Murdoch, Rupert

bidder rung William Bradley / NWN (916) 395-5391 08/30/1995 (07:40 112/4 Mchulcc:65 What's the deal on this? LMH NEW WEST NOTES page August 29, 1996 R.M. MEETS R.M. CRUNCH! Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the most ruthless "R.M." of all? Well, Richard "Dick" Morris, it ain't you. The contest between the chief political advisor to the president of the United States and the most powerful media mogul in the world is no contest. As a result, this week's Time magazine cover boy, just described in the magazine as "the most influential private citizen in the United States," who successfully counseled the president to move to the right and talk a lot about the overriding importance of family values, finds his career a smoking ruin. Dick Morris may still be wondering what hit him. The answer, in case he hasn't figured it out yet: Rupert Murdoch. And after all Bill Clinton's done for Murdoch. More about that in a few moments. Today's issue of the New York Post, a money losing but strategically important part of Murdoch's globe-spanning media empire, broke the news of the married Morris's extraordinarily foolish liaison with a Washington prostitute in spectacular fashion. "Bill's Bad Boy" read one screaming cover headline for one edition of the tabloid; "Guru Dished Dirt On Bill To Hooker" read another. Where did the conservative New York Post (which was kind enough last year to describe me as "a crusading journalist" when I was nailing California Governor Pete Wilson, then a rival to Bob Dole) get this story, which it chose to break on the day of President Bill Clinton's acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention? From <next week's issue of The Star. That notoriously sleazy supermarket tabloid used to be a part of the Murdoch empire. Needless to say, ties remain close. Murdoch, an Australian swiftly granted American citizenship by the Reagan Administration in 1985 so that he could establish the Fox TV network, made his bones, 50 to speak, as a global media figure with his British newspaper empire. And as it happens, as sex scandais go, the Morris affair has a distinctly British flavor to it. The template goes back to the Profumo affair in the early 1960s. A confidential counselor engages in a long-term relationship with a prostitute, in the process divulging what can be described as state secrets to the hired companion. John Profumo was a British defense minister who carried on a sexual liaison with a prostitute aiso linked to a colonel of the Soviet KGB. He sought to impress her -- though since he was paying her, it wasn't exactly necessary -- with secret tales. So, too, reportedly, did Morris, who has denied nothing. All that is missing from the