10 Other People Who've Been Pied

Image credit: @DanJHayes

News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch took a shaving cream pie to the face today during his hearing before a committee of the British Parliament on the phone-hacking scandal. Good thing we had this list handy.

1. Singer and activist Anita Bryant was hit in the face with a pie in 1977, in Des Moines. She responded by saying a prayer for her assailants.

2. Bill Gates took a pie to the face in 1998 while visiting Brussels.

3. In the same year, Sylvester Stallone got creamed (get it!?) while opening a Planet Hollywood in Montreal. I hope when they did it they yelled, "This is for Stop or my Mom Will Shoot!"

4. There was an attempt on conservative Ann Coulter, but she dodged the bullet — er, pie. Calling themselves "Al Pieda," two guys from Tucson lobbed a couple of custard cream pies at Coulter, but mostly missed.

5. Clothing designer Calvin Klein was the accidental victim of some PETA activists who hurled tofu pies at a fashion event — they were actually aiming for Karl Lagerfeld. One of the PETA members apologized for hitting Klein and called it "friendly fire," because Klein is fur-free. Lagerfeld is definitely not.

6. Jeffrey Skilling from Enron enjoyed a blueberry tofu cream pie against his will, courtesy of "Agent Chocolate Supreme." "Since Mr. Skilling, who made $132 million this year, creamed us — I felt obligated to cream him."

7. The Des Moines chapter of the Biotic Baking Brigade took responsibility for the 2003 pie-ing of Fred Phelps' followers. His followers were staging a protest against a gay student at Lincoln High School who won the Matthew Shepard Scholarship. The Des Moines BBB released this statement: "With our heads held high and our baked goods in hand, we are the cream topping on the pie tin of gay liberation and we unite under the motto, 'There will be no peace, as long as there is pie and there will be pie as long as there are fascists.' Fascist gay-bashers everywhere be warned... the pies are in the oven."

9. Thomas Friedman, an op-ed writer for the New York Times, got a couple of meringues in the mug at Brown University in 2008. After he said that climate change will make America stronger and more innovative, environmental activists delivered two plates full of green cream. Friedman ducked and the damage was pretty minimal; he continued his talk about five minutes later.

10. John Pepper, then-CEO of Procter and Gamble, was the target of pie-throwers at Northwestern University in 1999. The PETA members sent a pie to Mr. Pepper to protest animal testing. It wasn't the first time Pepper had been sent such a pie — he had received a similar greeting the year before, also from a PETA protester, while receiving an award.