Rupert Murdoch defends Exodus casting, says all his Egyptian friends are white

Responding to criticism that the cast of Exodus: Gods And Kings is awfully white for a film set in ancient Egypt, Rupert Murdoch has revealed himself for the 83-year-old rich white guy he is in a series of clueless tweets. Murdoch, whose 20th Century Fox is distributing the film, took to Twitter over the weekend to say that obviously aristocratic Egyptians should be played by white people, since all the Egyptian aristocrats he knows are white:

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Normally this sort of racially charged statement would set a plague of Twitter outrage upon Murdoch that could be vanquished only by the social-media equivalent of the blood of his firstborn son, i.e. deleting his account entirely. But because although he doesn’t own Twitter now, he could probably buy it if he felt like it, Murdoch continued to express his thoughts on the matter:

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As of this writing, Murdoch has yet to perform the symbolic act of Internet penance that is deleting the original tweet. But much to the relief of his publicity team, Murdoch did stop short of saying that he doesn’t think it’s weird to own a pyramid, because everyone he knows has one, and that people who think maybe plutocrats shouldn’t build funerary monuments posthumously establishing themselves as gods need to calm down.