Carl Levin to Ann Coulter: the political history of a pie in the face
Michigan’s Sen. Carl Levin got a pie in the face from a protester Monday. Pie-throwing has a political history dating to the 1960s and includes the pastry-based terrorism of ‘Al Pieda.’

A protester hit Sen. Carl Levin (D) of Michigan with a pie on Monday in the upstate town of Big Rapids. The protester in question – Ahlam M. Mohsen, a resident of Coldwater – was arrested and was due in court Tuesday on assault and disorderly conduct charges.

The pie in question was apple, according to news reports. Senator Levin took the incident with good humor, saying he was sorry the filling was not blueberry, which is his favorite.

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But generally pie-throwing has been a form of political theater aimed at those some deem pompous. In its heyday it was a sort of anarchic gesture with leftist overtones. Thus from the 1970s through the early ‘90s, an ex-Yippie named Aron Kay, also known as “The Pieman,” hit such notables as McGeorge Bundy, G. Gordon Liddy, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and William F. Buckley, Jr.

Mr. Kay matched pie fillings to targets. Thus New York Mayor Abe Beame got apple crumb. (Get it? The Big Apple? And Kay judged Mayor Beame a crumb.)

More recently, two men threw custard cream pies at conservative author and activist Ann Coulter during a 2004 speech at the University of Arizona. The pair – Zachary Wolff and Philip Edgar Smith – called themselves “Al Pieda.”

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