hi all. I was gonna write a little about rupert and his young half-as-old bride wendi deng with my last post, but I skipped it. little did I know that the whole thing would go unbelievably internet-viral. she slapped the guy who tried to pie murdoch at the UK parliament hearings, and the whole little scuffle was caught on video. next, the buzz is all over the place, bouncing off the walls.
I have long been interested in wendi for her ravishing but just-a-little-scary good looks... but didnt know much about her except that she sure fit the gold-digger profile. boy, does she ever. press accounts are now talking about how she came to the US. years ago she befriended an engineer and his family from california who agreed to sponsor her student trip.
but shortly after coming to the US, the husband divorced the wife and married wendi. according to accounts they were only together for about 5 months. nevertheless the legal "paper" marriage went about 2.5 yrs, conveniently long enough for her to obtain a US visa. meantime, she was cheating on her new husband with a guy Wolf, and the husband divorced her.
from one of the accounts below, murdoch was not aware of his wifes scandalous history, and got a little pale [figuratively] when he found out. an australian newspaper commissioned a story but got an eyeful and pulled it from publication; the editor declined to give the reasons [the outlet was 7% owned by News corp, murdochs corporation. just a total coincidence Im sure, wink]. it seems that she's just as opportunistic, ruthless and coldblooded in life as he is, and he discovered his reflection in the mirror. a female version of himself!! wow.
she reportedly told her 1st husband jake cherry he would always be a "father concept" to her and not much more. I guess now she has a new "grandfather concept". or maybe "great grandfather concept".
calling her a tiger woman is sure an understatement. shes a certifiable dragon lady.
but, shes been loyal to murdoch for over 10 years. I guess maybe in the time she's been with him, she hasnt found another/bigger mogul to seduce. at least I *think* she's been loyal. if she has affairs, which would certainly match with her history, they must be very discreet. the odd, or maybe not-so-odd, couple have two children.
deng seems to me to embody some of the best and worst aspects of capitalism. she has a rags-to-riches background. she's very ambitious and she has made her own opportunities for herself. she's an intense, nearly-fanatic networker. but, she's also a cold-blooded backstabber who seems to feign affection merely for materialistic gain. it would seem at various times, she's obsessed with power. a femme fatale.
in her younger days she went to Yale and graduated there with an MBA [surpise!]. which makes me think shes whip-cracking smart, motivated, and a hard worker. driven. accounts of her working around the Murdoch empire sort of vary. the article I read suggested she was expert at using others work and presenting it as ostensibly her own and getting credit for it.
however, it appears she hasnt been able to crack the china market for Murdoch as far as I can tell. apparently she's drizzled away millions of dollars on chinese ventures that have gone nowhere. they say she had a knack for buying overvalued dotcom properties that tended to fade into oblivion. of course MySpace is now one of the greatest business disasters of all time. it cost Murdoch in the hundreds of millions and theres not much left at this point except dust and ashes.
she reminds me of the aphorisms, "double edged sword", or "live by the sword, die by the sword".
the couple represents a new reality of the rich. west meets east. international globetrotters. china is targeted to become the worlds largest economy in less than half a decade, maybe less.
I may be projecting here, but I feel she also has a sort of a polyamorous side to her. her serial monogamy has been so fleeting and crowded together as to be clearly overlapping. she sees no restriction on mixing business with pleasure, in fact she welcomes it. she has no sexual problem with an older guy, in fact she seems to be attracted to em. as long as they have something she wants. like truckfuls of cash and connections, or whatever.
- Behind The Wall - Mrs. Rupert Murdoch wins hearts & minds in China
- WENDI DENG MURDOCH - A LIFE
- How Murdoch's wife won her ticket to America - Telegraph
- Aussie newspaper kills story about Rupert Murdoch's wife
- Wendi Deng, Rupert Murdoch’s Chinese-born Wife: Volleyball Player, All-Around Tough Woman - The Daily Beast
- James Rupert Murdoch Wendi attack shaving cream pie - Business 360 - CNN.com Blogs
- Wendi, Rupert Murdoch True to Character, Biographer Says - ABC News
- Who's the woman who fought Murdoch's foam foe? - CBS News
- With strong swipe, Murdoch's wife stands by her man | Reuters
- Wendi Deng's Charlie's Angel moment boosts husband's image | Media | The Guardian
- Phone Hacking: Wendi Deng - from Communist obscurity to top of capitalist heap - Telegraph
- She Is Woman, Hear Her Roar -- Wendi Deng Murdoch Fights Back - FoxNews.com
- Wendi Deng hailed in China for defending Rupert Murdoch | Media | guardian.co.uk
- Wendi Deng Murdoch
- Wendi Deng - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
* * *
I also had a bunch of links lying around re Amy Chua, the chinese mother in the news & been thinking of writing on her for months. Im gonna slot it into this post. she's the one who wrote the autobiography about raising her kids very strictly and then the WSJ ran a not-flattering profile on her, and it reverberated all over cyberspace for weeks. one angle I thought was cool is that her daughter, just about to go to college, decided to get her own blog and set the record straight. wow, she's got zillions of comments. and man, that daughter is *cute* too.
I wrote a lot of comments on blogs about Amy Chua. its not clear to me what her parenting style actually was. however, she seems egotistical and has little self-awareness. she doesnt seem to understand that holding kids to cutting standards and squeezing them to excel is in many ways an ego-trip for parents. and yes, ego-trips are not appropriate, to say the least. at worst they can set kids up for lifetime traumatizing. it reminds me of the satirical yet very apt saying, "its not enough for me to win, everyone else must lose".
my own mom was very strict and domineering at times. she wore the pants in the family, so to speak. in some ways I had a lot of freedoms, in other ways I was tightly constrained by her. it was a weird mix. did it affect my psychology? absolutely. at times I found it very hard to relate positively to women when I was younger. I couldnt see the point, and I always perceived a nefarious hidden/ulterior motive of women. thats the cliff notes version. it would take me years of therapy and blogs to really sort it out. luckily, I dont really remember that much about it any more =)
its important for parents to understand that kids are not a "tabula rasa" to paint our own desires, goals, objectives, initiatives, unfulfilled goals, etcetera. they are individuals. they have their own destiny, their own personality. it is not the job of the parents to dictate that but to discover it along with the kids in a co-evolutionary dance.
parents are not clay-shapers so much as caretakers. "caretaking" is a word that is poorly understood in our culture. we are caretakers of each other, of the earth, of our childrens inheritance, etcetera. the indians of the US had a profound expression. "we do not inherit the world from our parents, we borrow it from our children".
so, powerful chinese women have been in the news. they embody the hard edge of motherhood in sharp contrast to the squishy, self-esteem-building and preserve-at-all-costs american version. I do feel american parents do not fully understand the concept of self-esteem. its key to help kids feel good about their actual accomplishments, stuff they really earned. but american parents seem to be foggy on the whole concept of not praising kids in all circumstances or rewarding/giving them accolades for stuff thats not really something they earned.
in contrast to the chinese model, I also think that americans are weak on DISCIPLINE. Im strongly in favor of that in certain contexts but emphatically not overdoing it. mostly, SELF-DISCIPLINE. we are very disciplined at our jobs as far as working long weeks and getting little vacation. but we have little discipline in our diet or exercise, with americans as some of the most obese, if not *the* most, on the planet, constantly arguing variations of "its not my fault" as far as having a poor metabolism or whatever, while scarfing down junk food and vegetating in front of the boob tube.
americans have difficulty connecting cause and effect esp in their own lives. americans are the masters of denial. we just cant figure out how to hold our politicians accountable lately and make them work for us after more than a generation of neglect, political apathy and malaise.
at times it seems the chinese are outcompeting us at capitalism. but, with their state-sanctioned slave-wages they also show that capitalism at its worst is a "race to the bottom". Im not sure what the future holds, but at the moment it seems like the worlds next superpower as forecasted. [heck, they own so much US debt that all they have to do is sit around and wait for us to pay it off, and they'll be next in line.] as for being a world superpower, ah, to that I say, be careful what you wish for, you might get it. us Americans can really attest to that. a superpower can turn into a superdisaster in just a generation or so.
anyway, hope to hear your reactions & I typically reply to most comments in bunches & maybe we might even get a discussion going.
- Daughter of Amy Chua, who wrote 'Why Chinese Mothers are Superior,' responds to controversy - NYPOST.com
- ‘Tiger Mom’ daughter starts a blog, heads to Ivies - Yahoo! News
- Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior - WSJ.com
- Amy Chua - The 2011 TIME 100 Poll - TIME
- new tiger in town
- Amy Chua | Tiger Mother | Time 100 | The Daily Caller - Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment
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Most of my colleagues are male (70% of western teachers in Beijing are men) and I am going to have a few beers tonight with a good friend who can't shake his own dragon woman even after she got nailed for prostitution and served 6 months in a work camp. Why?
Chinese women never say no to sex. NEVER. They feel it is their duty. Western men are like cats in cream over this constant supply of ready sex, with no emotional attachment necessary so long as you keep giving them money ever time they ask for it which is daily. He loves this woman, (the poor fuck) but she has bought 3 apts in her home town over the last three years with money he gave her to "pay the bills." My friend is broke, but she owns three apartments?
Stealing another woman's man is a business decision and trust me there are no dragon tears unless they suspect their man of cheating, in which case he will come home to a closet full of cut up suits and all his furniture and electronics trashed. If he complains, she will call the police and tell them "he beat and raped me." A good friend of mine (fluent in Chinese) has had to bail out numerous male teachers whose soon to be ex girlfriend pulled the "beat and rape" story (which the police tend not to believe, but they have to check it out).
KOH-- I personally didnt say deng was born into poverty & I dont think any of the links above do either. she was apparently born into the middle class, her dad was an engineer with some connections to the communist party. but only midlevel or lower. but, she was very driven to move out of the middle class. she worked many low-wage jobs in the US when she 1st came here. including as I recall-- selling perfume, etcetera. it appears for awhile at least she did indeed "pay some dues" as the expression goes...
VZN: thanks for the post. I had never heard of Wendi and you're right about one thig-her looks are like the looks of Asian women who use too much makeup in a failed effort to look sexy when they should know that they are already sexy and don't need the makeup.
Amy Chua? Over-hyped nut case who, I'm afraid, did capture my own experiences.!
You sound like you may be interested in one yourself vz if you like I will ask my cousin where he got his. PM me.
er, uh, ah, how about "erotic writer" instead?
This reads like a movie script or two and would make good ones. You wonder where the veracity lives, schadenfreude such a huge factor in interpreting the rich and famous for all of us, it comes naturally.
Cultural differences in parenting are fascinating. But there is such a continuum of ranges even in one culture. In fact, I suspect there is a pendulum effect, if a parent was too strict as a parent the child may become too lenient in response to their past, etc, etc. The yin and yang of it ... and if you go too yin you are back at yang. :)
Some stories raise my curiosity. The Murdoch one didn't until I heard there was a dead body found, an early whistleblowing journalist. Wonder if that truth will ever come to light.
Take care! libby