New Orleans Just for the record I’m getting tired of all of the backbiting and whispering in the papers and the television news about why Rupert’s son, James Murdoch, a tall strapping lad in his 30’s, did not stand up for the old man when under shaving cream assault the other day before Parliament.  I think we don’t have the whole story or perhaps we have bad camera angles.  The reports keep on saying that son James seemed “frozen” and unable to react.  I think we’re letting this get way out of hand.

Today’s reports bend more credit in the ensuing melee to interim News Corp general counsel, Janet Nova.  Seems she had on the gray suit, rather than the pink jacket, so some folks missed her role when Wendi Murdoch reached over her and through a roundhouse at Mr. Marbles.  A Princeton undergrad and Columbia Law School graduate, Janet, seems to have jumped up ever earlier than Wendi, stepped in between Rupert and Marbles, and fended him off with an iPad.  Yes, an iPad, because as she indicated when asked, that’s the way “we roll” at Princeton and Columbia, making her a different breed than a Wendi-ride-and-die chick it seems.  Wendi’s move with this new information seems to have been more of a dog pile twist, trying to get a punch in after the hard work was already done with the iPad.  I hope in the middle of massive layoffs, pronounced recession, a looming suspect deal on the debt crisis, and pretty much the end of the world as we know it, you are following this because by damn, it’s important.

Now that the story is getting straight after the excitement and “fog of war” at Parliament, once again we have the “throw the rocks, hide the hand” crowd picking at James because he didn’t man-up and instead sat still and let the ladies administer the beat down.  I think it’s misogynist.   These snipers just don’t want the sisters to get their due.

Besides, look, he didn’t have position really.  They could leap out from the back row.  James was undoubtedly stuck under the table.  His shoes were probably off and he didn’t want to leap up in his stocking feet.  He would have had to just about crawl over the old man to get there.  All of these things are possible, really?

My dad always refused to tell us any stories about his youth.  There was one though that he told often.  Seems a big fat bully of a guy jumped him on the baseball field in Orange, California one afternoon and pinned him down and sat on him.  Dad got him off by claiming “the sun was in his eyes,” so the stup moved off, giving my dad a chance at a couple of blows before running away as fast as he could.

Just possible that could explain this situation at Parliament, too.  Given they were trying to honest up about phone hacking, police paying off, and all manner of crimes large and small that at that every moment it might have been that the sun was in his eyes.