Murdoch’s “zombie garbage men” go on the rampage

Boy, oh boy. They’re only a few weeks into the job, and already Rupert Murdoch, Les Hinton and Robert Thomson have outraged the good burghers of Wall Street.

There’s a dawning realization that the “special committee” set up to protect Dow Jones from Rupert’s worst instincts might be toothless. (Er, that sounds familiar somehow.)

How come the committee didn’t, for example, get to sign off the highly-political ouster of managing editor Marcus Brauchi?

Brauchi was the leader of the Wall Street Journal‘s latte-sipping indigenous peoples. But his departure wasn’t vetted by the committee because he wasn’t fired.

He just asked to resign. As the Journal itself reported:

The committee wasn’t required to sign off on Mr. Brauchli’s exit — it has the power to approve new appointments and firings of the Journal’s managing editor and two other top Dow Jones editors, but not resignations.

Ah. And if you think that’s merely a storm in a teacup, try this for size: ex-FT hack and NY-based blogger Nick Denton has been attempting to identify the winners and losers in the Journal‘s newsroom.

For British readers, the piece is fairly tedious. Give it a skim — but make a point of heading to the comments, where you will find a whirlwind of negative sentiment about News Corp and its leader.

We’re particularly struck by the unseemly references to Robert Thomson and Len Hinton as “zombie garbage men”. Not to mention the characterization of Rupert Murdoch’s offspring as “waterhead mongoloids”.

The risk of Mr Murdoch’s sedan carriage being hijacked on the streets of the financial district by a mob wearing pigtails and tricorn hats continues to grow.

The throwing of tea leaves into the Hudson River seems certain to follow.