Throwing a pie at 80-year-old Rupert Murdoch yesterday was mean and nasty, (and may have distracted people from the phone hacking scandal at hand.) But critics of the News Corp. chairman are setting aside physical comedy with a number of pie-less methods of lampooning the media mogul. Here's what they're coming up with:

Ask Murdoch  Riffing on the once-popular Ask Jeeves search engine (now simply Ask.com), "Ask Murdoch: Where Rupert forgets stuff" makes light of yesterday's hearing in which British Parliament found it frustratingly difficult to get any answers out of Murdoch other than that he was sorry. See if you can do better. The site was launched in affiliation with the blog Political Scrapbook:

Urban Art  The Wooster Collective, a site dedicated to showcasing street art from around the world, spotted this gem in London, playing off the Hitchcock classic Dial M for Murder:

A mock defense Stephen Colbert gave a defense of Murdoch and the media's coverage of the saga in a way only he could: "How bad of a deal is it to hack people's phones? That's journalism," he said in an interview with The New York Times media reporter David Carr. "Ed Murrow said 'by any means necessary!'" Giving a defense of News Corp.'s American media outlets, he suggested that U.S. officials need not worry. "I'm not sure the Fox & Friends can hack into their own voicemail . . . they're just not technically-savvy."

A Top 10 List CBS host David Letterman's perennially-challenged Top 10 List sketches took on the News Corp.  scandal last night. “Top Ten Thoughts Going Through Rupert Murdoch’s Mind During the Pie Attack.” Per usual, the answers like "mmm" fall flat. But at one point Today Show co-host Matt Lauer inexplicably is seen breaking into the Ed Sullivan Theater with a garbage can, which somewhat saves the skit:

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John Hudson