james fallows for the national correspond respondent and richard quest back in london. let's me start with you, james fallows. a massive day for the murdoch family and news corporation. what is your overview? how did they do? >> miraculously, the pie may have saved the whole day for the murdoch family. of course, as you pointed out it will dominate the headlines. the spectacle of wendi, trying to step in and protect her husband, and rupert murdoch being wronged. that changed a very difficult beginning for both murdochs in the first hour of the hearing. when rupert murdoch seemed sometimes confused, slow, and often in an almost touching way, james murdoch would try to intervene and supply information that his father didn't have. and the mps would say, no, we'd like to hear from rupert murdoch. the pie changed the whole dynamic of the day. >> very dramatic scenes. would you agree it was the pie that won it? >> no, i actually don't think i would agree. i think the pie incident will be seen for what it is, which was a disgraceful, appalling breach of parliamentary regulatio

but it was apparent that he wasn't -- >> let me bring in james fallows on that point. what was interesting watching it, i saw people observing the murdochs seemed to be a mibit mumbling. this reminded me of the meetings i had with him 16 years ago. when he warmed up, he was the murdoch of old. i expect when he started, he was very conscious of not saying the wrong thing and that is why he was taking time to answer. what's interesting to me, he made it clear he didn't feel the buck stopped with him is that a position that's acceptable for a guy who is chairman and ceo of a news corporation? >> it's quite a surprising position, and there is a different of your reaction to this and most of the public. most of us have never done business with rupert murdoch and know what he is like inside. the first impression of him being very cautious and sometimes worse than cautious, unsure of what he is saying. that is a surprise giving the view of murdoch of this controlling figure. probably the most influential media figure in the world and finally his saying he wasn't accepting res

and then, of course, there's fallow, their little dog. [laughter] so it was an era dominated by these folks here. um, so, please, join me now in if picturing a scene that will take us back to the past. this is a drafty old house, and i usually just say a small town in missouri, but this time i'm going to say in sedalia, missouri. here we have an exhausted housewife trying to keep warm at the end of a dull day of housekeeping while reading her favorite columnist in the kansas city star. suddenly, she looks up at her little girl, and she says, "i am sure that she is better than he is." [laughter] well, who do you think the she was? eleanor roosevelt. and who is the he? franklin. my family was rock-ribbed republican, believe me. they would have fit pretty well with the tea party crowd we have now. but my mother loved reading eleanor roosevelt's "my day" column. do any of you remember "my day"? i see a few heads nod, yeah. why did my mother like it? well, this is a column about a woman who was doing something. she was going places. she was do

we got double digit unemployment we have water shortage that causes our agriculture to leave land fallow, leaving thousands unplanned parenthood. by getting the water flowing again, we cannot only get -- if we don't use the natural resources we have in our forests, if we don't manage our timber harvesting plan, not only will we see the lack of employment opportunities but we'll see devastation. we'll see fires because the forests will manage themselves if we don't manage the forests for them. we need to make sure that as we're looking across the nation our oil reserves. between our oil, our natural gas, our shale reserves, we have the largest resources in the world. we just got to be willing to tap into them. we need to shorten the time on permits. we need to reduce the regulation so we can actually go in and get the oil so we're not dependent on other nations. these aren't republican jobs. these are not democratic jobs. these are american jobs that we got to go out, stand strong on cutting the regulation, on getting the right economic policies, getting the permits moving again so we can