Media critic Michael Wolff's new book, The Man Who Owns the News, is excerpted in the London Guardian today. But it glosses over the details of a joke in particularly poor taste that the reptilian Newscorp billionaire told his Sun tabloid editor Rebekah Wade—who was was arrested a few years back for assaulting her supposed "hard man" British actor husband—after "a few drinks in a posh London restaurant," about gay sex. "Seeing [Wall Street Journal publisher Robert] Thomson arrive, Murdoch whispered: "For God's sake, don't tell Robert what I said. He's a gentrified man ... very clever," it reads. The actual joke, as it appears in the book, comes after the jump.

Rebekah Wade, the editor of the Sun in London, recalls Murdoch telling a joke after a few drinks, as they wait for Robert Thomson to arrive at a posh London restaurant. "God this is brilliant...what's the difference between a fridge and poofter?" Murdoch booms to Wade. "Well, when you pull the meat out of the fridge, it doesn't fart!" But, then, seeing Thomson coming into the restaurant, Murdoch urgently whispers, "For God's sake, don't tell Robert what I said. He's a gentrified man...very clever."

Nice, Rupert, very classy.

In related news: there are few pursuits more fruitless than arguing with a review of your book, but that's what Wolff does on his blog in response to the negative review of his book The Man Who Owns the News, "a biography of Rupert Murdoch, is also implicitly about the failures of the Times and its publisher, Arthur Sulzberger, Jr."

Maslin herself views Murdoch with contempt, if not downright nausea. There is no aspect of his singular success or peculiar character that she finds compelling. He's just loathsome-not least of all, it's fair to assume, because Murdoch is the most likely buyer of the beleaguered Times... Maslin's review seems to be so much more about the terrible dread that has enveloped the Times as it awaits its fate-quite probably Murdoch himself-than it is about my portrait of the man.

Yeah, but the review is from Janet Maslin, who is like the Sarah Palin of the New York Times.