Had Rupert Murdoch's wife Wendi Deng not leapt to her feet yesterday at a parliamentary hearing and fought off pie-throwing assailant Jonathan May-Bowles, then her husband would have become the latest luminary to fall victim to "pieing." It's a forty-year old phenomenon borne out of a spirit of bratty, tongue-out political activism -- specifically, of the anti-Vietnam variety.

"Murdoch had it coming," says Aron Kay, a legendary New York activist known as "The Yippie Pieman." He's been hurling baked goods at politicians since the early '70s, landing some of the movement's biggest "gets," including much-ballyhooed former Democratic mayors Abraham Beeme and Ed Koch . "Pieing didn't start with me," Kay points out, "But I have been responsible for much of its history."