Peak Rupertfreude
For the last few weeks, the Chattering Class has been overdosing on Rupertfreude.
For the last few weeks, the Chattering Class has been overdosing on Rupertfreude. With the eye-popping Vanity Fair cover story by Gabriel Sherman, the broken engagement, the $787.5 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems and the death of Logan Roy on Succession, it has been all Rupertfreude for most of the month of April. And Rupertfreude is, to be sure, the compound German phrase meaning the joy one receives at the misfortunes of the most dangerous immigrant in the history of America.
Here’s a particularly spicy bit from the Vanity Fair story:
At the age of 91, Murdoch blew up his fourth marriage. Hall was waiting for Murdoch to meet her at their Oxfordshire estate last June when she checked her phone. “Jerry, sadly I’ve decided to call an end to our marriage,” Murdoch’s email began, according to a screenshot I read. “We have certainly had some good times, but I have much to do…My New York lawyer will be contacting yours immediately.” Hall told friends she was blindsided. “Rupert and I never fought,” she told people. There had been disagreements over his antiabortion views and some friction with the kids over Hall’s rules about masking and testing before they saw Murdoch, according to sources. But Hall never felt Murdoch treated these as major issues. Hall and Murdoch finalized their divorce two months later. (One of the terms of the settlement was that Hall couldn’t give story ideas to the writers on Succession.) Hall told friends she had to move everything out of the Bel Air estate within 30 days and show receipts to prove items belonged to her. Security guards watched as her children helped her pack. When she settled into the Oxfordshire home she received in the divorce, she discovered surveillance cameras were still sending footage back to Fox headquarters. Mick Jagger sent his security consultant to disconnect them.
Imagine, for a moment, Mick Jagger as the hero of any story …
The Fox Dominion nine-figure settlement is the largest publicly known media settlement in history. Allow that to marinate. The payout is ten times Dominion’s 2018 valuation. And that payout opens the floodgates to Fox Corp shareholders, looking for more internal documents, blood in their eyes. “With that proof in hand, plaintiffs lawyers are now poised to bring lawsuits accusing Murdoch and other Fox board members of breaching their fiduciary oversight duties by failing to block the network’s flawed reporting, despite red-flag warnings,” writes Alison Frankel for Reuters:
One such shareholder complaint is already on file in Delaware Chancery Court. And based on my conversations on Tuesday night with four prominent shareholder lawyers, all of whom asked to remain anonymous as they solidify their legal strategies, additional lawsuits against Fox officers and directors are on the way.
Charmed, I’m sure.
It is probably all swell and lovely, in hindsight, that Fox settled. As daunting as that nine-figure payout appears on the screen, it, too, shall pass away. The alternative — “Murdoch taking the stand in deep-blue Wilmington, Delaware,” as Jef Feeley reminds us in Bloomberg — is too horrible a notion for the media mogul to even contemplate. And there are 7,000 documents now in the public domain. Imagine the 92-year old control freak defending disinformation and out and out on-air lies on the stand in the state that now President Biden represented for 35 years. And Dominion lawyers were planning on cross examining Murdoch as early as this week, their second witness after Tony Fratto.
Jack Schafer sums it up pragmatically for Politico:
The alternative to settling with Dominion for telling a series of lies about voting fraud would have been a painful and long courtroom drama. A stream of ugly would have been on the Fox image, day after day, as Dominion made its case. Even after the case concluded and went to appeals, the Fox brand would have been further stigmatized, and shame and disparagement would have been leveled at Murdoch, Fox executives and Fox hosts Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Maria Bartiromo, Laura Ingraham and Bret Baier, all of whom Dominion planned to put on the witness stand. Getting out from under all of that hurt for $787.5 million is a kind of bargain for a company with a market cap of $17.3 billion. Fox has $4.1 billion in cash and warrants on hand, says the New York Times.
Next up: the Smartmatic suit, which wants even more than Dominion -- $2.7 billion -- in defamation damages. Good luck with that, Rupert.
U.S. positioning troops ahead of possible Sudan embassy evacuation (Politico)
“In presidential elections, the Northeast and Greater South are essentially mirror images of each other: in the former, all but one state leans Democratic relative to the nation (Pennsylvania), while in the former, all but one state leans Republican (Virginia).” (Sabatos Crystal Ball)
Fox News vs. The Big Lie (Crash Course)
US could approve MDMA therapy this year (semafor)
Tripping in the Bronze Age (NYT)
Defying PA repression, Palestinian teachers lead biggest strike in years (972 Magazine)
Biden’s New Green Jobs Are Boosting Purple and Red States (TNR)