Went to Czech beer garden here in Astoria last Friday (yeah, I know, and just got around to blogging about it now), and had an interesting conversation with a woman who works at the in house advertising agency at Harper Collins. Jokingly, I asked her what it was like working for an international supervillian. She remarked that she'd only seen him once, at the News Corp. Christmas party. She did say that Harper Collins was actually hiring right now, as opposed to everyone else in the publishing industry, having expanded smartly and put in a hiring freeze at the right. The publishing house is, like Fox broadcasting network (and as opposed to the New York Post and Fox News) a fairly apolitical outpost - whatever difficulties Michael Moore says he encountered getting Stupid White Men to press, it got there, and I'm fairly certain Murdoch has no particular qualms about the mint he's made on it, any more than he does about 24 repurposing the most outlandish left wing conspiracy theories about September 11th into an action show.