Wendi Murdoch, wife of Rupert, in Paris in May: On Tuesday, she foiled a protester who tried to give the embattled media mogul a face full of shaving cream.

REUTERS/Pool

he video: A protester tried to hit News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch in the face with a shaving-cream pie as he testified before British Parliament on Tuesday about the phone-hacking scandal that took down one of his newspapers, the News of the World. But the embattled 80-year-old media mogul was saved when his wife, Wendi, wowed everyone with a swift, brutal counterattack. (See a video clip below.) She leapt from her seat behind her husband, and catapulted herself over a women in front of her, with both arms swinging. She appeared to land an overhead swat on the assailant's head before a uniformed officer and others in the room had time to intervene.

The reaction: Those were some impressive "ninja skills," says Andrew Sullivan at The Daily Beast. "I wouldn't want to cross Wendi Murdoch." The suspect, an anarchist comedian known as Jonnie Marbles, learned that lesson the hard way. Wendi Murdoch might be a hero, says John Cook at Gizmodo, but Murdoch's son, who was sitting right next to him, surely wasn't. He "just stood there." And Mrs. Murdoch didn't quit after her "instinctive and furious" reaction, says James Kirkup at Britain's Telegraph. She picked up the attacker's foam-covered paper plate and almost managed to hit him with it. Then she moved back to her husband and "started to clear the foam from his face, sometimes embracing him, holding his bald head in her arms." She does it all. Watch the disruption of the hearing below: