LONDON — The Murdoch who may have emerged in the best light Tuesday was not Rupert Murdoch or his son James, but from his wife, Wendi.
It was Wendi Deng Murdoch, 42, who lunged across the hearing room to defend her husband when after about two hours of questioning a protester stormed the witness table, attempting to hit the 80-year-old Murdoch with a shaving cream pie on a paper plate.
Even as James Murdoch seemed frozen to his seat, Wendi Murdoch leaped to her feet from her chair just behind her husband, swung her arm in a great arch and punched the protester.
Her actions brought immediate praise even from those lawmakers who had directed the toughest questions at Murdoch, chairman of News Corp.
“Mr. Murdoch, your wife has a very good left hook,” said Tom Watson, a Labour member of Parliament.
Although she has no formal high- ranking title in Murdoch’s companies, she acts as counselor to her husband.
A daughter of a factory director in Guangzhou, China, Wendi Murdoch attended the Yale School of Management and then returned to Asia where she worked at Star TV in Hong Kong. It was at Star TV, once owned by Murdoch, that she met the media tycoon.
Some reports in the British media suggested that after Tuesday’s thwarted attack she even shoved the pie back into the protester’s face, screaming.
The protester — identified as Jonathan May-Bowles, a.k.a Jonnie Marbles, a comedian — was later led away by the police with his face covered in white cream. The New York Times
