I can’t find anyone who approves of what happened yesterday, when news titan Rupert Murdoch suffered a near-shaving-cream-pie in the face during a hearing before members of Parliament in London. Everyone seems to agree that the pie-thrower, “activist” Jonnie Marbles, is a dumbass. We even seem to agree that Rupert Murdoch’s wife, Wendi Deng, is a badass. (If you’re late to the story, Wendi personally lunged at Marbles and smacked him on the head. Sadly, no black eye was administered.)

While near-unity prevails on this particular incident of pie-throwing, however, the practice of pie-throwing in general yields divided opinions. For instance, when pundit Thomas Friedman got a couple of pies thrown at him while he was onstage at Brown University in early 2008, a lot of otherwise sober people approved. Blogger Matt Yglesias called it “funny,” and other bloggers had similarly amused reactions.

Being a conscientious journalist, I’ve watched a lot of pie-attack videos in the last 24 hours. One thing they have in common is that they’re not funny. And I don’t just mean that I don’t find them funny. Watch a few of them. Here’s Anita Bryant getting pied. Here’s Bill Gates getting pied. Here’s Ann Coulter getting pied. Does any of them make you laugh? Does anybody in any of the videos laugh? Invariably, the response of the gathered crowd is alarm followed by disgust. A whiff of chaos, of a broken social compact, is in the air. Everyone is shaken.

(Check out TNR’s video history of famous people getting “pied.”)

A common defense of pie-throwing is that it’s, well, just a pie. But, of course, the person getting attacked has no idea what the hell is about to hit him or her. In 1976, during a campaign appearance in his first run for the U.S. Senate, Pat Moynihan got pied by a Yippie yelling “Fascist pig.” Moynihan, a child of Hell’s Kitchen, was no softie, “but it scared the hell out of me,” he told The New York Times. It had been “a violent act.”