Snarling tigress (Ms Wendi Deng), crouching dragon (China)

The Wendi Deng saga continues...

Some people have already coined a new verb, "I'll Wendi you!".

Rap mogul Russell Simmons said in a comment on Twitter that Ms Deng "told me last week she had to go to London to take care of her man... now I know what she meant". And former CBS news anchor Katie Couric tweeted that Ms Deng has given a "whole new meaning to the term tiger mother".

But it now turns out that while the media has been mesmerised by Ms Deng's Snarling Tiger, Smack Down manoeuvre, another woman was in fact the first to jump into action. Ms Janet Nova, 46, interim group general counsel of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp empire, had leapt to her feet as the shaving foam wielding attacker approached Mr Murdoch.

Ms Nova used her iPad (wah, it doubles as an iShield!) to block the man. That action gave Ms Deng time to reach over Ms Nova, swing her arm and deliver that now-famous sharp punch on Mr Marbles, who we are now told is a comedian (apart from being a Labour Party member).

I'll wrap up this posting with a brief note on the Crouching Dragon, aka China, which is clearly unamused and very jittery over the US' continued mismanagement of its economy and financial affairs. As they say, if A owes C a hundred bucks, and A is going broke, A is the nervous party because C might just pull the plug and get an order to have A's assets seized. But if A owes C a million bucks and does not have much by way of assets left anyway, then it is C who is jittery, very jittery. Well, A is America here and C is China, and C is holding some US$1.2 trillion in US Treasury bonds.

For more on this black comedic playbook, read Bloomberg View columnist William Pesek's piece "Joke is on China as AAA rating for US becomes laughable" (TODAY, 21 July, page 18). Here's the link:

http://www.todayonline.com/World/EDC110721-0000023/Joke-is-on-China-as-AAA-rating-for-US-becomes-laughable

Finally, for a spoof piece on this topic by the rightwing US newspaper The Washington Times, see

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/20/the-national-debt-papers/

Methinks China right now is wishing it could tell the US, "I'll Wendi you!"