esrosedotblog

OLD MAN

I suppose that if you have enough money and staff and support you can go on trying to run the show at 80 years old.

I am thinking about Ol' Rupert Murdoch.

He sure looks tore up in those photos that aren't managed for him.

He always smiles. That is his style. As he shoves the shiv between the ribs.

I speak only about the 80 part today.

I haven't really worked for 15 years and maybe for awhile before that so I am not an expert on this kind of thing.

When I had enough money and felt the cold breath of winter on my neck, I tucked it in and went for quiet and low volume in the desert.

Perhaps if I had kept up and stayed hitched to the plow I could have made it up to now managing my small empire. But I don't think so.

What is interesting to me is that someone like Murdoch would want to. Let the kids have it. Let the stockholders hold it. Get professional managers in. Prepare for the inevitable. It takes years to train managers to do what an entrepreneur knows in his bones. And even then you have to give it up.

At least for the sake of the enterprise.

At 75, almost, I am in really good shape. As good as my peers around me. But there is no way that I would be competent to run even the kind of small business I had.

This morning, inexplicably, I overslept and missed the gym. Two weeks in a row for Tuesday morning. What is up with that?

It is OK. There is not a lot at stake except my pride which comes cheap these days. I am trying to let go of it. I mean my false pride. The ego buster.

Guys like Murdoch are egoists of the first degree. They have a touch of evil that keeps them going. They can use menace as a way to get things done through other people (a basic definition of management). But that means has ends beyond your control. People menace back.

As we see today, right now, live on the 'net, he is not managing. He is blaming. He is looking for someone else to take the fall. He is "humbled". Bull K. Shit.

He has about enough humility in that bag of skin to fill a teaspoon and even that is fake.

Drive. That is what he has.

It is interesting to watch. I am surprised, will be surprised, if he survives this. I mean this even in the mortal sense.

Sure. People who are paid to do so will still be yes men. Peers in business will still kiss his ass because they want something from him.

But the sharks are in the water. They smell the blood that has been drawn.

80 years of fucking other people over is coming to pass.

I read that it is like the death of a dictator when all the flunkies and cooptees line up at a microphone to vilify the bastard who yesterday they were applauding. The dictator is dead. Long may he rot, the bastard. That is Murdoch's fate. No one with any integrity will ever give themselves over to him again. Not even his one son remaining in the center of the business.

Poor James. If he lasts he will reap the harvest, even unto the next generations.

Labels: life