Supper with Rupert

I’ve defended Rupert Murdoch’s purchase of the Wall Street Journal, but that’s not an endorsement of his political sensitivity. From the Campbell diaries:

Thursday January 17th, 2002:Murdoch was coming in for dinner and… brought James and Lachlan [his sons]…Murdoch was at one point putting the traditional very right-wing view on Israel and the Middle East peace process and James said that he was ‘talking fucking nonsense’. Murdoch said he didn’t see what the Palestinians’ problem was and James said it was that they were kicked out of their fucking homes and had nowhere to fucking live. Murdoch was very pro-Israel, very pro-Reagan. He finally said to James that he didn’t think he should talk like that in the Prime Minister’s house and James got very apologetic with TB, who said not to worry, I hear far worse all the time. Most of the discussion was a run round the main foreign policy blocks, Israel, Saudi, Iran, Indo-Pak, a little bit of why does Britain have to bother so much?…Murdoch pointed out that his were the only papers that gave us support when the going got tough.