Gawker
How satisfying for Rupert Murdoch to sit on the top table at yesterday's dinner to celebrate Time magazine's issue celebrating himself and the other 99 most influential people in the world.
On one side of host Rick Stengel was John McCain, the Republican nominee; the Australian media mogul was on his other side; and Murdoch's New York rival, Mort Zuckerman of the Daily News was in the rafters. And the Observer's John Koblin passes on a rumor that McCain was hoping to bend the newspaper proprietor's ear at the Time party.
Murdoch is accustomed to pandering from politicians like the UK's Gordon Brown, but he's had surprisingly little influence in the US. A regular at 10 Downing Street in London, Murdoch has—astonishingly—never been invited to the White House, and only recently met George Bush. So much for the vast right-wing conspiracy of the liberal imagination—of which Murdoch is assumed to be such an integral part. (One assumes Karl Rove and other Bush aides must have dealt with News Corporation's Fox News through Roger Ailes, Murdoch's Jabba-like lieutenant.)
Here's the irony: it's only now with the acquisition of the Wall Street Journal that the 77-year-old media mogul is accumulating the influence in the US that he's always coveted and that liberals have long feared—just as he enters his cuddly dotage.
Comments
Always Look on the Bright Side of Life must be Rupert Murdoch's theme song. Dude is always smiling.
My god, what food did they serve at that Time 100 dinner?
@Obviously Not Omniscient: But when he does it kinda looks like someone let the air out of his face. Alternately, it looks like someone went at McCain's face with a bicycle pump in the other pic.
@Obviously Not Omniscient:
He's rich, powerful, married to an attractive woman, able to travel the world, and feared to the extent that he doesn't get a desperately needed and easily afforded face lift ON PURPOSE.
I'm surprised that the song's melody isn't played by the wind rustling through his wrinkles.
@sassypants: Re: Murdoch, it's called "aging".
Re: McCain, it's called "cancer" and "Vietnamese Prison Camp".
@Obviously Not Omniscient: I'd smile too if I was worth a bazillion dollars, dined at 10 Downing street, was married to someone 30 years my minor, was constantly featured in major publications, bought and sold billion dollar companies............
Wow! The two old guys who used to hang out in the balcony box of the Muppet Show have really done well for themselves.
Can we start taking bets on whose face will melt first?
Above: a sampling of panels from the tryptic Powerful Men Pinch Loaves.
@Obviously Not Omniscient: His mouth is smiling, but his chin is very saaaad. See how it frowns at you? Sad, mad chin.
@Chaim Gnadelstein: who's the third?
@blix: That was too good to go uncommented. Seriously, damn fine work.
These guys look like the two piece meal at Kentucky Fried Chicken.
@ragepotato: Thanks!
@SW-2:
Vladimir Putin -- only his face basically looks the same as always.
Oh this is a Rorschach test, right? Like, what kind of strange and scary things you can see in his wrinkles, right?
I see...two ladies doing it with a teddy bear. And not the hairy fat dude kind either!
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