Leave it to the Bancrofts to energize a sleepy Friday afternoon. As the family tries to decide whether it will sell Dow Jones to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., some of its internal wrangling is starting to show up in public.

The latest to go on record is Crawford Hill, who sent a nearly 4,000-word letter to his relatives on Thursday. The letter, which appears on The Wall Street Journal’s Web site, supports selling to Murdoch, and is equal parts Thomas Pynchon and John Cheever. Here are some of our favorite excerpts:

- You are all fine humans and we have nothing to be ashamed of about how we have looked in press or any of that nonsense — we are an amazing group of people who have lives that extend way beyond our ownership of Dow Jones. Let’s keep smiling through all of this. We are all lucky folks.

- “Uncle Pit,” she [Jessie B. Cox] would say to Whitney Stone, chair of the U.S. Equestrian Team and her dear friend, “You simply must sit next to Bumpy today so he can tell you all about the swimmers!”

- We are actually now paying the price for our passivity over the past 25 years.

- Our real legacy was an inherited lack of awareness as to what it takes to nurture and pass on an effective legacy about what is really required to be responsible, engaged and active owners of a family business. But we got away with this for a long time!!

- It is also so telling that now so many of you have revealed going back quite a long way, that you had serious concerns about the business skills of Peter Kann, but thought he was and still is a fine guy — which he is. Peter once cooked me a dinner all by himself at his home in Princeton while we watched Karen on The McLaughlin Group on TV and she arrived later, after the taping, to join us. The reason these split feelings about Peter are significant is they underscore how impotent or unwilling we were as a family do anything about Peter — despite the obvious problems. The emotion involved prevented us from making the prudent business decision.

- Up until the past few months there has never existed a family culture of questioning management. Family directors have not gone out of their way to promote this basic concept — in fact we were always told by them that we need to support management, these things take time and we can’t really talk about anything important. I always wondered what the point of owning something was if you could not even seriously question those who had been hired, in essence by you, to run your business. How screwy is that?

- Murdoch, like it or not, has what it takes to help the business flourish. He will not have naked bodies in the WSJ — he is not a moron

- The fact that we still get a premium is a bonus. And it is a helluva premium. Let us remember that this is America and capitalism is good and that, hello We Own a Business.

- His signoff: Crawford, Dad, #1 son, brother, cuz, nephew, “who’s he?,” heretic to some, born in Boston but Eagles fan all the way and now I am again proud to say, fellow alum of St. George’s with my “born again” in-law cousin Buzzy! p.s. Life is too short not to keep on seeing the irony and humor in virtually everything!