Deep Read: Rupert Murdoch in 'Vanity Fair'

Is Rupert Murdoch behind the rumor that Michael Bloomberg might buy The New York Times? Michael Wolff, who interviewed the News Corp. chairman extensively for an upcoming book, thinks he is -- although Wolff himself also deserves some of the blame.

In an excerpt of the book in October's Vanity Fair, Wolff says he often used tidbits of gossip to loosen Murdoch's tongue. Having dreamed up the Bloomberg-Times scenario on his own, he says,

I offered it to him as a bit of speculation -- conflating two of his favorite subjects, Bloomberg, whom he greatly admires, and the Times, which he does not -- that a Bloomberg-Times deal could be possible. He paused, considered, opened his mouth, seemed blissed out for a second, processed this information against his own needs and interests ... and then said, "It makes sense. I think I'll ask him." And suddenly the rumor was everywhere -- he was telling everybody, which made it true.

But in fact, says Wolff, Murdoch himself harbors a very serious and longstanding desire to own the Times.

[I]t's obviously irresistible to him. I've watched him go through the numbers, plot out a merger with the Journal's backroom operations, and fantasize about the staff's quitting en masse as soon as he entered the sacred temple.

Other tidbits of note from the excerpt:

-Murdoch "blithely" disregarded the document he had put in place to safeguard The Wall Street Journal's editorial independence:

It barely figured into his plans or consciousness. Except that he seemed briefly tickled to have figured out that if he merely called his chosen editor, Robert Thomson, the publisher, then he'd have his choice. He was only slightly confounded (and a bit bemused) that it took Journal editor Marcus Brauchli four months to get the message that he was out.

-Under the liberal influence of his wife, Wendi Deng, Murdoch has shown signs of souring on Fox News.

For a long time he was in love with the Fox chief, Roger Ailes, because he was even more Murdoch than Murdoch. And yet now the embarrassment can't be missed -- he mumbles even more than usual when called on to justify it; he barely pretends to hide the way he feels about Bill O'Reilly. And while it is not possible that he would give Fox up -- because the money is the money; success trumps all--in the larger sense of who he is, he seems to want to hedge his bets.

-At a "secret courtesy meeting" between Murdoch and Barack Obama earlier this summer, Murdoch introduced the candidate to Ailes. Obama reacted sharply: "He said that he didn't want to waste his time talking to Ailes if Fox was just going to continue to abuse him and his wife, that Fox had relentlessly portrayed him as suspicious, foreign, fearsome -- just short of a terrorist."

The Fox boss's response was a classic of thug journalism: "Ailes, unruffled, said it might not have been this way if Obama had more willingly come on the air instead of so often giving Fox the back of his hand."

-Murdoch tried to keep Deng from learning that he had promised his four children by a previous wife that the issue of his third marriage wouldn't have voting stakes in News Corp. But she found out anyway -- when he blurted it out on Charlie Rose.

-His kids think he needs to tone it down with the Just For Men touch-ups: ""I've said to him, 'Dad, I understand about dyeing the hair and the age thing' -- he never wants to die -- 'but just go somewhere proper,'" says his daughter Prue. "But he insists on doing it over the sink because he doesn't want anybody to know. Well, hello! Look in the mirror."