Waiting for Wankette
 
Joe Klein's little yelp of glee startled me at first, but thankfully, I regained my composure in time to see the source of his joy, a Blackberry message announcing that Ana Marie Cox was just outside. A colleague had seen her downing shots in the parking lot.
 
Ana Marie was late to the Association of Political Pundits party, and that was for the better. An early arrival would have taken attention away from Ann of a Thousand Flays who had set up court early in order to allow for the maximum amount of fawning over her latest book, Scum-Sucking Dickwads: Why Liberals Should be Executed. If Ana Marie had arrived earlier, Coulter might have had to stab someone to get the attention she craved.
 
I wasn't the only one to notice Klein's ecstatic squeal. Every head turned at the sound. Inasmuch as Klein was too overcome with emotion to respond to  their inquisitive stares--he was sobbing heavily, like a starstruck Beverly LaHaye at an Englebert Humperdinck concert--I blurted out, "She's coming. Wankette is coming."
 
 
I regretted it immediately. I came to observe, not participate. That's why Jane sent me. She assumed that the punditarians would feel comfortable talking to a general in the Red Guard of the Glorious Conservative Christian Cultural Revolution. After all, I'm at least a step up from Little Green Football's Charles Johnson, and they loved his work on kerning. But I had to ruin it all by drawing attention to myself. Now MoDo would target me as an aspiring columnist and a potential rival. I'll need to buy more fashionable cammies or she'll crucify me in her column.
 
Self-chastened, I decided to shut up and mingle. My first stop was a circle where Howard Kurtz was holding court. "Did you see the note she sent Insty ," I heard someone say as I wedged my way in between Christopher Hitchens and his emergency vodka cart. "Yeah," Kurtz responded, "I have the same reaction when I see Joe Wilson. He makes me want to puke up my Tartlet of Quail."
 
Before I could stop myself, I jumped in, "I don't know how she could be in the same room with that man." "While he was grandstanding during the First Gulf War by standing with the American hostages in Baghdad and telling Saddam to go to hell," I exclaimed, "Ana Marie was honing her literary and business skills by selling peeks at the word "assfucking" in her elementary school library's copy of the Unabridged Oxford Dictionary." "That," I said "is the kind of entrepreneurial thinking that made America great. I doubt Wilson has even ever had to make a payroll."
 
Of course, they all loved it. Everyone laughed and told me I had nailed it. And Kurtz surreptitiously squeezed my butt in the way an athlete shows his approval for a teammate. Although I found it strangely exciting, I realized that I'd blown it again by speaking rather than listening. so I untangled myself from Hitchens' Stoli IV bag and headed for another group.
 
Lloyd Grove was the center of attention at the next stop. Jonah Goldberg was trying to persuade him to leave. "You're not a real pundit,"Jonah whined, "you're a gossip columnist." "Oh yeah" Grove responded, "what's the difference between what I do and what Ana Marie did at Wonkette, or what you do at NRO for that matter?" "That's it," Jonah sobbed, "I'm calling mother. You better go. She brought down a president."
 
Again, I spoke before thinking. "Lloyd has a point, Jonah " I interjected, "if his editors had let him use the word, 'assfucking' he might very well be a columnist for Time like Ana Marie."
 
That got Jonah's attention. He looked at my cammies and cried, "Oh my God, he's a recruiter," and dashed out of the room so fast, he knocked over Michelle Malkin's racial classification charts.
 

And so it went for the rest of the evening. Although Ana Marie never did make it out of the parking lot, she was the focus of every conversation. And my comments were the hit of the party, so much so, that on Monday, Gen. JC Christian, patriot will be Time Magazine's newest columnist.