on top of the other. The gesture, according to a body language expert implies helpfulness, openness and also prevents hands from gesticulating wildly and giving too much away.
I also detected a dose of defensiveness in the gesture. James Murdoch's robotic, repetitive answers were betrayed on occasion by the high colouring that broke through the Meditteranean tan borne of too much holidaying and by the rapid blinking of Senior's hooded eyes.

Their verbal suits, however did not have quite the same acuity, although the old father/son schtick came to the rescue. There was Senior's summarising with his down-to-earth thumping, cutting and pushing , the salami-slicing of the table with the hams of his age-spotted hands which said 'I am a man who knows the relative value of things-and by the way, I can still cut the mustard.'

The plastic signage in front of their corporate persons, one saying 'James Murdoch' and the other saying 'Rupert Murdoch' made them look like two naughty public schoolboys (albeit of an Antipodean hue). The obedient crowd behind them seemed to come to their aid rather than holding them back, their heads moving like sunflowers according to the position of the Sun and Son.

At times, Junior was seen to stumble verbally, often parrying with words and exhibiting the signs of having just emerged from the prepping session blinking into the light. Phrases like 'I'm glad you asked me that', 'with reference to the specifics of your question' or 'that's a very good question' allowed him some false contrition and wriggle-room. 'I' was used interchangeably with 'we' and 'we' was used interchangeably with 'News International or 'The Corporation' and demonstrated the fluency of power. Nevertheless, the Son blurtingly ended up repeating himself all the way to the end of the two-hour session. The continuous use of the words 'active' 'proactive', 'actually', 'specifically' 'currently' and his way of denial, as in 'we don't have access to that information' or 'it would be wrong to make a statement while there is a legal process ongoing currently with regard to that particular issue' made him look like a snake thrashing in a pit. Sometimes his language was worthy of Dick Cheney. 'This was re-looked at' he offered 'along with the re-started criminal investigation.' And 'to my knowledge, it was not known about' was another Cheneyism..
Senior's use of long silences not only bought him time but seemed to add a bizarre gravitas to his duplicity, as well as allowing him to find 'le mot juste' in between bouts of bellicosity and a withering, sickly humour which issued from between his teeth like sawdust from between the teeth of the kind of circular saws one finds in a sawmill.
It must have been hard to find the necessary level of penitence or grimness, though, as neither the puppy or the old dog had ever been grilled before.

There was a side effect of the courtroom drama that was much more satisfying than the salacious revelations of the redtopped, bloodsoaked Empire; the distinctly British restraint of the Committee did serve to point up the crassness of the Murdoch show and its disdain for the rule of law. It wasn't, after all, the highest court of the land and a jail sentence was not pending. But it was great to see the Committee members make play with the ancient art of sarcasm, whipping these newsmasters, these hounds with the spoken word, with language; the delicious ironies of men who make their money out of 'telling it like it is' having to tell it like it wasn't had not escaped some of the Committee who wryly clasped their faces with their hands and twisted in their seats. You hoped that they would descend like piranhas onto meat that was dead in the water, though sadly, this did not happen.
The pie incident did happen, though one began to wonder if it had been staged by the Murdochs themselves. The whole thing, except for the pie incident, was not unlike a Bird and Fortune sketch. Each man dug himself into a dirty hole with a set of rather expensive spades and a tiny push from the mild-mannered Committee.
Old Murdoch rolled his head occasionally in a turtle-like fashion to denote derision. His hand-chopping of the table spoke of a vice-like grip, a waning virility and the mutual exclusion between power and delegation.
Like water seeping between cracks, the lies, the blackmail, the manipulation and all the excrescences of power and the pursuit of money had led to a drip becoming a stream and the stream becoming a current throughout the whole phone-hacking phase of the public enquiry. It had led to the spectacle of the world's most powerful media emperors being brought before a lowly court. These excrescences were the very opposite of the thing that Rupert Murdoch popped up from time to time during the Hearing to lecture about. 'Transparency' he had opined 'is one of the things that makes us a more open society, that's one of the great things about this country' (not to mention tax-breaks for residents living abroad).

I am reporting all this straight, of course, but what the hell... decorum and journalistic ethics and standards has clearly gone straight out of the window and punched the wall to smithereens, and anyway, what use is a verbatim report of the biggest farce of them all.