Yes, We Are Here Because of Rupert Murdoch

With about 10 minutes left in Super Bowl LIX, the FOX broadcast found a beat to divert its cameras away from the Eagles’ humdrum rout of the Chiefs to News Corp kingpin Rupert Murdoch, cozily ensconced in a suite. I wouldn’t have known this was Murdoch because I’ve never bothered to commit his physical appearance to memory, but fortunately play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt made things abundantly clear:

“Well Rupert Murdoch is here at the game,” observed Burkhardt. “Good to see him, we’re all here because of him. So Rupert, we appreciate it. That’s our boss enjoying what’s been a dominating performance by the Eagles.”

It’s not going to be in the 20 most talked about moments from Sunday night. In fact, it’s been almost a day since the game ended and I’ve only seen one mention of it, from Richard Deitsch’s Bluesky. Amid the humbling of Patrick Mahomes, the petty poetry of Kendrick Lamar, the imperfect prose of Tom Brady, a new scorebug that was simultaneously minimalist and maximalist, and the usual cavalcade of commercials featuring celebrities hawking the AI flavor of the week, there were only crumbs of our attention left to lend to a blink-and-miss-it cameo from Rupert Murdoch.

But I did a mental double take when I heard Burkhardt’s adulations. I rewound the broadcast and watched the clip again to make sure I didn’t mishear him, then I rewound the broadcast again and recorded the clip, just to make sure future me would not doubt my memory. We’re really here, aren’t we? The lead play-by-play voice on FOX is Dear Leadering the single most destructive and corrosive figure in modern media for a nine-figure Super Bowl viewing audience.

I may not have caught it if not for the moments that preceded it. A whole stadium cheered for Donald Trump (and his haughty, buffoonish salute) during the national anthem. FOX allowed Kanye West to buy an ad that aired in several major cities in which West instructed viewers to go to his website, the only function of which was to buy a white shirt with a black swastika on it. Kendrick Lamar put on a stirring, poignant halftime show that went completely over that same stadium audience’s heads when they found themselves gleefully singing “A MINOR” in unison with the rap star.

We are in such a dark moment and Sunday night’s Super Bowl broadcast leaned all the way in. I don’t know what I was expecting, I just didn’t think it would all feel this bleak this fast. At least Kevin Burkhardt was right. We certainly are all here because of Rupert Murdoch, huh.