The Wendi Deng Show

“So now we know the real reason Rupert Murdoch married 42-year-old Wendi Deng: her kick-ass slam dunk. As the stupid git in the checked shirt sabotaged Louise Mensch’s questioning to attack Rupert Murdoch with a foam pie, Ninja Wendi jumped to his defence. And she didn’t hold back. Was her swift reaction and killer shot helped by years of playing volleyball? What a gal.”– from: Kapow! Wendi Murdoch brings girl power to Parliament (Lucy Jones/Telegraph)

The folks at Edelman, Murdoch’s spanking new PR consultants, must be kvelling. I’m not suggesting they had anything to do with the shaving cream attack on Murdoch in front of the Parliament hearing Tuesday. God no. But they might keep that crackpot in mind come Christmas.

Remember Karl Rove’s golden slogan, politics is TV with the sound off?

Turning on the tube about twenty-minutes before the scary-close shave, I was already admiring how Murdoch was framed for such a long stretch of TV time between two attractive women, with the elegant, demure Wendi positioned perfectly between Rupert and James. (Of Wendi’s entrancing, sort of hypnotic jacket, The Globe and Mail claimed — and, actually, I wouldn’t put this past Edelman — it was: “reminiscent, ironically, of the one worn by Jacqueline Kennedy on the day of John F. Kennedy’s assassination.”)

Such is the power of political celebrity and the ever growing tabloidization of traditional news that Mr. Crackpot allowed Wendi Murdock to steal considerable thunder from the Murdoch testimony. So, instead of the solitary take-away of a pass-the-buck CEO and a nervous and obfuscating Murdoch son, a sympathetic co-star had a literally smashing world-wide introduction yesterday on “the Rupert Show,”, with that much mind share siphoned off by the much more mouthwatering storyline of “The Battle Cry of the Tiger Wife.”

(Stay tuned for a “part 2” where we drill down on the more subtle optics from yesterday’s hearing.)

(photos 1 and 3: Reuters/Parbul TV via Reuters Tv caption 1: Wendi Deng (2nd L) lunges towards a man trying to attack her husband, News Corp Chief Executive and Chairman Rupert Murdoch, during a parliamentary committee hearing on phone hacking at Portcullis House in London July 19, 2011. caption 2: Rupert Murdoch’s wife Wendi Deng (C) looks on as BSkyB Chairman James Murdoch and News Corp Chief Executive and Chairman Rupert Murdoch (R) appear before a parliamentary committee on phone hacking at Portcullis House in London July 19, 2011. Rupert Murdoch told the British parliament on Tuesday that giving evidence on the phone-hacking and corruption scandal that is engulfing his global media empire was “the most humble day of my life”.) (photo 2 : AP caption: In this combo made from images taken from video, committee members and Wendi Deng, wife of Rupert Murdoch, foreground left, react as a protestor, at left in checked shirt , tries to throw a paper plate covered in shaving foam over Rupert Murdoch as he gives evidence to a House of Commons Committee on the News of the World phone hacking scandal in London, Tuesday, July 19, 2011. Video of 42-year-old Deng jumping forward to smack a protester with a pie aimed at Murdoch’s face quickly went viral, and numerous fan pages quickly popped up on social networking sites such as Facebook praising her quick rapid reflexes.)