Lovely.

Well at least she can't screw up the interagency process anymore, eh?

It's official. Say it ain't Bolton, puhleeeeese!

He's on a roll these days --

I have no interest in listening to a Chris Matthews panel speculate on who might replace this or that person in the cabinet, as if they were engaging in Rotisserie League baseball. I assume whomever Bush picks will have horns, cloven feet, and a connection to an oil company, so who cares what name the minion goes by?

Captures my ennui to a tee.

Like praktike's post above, Wolcott zeroed in on the remarkable timing of Tom Friedman's proposal on MidEast peace and Powell's resignation. But Wolcott made a PB&J sandwich out of 2 and 2:

I can exclusively report what finally drove Powell over the brink. Yes, he was bummed by years of being backstabbed by the neocon hawks, most of whom spent Vietnam masturbating in their dorm rooms. But the last straw was seeing and hearing Thomas Friedman on Tim Russert's CNBC weekend show, channeling Bush's voice to advocate that Powell devote himself exclusively to negotiating a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israelis--that he be dispatched to the Middle East deal and not to be allowed to return home until he had one, even if it took a year.

Powell put aside his peanut butter sandwich, muted the remote, pondered all those airplane rides and diplomatic meals, and said to himself, "I'm too old for that shit." And the next morning tendered his resignation.

Yet another Tom Friedman dream-scheme thwarted.

A Friedman "dream-scheme" should find its way into the lexicon STAT.

BTW, the balance of Wolcott's entry is quite serious and seriously funny.

Wolcott's ability to shift in between seriousness and ornate snark is impressive indeed.

Seems like a typicallyweak lefty rant to me. There may be good leftist snarks, Hitch used to be one, but this clown doesnt seem to qualify.

Ah, Oscar, you're just in post-election supersensitive mode, like all the rest of us. And Hitchens doesn't snark, he's full throttle, high dudgeon, take no prisoners like the good Totskyite polemicist he is. The problem he has these days is that his heart's in it, but not his head, and it's making him even more schizo than usua -- he's contrarian about himself, not just the rest of the worldl. But everybody keeps reading because he's got that rare talent of the observation that finds a way to hot buttons nobody knew were there to push. And recently because it's like watching a train wreck in slow-motion.

Wolcott's another kettle of fish altogteher, which is why they inhabit the pages of the same mag in reasonable comfort regardless of the particular far wing on which Hitchens thinks he's flying any given day. Wolcott is the observer of the culturally absurd, which these days is most of the poltical arena, and he combines the two. And he can be equal opportunity -- the media ultimately being his favorite sport.

You have to admit that Rotisserie League is wonderful for the gabfest that passes for political analysis and insider scoops on these roundtable roundups.

And even if you're FarRight, you must agree that the prospect of a no-return ticket to deal for a year with the Israelis and the Palestinians would be enough to give pause to anyone. The only person who seems to have survived such a process -- and done so repeatedly I might add -- and returned relatively sane from the ordeal is Dennis Ross. Until they find his clone, I'm not sure there are going to be any takers for thet post Tom Friedman has so graciously invented for the President to fill (at least anyone you'd want to send if you wanted to accomplish anything and who wouldn't be persona non grata with both sides within 48 hours).

Nadezhda,
I have no problem with Leftist or Rightist rants as long as they spear what they are aiming at, and Hitch, like Trotsky is very good at that. Wolcott, however, seems to these eyes to be attacking his own delusions about others - not the same thing in my book. With the best of them, even their targets are left saying "ouch!" even if they don't change their minds. That said, I agree that Friedman's idea is nuts on the surface of it. Maybe I should re-read Wolcott again, but after he started praying for huricanes a few months back, I have had a bad taste in my mouth about him.