The things that most fascinated me about the Murdochs’ appearance at Westminster last night were Rupert’s hands. They are thoroughly octogenarian. One thought of leopards and their spots, as the apparently doddery old guy and waffling, spinning young man ran rings around most of the MPs, who huffed and puffed.

But one also recalled Lady Macbeth, who had stuff on her hands to wash off:

Out, damned spot! out, I say! — One: two: why,
then, ’tis time to do’t. — Hell is murky! — Fie, my
lord, fie! a soldier, and afeard? What need we
fear who knows it, when none can call our power to
account? — Yet who would have thought the old man
to have had so much blood in him.

It was lucky Old Gramps brought his Lady Murdoch, the ninja Wendi, who took out the pie delivery guy with a rightie, as junior was no help. You can hear the whack she gives him.

Media maven Jack Shafer at Slate puts like this: “Rupert Murdoch and James Murdoch pretend they’re the victims.” He quotes a brilliant tweet from Alex Heard: “”What a small (lying) hole they’re successfully running through. Too dumb to know this was hap’ning; smart enuff to still run the biz.”

Shocked, shocked!

But we must go back to the Guardian for a bit more heft than a foam pizza:

“Blindingly obvious” evidence of corrupt payments to police officers was found by the former director of public prosecutions, Lord Macdonald, when he inspected News of the World emails, the home affairs select committee was told . . . it took him between “three to five minutes” to decide that the material had to be passed to police.

“Deliberately” blocking Scotland Yard

And this:

Rupert Murdoch’s News International has been found by a parliamentary committee to have “deliberately” tried to block a Scotland Yard criminal investigation . . . The report’s central finding comes a day after Rupert and James Murdoch testified before the culture, media and sport committee. It finds the company deliberately tried to “thwart” the 2005-6 Metropolitan police investigation into phone hacking carried out by the News of the World.

. . . the man who oversaw the first Metropolitan police investigation into phone hacking, Peter Clarke, said: “If at any time News International had offered some meaningful co-operation instead of prevarication and what we now know to be lies, we would not be here today.”

The Cream

RM: I was invited within days to have a cup of tea to be thanked for the support by Mr Cameron, no other conversation took place. It lasted minutes.
Q: And that’s the one where you went in through the back door?
RM: Yes. I had been asked by Mr Brown also many times.
Q: To go in through the back door?
RM: Yes.
—
Q: Who was responsible for the scandal? You?
RM: “No. The people I trusted and the people they trusted.”
“Frankly, I’m the best person to clean this mess up.”