Happy Birthday, Rupert Murdoch

1. The most interesting thing about you is that you were once married to Wendi Deng, the most riveting person to have ever lived.
2. WENDI. WENDI. WENDI.
3. It’s no exaggeration to say that I think of her weekly. Sometimes fearfully (is she reading this right now), sometimes like how I picture a medieval serf would think about the lady of the manor, again fearfully but with more involuntary genuflection and tugging of forelocks, sometimes with bewildered admiration, but mostly a low kind of droning hum that just goes WEEEENNNNNNNNNNNDI. Imagine the sound of a chainsaw in faraway woods, making efficient work of some sturdy-seeming trees. Now, imagine that chainsaw can speak, and that what the chainsaw is saying is WEEEEENNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNDI. That’s what my brain sounds like when it’s thinking about Wendi.
4. If someone asked me to name my top five fantasy dinner party guests, I would say “Five versions of Wendi Deng at different periods of her life, from when she was a volleyball player to present day.”
5. If someone asked me to name eight songs I would take with me to a desert island, I would say, “Instead, can I have eight recordings of Wendi Deng relaying detailed anecdotes from different periods of her life. I don’t care if the anecdotes are widely known or not – I just want to hear her tell them.”
6. You understand this. There’s no need for me to get into what makes Wendi Deng so interesting, because you were married to her for fourteen years, and so you know.
7. The fact of your marriage is, as I said, the most curiosity-invoking  thing about you.
8. This is extraordinary in itself, given who you are: are a terrible, mercenary, sinister person who has done a number of truly disgraceful things. You should be horribly fascinating all on your own.
9. If I was doing a PowerPoint presentation now called “What’s Gone Wrong, Here”, the first slide would be just of your face.
10. However, I cannot say with any confidence that the world would be a noticeably better place if you had never been born, because it is my strong sense that you are not so much a person as a conduit for the worst impulses of the culture.
11. If you had never been born, it seems highly likely that some kind of Murdoch-esque figure would have risen slimily out of the mud to take your place.
12. I don’t know for certain, however, because at the same time as being a terrible, mercenary, sinister person who has done a number of truly disgraceful things, you are also boring.
13. Beyond an ordinary curiosity about the mechanisms of power and the spectacle of grotesque wealth, it is impossible to take an interest in the actual facts of your life.
14. It’s very difficult to know whether the hideous world you have been so instrumental in creating is in any way shaped by personality features that are specific to you and you alone, or whether things would have turned out this way with another profoundly unethical billionaire’s hand on the tiller.
15. I could easily be wrong about this, but I will never know, because trying to think about what you are like as a person is beyond me. I cannot do it.
16. If someone tried to tell me about your hobbies, I wouldn’t listen.
17. If someone told me you were pathologically frightened of rabbits, I wouldn’t care.
18. If someone told me you never learned how to use a computer, I wouldn’t even laugh.
19. Can’t care about your marriage to Jerry Hall, can’t care about how you seem appallingly vital for such an elderly person.
20. I can only think about Wendi, and wonder what she is up to right now.
21. Bet you’re thinking about it too.
22. Happy Birthday.

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Rosa Lyster