Wendi Deng's Charlie's Angel moment boosts husband's image
Rupert Murdoch's shaving-cream assailant first faced a slap, and then had his pie thrown back at him
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 July 2011 22.24 BST
Wendi Deng and Rupert Murdoch arrive back at their London home after Murdoch's appearance before MPs. Photograph: Ki Price/AFP/Getty Images
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The lightning reflexes of Wendi Deng as she sprang from her chair to swing at her husband's attacker and try to smack him in the face with his own foam pie owes as much to her athletic prowess as to her protective instincts toward Murdoch Sr.
The 42-year-old had sat immediately behind her husband as members of the culture, media and sport committee grilled him, occasionally pouring his water and leaning in to whisper encouragements. Until, that was, her Charlie's Angel moment.
The Murdoch father and son were nearing the end of more than two hours of questioning when there was a sudden commotion. A woman's voice could be heard shouting "no, no, no" as the shaving-cream assailant, Jonathan May-Bowles, walked up to Rupert Murdoch, took aim and struck.Wendi Deng defends Rupert Murdoch from attacker Link to this video
Deng lunged while startled police officers were barely off the back foot. While a roomful of male advisers also appeared stunned, she scooped up the paper plate fired at her husband and launched it like a grenade back at May-Bowles, a comedian, with an amazing right hook.
Such was the force of her shot that the foam directed at her husband's face landed on a police officer and on her own blue-painted toes.
Witnesses believed that if it wasn't for that officer she would have continued round the table to finish the man off.
She capped this performance by proceeding to sit on the table in front of her husband, calmly wiping his foam-flecked face.
That she reportedly laughed "I got him", relishing the moment she swung a right hook at the comedian, indicates Deng is no shrinking violet – more Crouching Tiger, according to members of her instant global fan club.
Her actions sent Twitterers into frenzy. "Wow, wendy [sic] murdoch giving whole new meaning to the term tiger mother … insanity!" tweeted the US TV news anchor Katie Couric.
Another tweeted: "OMG! Wendi Murdoch just crouching tigered across 2 people and head whacked a guy trying to pie Rupert! THAT is good TV!"
It seemed Deng had improved Murdoch's image far more than the public relations consultants he has been paying.
"That pie thrower did more for Murdoch than Edelman ever could," tweeted Katie Rosman, a technology and pop culture correspondent for Murdoch's own Wall Street Journal, in reference to Murdoch's recent hiring of the PR firm Edelman.
At 5ft 10in and possessed of steely determination, Deng has always excelled at sport. It is undoubtedly because of her that Rupert finds himself pumping iron at 6am and downing a concoction of fruit and soy protein, as the News Corporation chairman once disclosed to Vanity Fair in a rare interview.
A former school volleyball champion in China's southern city of Guangzhou, where the young Wendi was raised, Deng openly fusses over her husband and is said to regularly admonish him for not taking enough care of his health – scoldings Murdoch seems to enjoy.
The mother of Murdoch's two youngest children, she has risen from the position of a junior executive at Star TV in Hong Kong to become his powerful right-hand woman, particularly in advising him on potential investments in the lucrative Chinese market.
Deng, who was head of her school's athletic association and excelled at basketball and badminton, burst on to the US social scene after meeting Murdoch at a company party in Hong Kong. They were married in 1999, 17 days after his divorce from his second wife, Anna, mother to Elisabeth, Lachlan, and James. She was 30, and a newly appointed vice-president of his Star TV. He was 68.
The daughter of a factory director left China as a teenager with the help of a Californian couple, Jake and Joyce Cherry. Jake Cherry was helping the Chinese build a factory to make freezers. Deng, who has two sisters and one brother, had enrolled in Guangzhou medical college at the age of 16.
A Wall Street Journal profile, published in 2000, says the Cherrys' interpreter introduced them to Deng, who was anxious to learn English, and Joyce Cherry offered her tuition.
When Joyce returned to Los Angeles in 1987, her husband stayed on in China to finish the factory project. He rang her to say Deng wanted to come to the US to study, and the couple sponsored her application for a student visa.
She moved into their home, claims the article, but all was not well. Joyce suspected her husband was having an affair with Deng, with whom he was reportedly infatuated.
Deng, who was by now a student at California State University at Northridge, a commuter college in the San Fernando Valley, before going to business school at Yale, moved out. Cherry followed, and moved into a nearby apartment.
Deng married Cherry, then 53, in February 1990, but they split up four months later because of her relationship with a man named David Wolf, who worked for an import-export company.
Cherry later told an interviewer: "She told me I was a father concept to her, and it would never be anything else. I loved that girl."
In keeping with her keen interest in physical fitness, Deng, by now a US citizen, worked with Wolf at a Los Angeles gymnastics academy where she acted as a liaison between the gym's Chinese coaching staff and parents of the children who attended.
She first appeared at Murdoch senior's side in 1998. By then she was working for Star TV, planning its activities in Hong Kong and China, in particular helping to build distribution for its music channel. She acted as Murdoch's interpreter on a visit to Shanghai and then Beijing.
Rumours of their romance were fuelled when, after dinner meetings in Hong Kong, they were seen holding hands. He separated from his wife that year. Deng has been at his side ever since.
"Wendi gives News Corp a Chinese face in China," Joseph Ravitch, from the Goldman Sachs media practice that advised News Corp on its Asia strategy, told the WSJ. "She represents not just the company but the owner, and that's criticial in a country where families are very important."
She is also, it would seem, the media mogul's greatest protector.
As committee member Tom Watson observed once the protester was arrested and normal service was resumed: "Mr Murdoch, your wife has a very good left hook."
Rupert Murdoch's shaving-cream assailant first faced a slap, and then had his pie thrown back at him
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 19 July 2011 22.24 BST
Wendi Deng and Rupert Murdoch arrive back at their London home after Murdoch's appearance before MPs. Photograph: Ki Price/AFP/Getty Images
======================================================
The lightning reflexes of Wendi Deng as she sprang from her chair to swing at her husband's attacker and try to smack him in the face with his own foam pie owes as much to her athletic prowess as to her protective instincts toward Murdoch Sr.
The 42-year-old had sat immediately behind her husband as members of the culture, media and sport committee grilled him, occasionally pouring his water and leaning in to whisper encouragements. Until, that was, her Charlie's Angel moment.
The Murdoch father and son were nearing the end of more than two hours of questioning when there was a sudden commotion. A woman's voice could be heard shouting "no, no, no" as the shaving-cream assailant, Jonathan May-Bowles, walked up to Rupert Murdoch, took aim and struck.Wendi Deng defends Rupert Murdoch from attacker Link to this video
Deng lunged while startled police officers were barely off the back foot. While a roomful of male advisers also appeared stunned, she scooped up the paper plate fired at her husband and launched it like a grenade back at May-Bowles, a comedian, with an amazing right hook.
Such was the force of her shot that the foam directed at her husband's face landed on a police officer and on her own blue-painted toes.
Witnesses believed that if it wasn't for that officer she would have continued round the table to finish the man off.
She capped this performance by proceeding to sit on the table in front of her husband, calmly wiping his foam-flecked face.
That she reportedly laughed "I got him", relishing the moment she swung a right hook at the comedian, indicates Deng is no shrinking violet – more Crouching Tiger, according to members of her instant global fan club.
Her actions sent Twitterers into frenzy. "Wow, wendy [sic] murdoch giving whole new meaning to the term tiger mother … insanity!" tweeted the US TV news anchor Katie Couric.
Another tweeted: "OMG! Wendi Murdoch just crouching tigered across 2 people and head whacked a guy trying to pie Rupert! THAT is good TV!"
It seemed Deng had improved Murdoch's image far more than the public relations consultants he has been paying.
"That pie thrower did more for Murdoch than Edelman ever could," tweeted Katie Rosman, a technology and pop culture correspondent for Murdoch's own Wall Street Journal, in reference to Murdoch's recent hiring of the PR firm Edelman.
At 5ft 10in and possessed of steely determination, Deng has always excelled at sport. It is undoubtedly because of her that Rupert finds himself pumping iron at 6am and downing a concoction of fruit and soy protein, as the News Corporation chairman once disclosed to Vanity Fair in a rare interview.
A former school volleyball champion in China's southern city of Guangzhou, where the young Wendi was raised, Deng openly fusses over her husband and is said to regularly admonish him for not taking enough care of his health – scoldings Murdoch seems to enjoy.
The mother of Murdoch's two youngest children, she has risen from the position of a junior executive at Star TV in Hong Kong to become his powerful right-hand woman, particularly in advising him on potential investments in the lucrative Chinese market.
Deng, who was head of her school's athletic association and excelled at basketball and badminton, burst on to the US social scene after meeting Murdoch at a company party in Hong Kong. They were married in 1999, 17 days after his divorce from his second wife, Anna, mother to Elisabeth, Lachlan, and James. She was 30, and a newly appointed vice-president of his Star TV. He was 68.
The daughter of a factory director left China as a teenager with the help of a Californian couple, Jake and Joyce Cherry. Jake Cherry was helping the Chinese build a factory to make freezers. Deng, who has two sisters and one brother, had enrolled in Guangzhou medical college at the age of 16.
A Wall Street Journal profile, published in 2000, says the Cherrys' interpreter introduced them to Deng, who was anxious to learn English, and Joyce Cherry offered her tuition.
When Joyce returned to Los Angeles in 1987, her husband stayed on in China to finish the factory project. He rang her to say Deng wanted to come to the US to study, and the couple sponsored her application for a student visa.
She moved into their home, claims the article, but all was not well. Joyce suspected her husband was having an affair with Deng, with whom he was reportedly infatuated.
Deng, who was by now a student at California State University at Northridge, a commuter college in the San Fernando Valley, before going to business school at Yale, moved out. Cherry followed, and moved into a nearby apartment.
Deng married Cherry, then 53, in February 1990, but they split up four months later because of her relationship with a man named David Wolf, who worked for an import-export company.
Cherry later told an interviewer: "She told me I was a father concept to her, and it would never be anything else. I loved that girl."
In keeping with her keen interest in physical fitness, Deng, by now a US citizen, worked with Wolf at a Los Angeles gymnastics academy where she acted as a liaison between the gym's Chinese coaching staff and parents of the children who attended.
She first appeared at Murdoch senior's side in 1998. By then she was working for Star TV, planning its activities in Hong Kong and China, in particular helping to build distribution for its music channel. She acted as Murdoch's interpreter on a visit to Shanghai and then Beijing.
Rumours of their romance were fuelled when, after dinner meetings in Hong Kong, they were seen holding hands. He separated from his wife that year. Deng has been at his side ever since.
"Wendi gives News Corp a Chinese face in China," Joseph Ravitch, from the Goldman Sachs media practice that advised News Corp on its Asia strategy, told the WSJ. "She represents not just the company but the owner, and that's criticial in a country where families are very important."
She is also, it would seem, the media mogul's greatest protector.
As committee member Tom Watson observed once the protester was arrested and normal service was resumed: "Mr Murdoch, your wife has a very good left hook."
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.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jul/19
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