What excitement! guardian.co.uk reported yesterday that Elisabeth Murdoch is hosting a party in London for Barack Obama. Thank God some things don't change in a fast-moving world. The Murdochs are hedging their bets. So what's new?
Nonetheless, Murdochian manoeuvres matter to us all as more than simply worth a good chuckle because so many politicians around the world behave as if Dad must always be placated.
They really think the old witch doctor can do them fatal harm if they stand up to his views, half-baked or hypocritical as so many of them seem to be outside the narrow world of commerce, where his touch is (usually) formidable.
So far as I call tell through years of interviewing survivors of flights on Air Rupert, Murdoch's passion is business and he regards politics and politicians as largely instrumental: there to serve his needs.
Of course, he believes in free enterprise and open markets (except where he's got the monopoly) and he's said to have found religion, as they tend to when heading towards the big shareholders' meeting in the sky. It doesn't get in the way of page three girls and other filth. Watch out, Wall St Journal!
But in my lifetime, he's been a Thatcherite in London, then a Blairite (never much of a Majorite) while being a Democrat in New York (the Dems were running City Hall and he owned the Post), a Republican in Washington and - mostly gloriously of all - sympathetic to the communist regime in Beijing where he published the memoirs of Deng Xiaoping's daughter for a tidy sum, so a Sinologist once told me. Old Rupe certainly peed on the Dalai Lama's "Gucci loafers" like a good party man.
It's all unhealthy, of course. Look how Rupert's ill-will towards Europe has frightened successive British governments into being either negative about it (G Brown) or laughably timid (T Blair).
I'm not starry-eyed Europhile, but it has been a bit pathetic. But ever since the old boy fell into the clutches of wife No 3, Wendi Deng, I've started feeling sorry for him.
Poor old chap, all he wants is his carpet slippers and a nice DVD and he's plonked back on the hampster wheel: parties, new babies, having fun.
Back in 2000 the Wall St Journal, which Murdoch recently purchased (putting the fear of God into the FT), published a lively account of Mrs M's early life in China.
I have just checked, it's still there online (Brownie point duly noted), though this article in Slate gives a bit of context as well as the original.
So just imagine if the real significance of Elisabeth Murdoch's party should be that she didn't tell Dad in advance, let alone consult him? Perhaps it's a dynastic power struggle we're watching here, not a political one.
"Dad, I'm throwing a party for Barack.''
"In a barracks, darlin'? Why can't you afford a proper place for a party. I''ll help you out..."
