The Statutory Rape of Fun By Venomous Playthings

November 29, 2004

Pelican Bay Townhomes
Somewhere in Germantown, MD 20874-5404
malkin@comcast.net

Dear Mistress Michelle,
Your blog is becoming increasingly incoherent. The only point of interest in your last postings concerned the vast conspiracy of John O'Neill haters and the Moonie Times reporting that his 527 will receive the 2004 Courage Under Fire award for putting Steve Gardner out of work. The bigger question is this: have you and I gotten to the point where we cannot be more than friends?

Your fear of John Kerry still puzzles me. You never explained it fully. Understandibly, he is the handiwork of the Democratic inner sanctum, but so was Lyndon Baines Johnson and Harry S. Truman. Where do you see the idiosyncrasy?

And just for the heck of it please stop calling me a heat-seeking liberal. I stopped calling you Imelda Marcos with a vocabulary many moons ago, and the least you could do is return the favor. Must I remind you again that I keep a basement office at The Los Angeles Times - I was entertaining Washington correspondent Ron Brownstein on Hermosa Beach the other night for several turbulent hours about starting my own conspiracy theory rag - so when the moment comes to seize the reins of journalistic power I will have a running start. But for now I am still being syndicated all over the world, just as you are, but it is clear that I have superior penmanship, and for the time being I have turned down the offer from The New York Times to replace Safire for its Op-Ed section.

But for all it's worth - and what I hear from your coalition of venemous playthings - I don't figure there's much hope for you and me as an evolutionary pair to succeed Mary Matalin and James Carville. We could have had our own show on HBO or Showtime. But I have my reasons and they are pure. You seem to have gravitated further from reality since your appearance on Hardball, and I hear Bill Maher will no longer take your calls. I truly empathize with your imprecise goals, being what they are - just unfulfilled vindication - but I think you have been led astray by a tough crowd for the high-stakes action. Your thirst to assault liberals with bold accusations no longer humors me. I think you are going on these television and radio shows just so you can see what they write about you at Media Matters for America, which pains me greatly. It will take me a while to lessen the size of my ego because of my recent string of large-headed successes in American Journalism, Inc., but it's only because I am not afraid of the wild highway or a brush with extreme violence in the barrio. Would it surprise you to know that I have fully penetrated the steely confines of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which neither of us could have imagined in our wildest dreams, and have in the space of a couple of days revealed a number of important stories that beg coverage. Words cannot describe the euphoria I get from shaping fertile minds - some day you'll have to come along for a ride in the Lexus SC 430 to see the joy I bring for yourself. But for the moment you are way over there pushing ink and intellectual disease with with a pack of degenerates who never considered disagreement with you. What I think you need to do is come out West and get back in journalistic shape with me as your spotter. We can exchange ideas and advise grass roots organizations in our spare time, then jet off to Palm Springs for weekends of artistic passion in the spas. It will be a challenge for you - but I see big things in your future. In my world you could go from speaking with Indian casino pit bosses to defending African-Americans to working the Private Investigator trade shows to Hispanic causes to the problems of Immigration all in one day - and God willing the bastards won't keep us down. I have come to the point in my journalistic development where I cannot distinguish the differences between repressive Fascism and hardcore Capitalism, or, for that matter, fully actualized French Socialism.

Your approach to this challenge has one terrible flaw - you seem to have lost affection for the iconoclast, the one who cannot be convinced of anything and consequently pushes the button on everything above and below him. He is a creature of suspicion and self-examination, the ever-wise magician of thought and being, a heavy dude with a savvy imagination and the necessary financial freedom to consider every alternative, a great ally or a mean-spirited enemy depending on what tickles his fancy. But still a fundamentally sane and stainless person - or in my case, a sordid Third World element combining Gary Glitter with Holden Caulfield and Sy Hersch. The pig fuckers beat the snot out of Gray Davis in California a couple of years ago, and they are getting primed to stone the Gropinator next. Pity the relentless, because they have no convictions when it comes to politics these days. The only thing missing in California - and across this country, of course - is that people don't have something to vote for, so the alternative is against. As far as I am concerned, I see no land shark on the horizon - on either side of the aisle - so it leaves me to wonder what could happen if we became a team, a real team defining the future on our own. Dubya is intellectual jailbait with the soul of a redneck punk, even you know that. And I'd sooner vote for Donald Trump out of irascibility, but for no other reason.

Anyway, without a change in venue your opinions will be ground into dust. Your points have lost their claws - at least for a rebel like me - and it should already be clear that you need a long shot on this side of the blue states to know just how tenuous the balance of sanity really is. Albert Camus might have been the patron saint of existentialism, but he died just as Jayne Mansfield did. Minds like his get taken from us in every age, before they have enough time to dig into the mean details of implementing their philosophical ideals. They are radicals first, then heroes after death, and then radicals again, once they realize that their suburban, obese kids with face jewelry and black fingernail polish are spouting the same philosophy hook, line and verse.

As for your blog, your commentary seems to paint over the major issues of the day. I never took Maureen Dowd at The Times to be in your class, but I was visibly shaken when I saw that you went for the jugular with that scapel you call a keyboard. It was a like using a diamond-encrusted garrot to kill a peasant, and normally I wouldn't have given a damn - but why would you spend a waking minute to pursue a minor issue in a weak attempt to make a major score?

I can feel that you're in a fit of rage now. But I suppose you know how it feels to be left at the cliff of a huge political awakening, and I am sensing that you need to reach out beyond the clearing of your grassy knoll, and deep into the dirty realities of a world in which the columns just run out, making you free at last. Come give it a whirl out West. And when you finally make it here at last, I promise to have a better bed than the one I had in Redondo Beach - the sliding glass door will close this time, and you won't get awakened by immigrants selling fruit or the scent of fresh shellfish. Recently I moved into a new beachfront place, where there are better possibilities, and by the time you arrive the place should be just divine.

I'll send my personal assistant, Hector, with a plane ticket in a few days. What have you got to lose? And why not? Ann Coulter has jumped way beyond you already and it will take you to at least the age of 45 before you pump out enough literature to be considered equals, and you may have to learn weather maps and pressure systems in Malaysia to earn a buck before long. I am so overcome with fascination over the possibilities of both of us together long last - but then again, presumptive ramblings are within my nature, right? But I have always made reasonable efforts to amuse. In all, my supreme faith in conviction tells me that you are so removed from the pulse of what's happening these days that a chance to reclaim your inner deviant can be sharpened into immediate journalistic context. We can call it the quickening, the whatever you want to call our association.

Many have compared my persuasive powers to John Derek, calling me an intellectual svengali of sorts, a veritable Rex Harrison of mind, body, spirit and soul. But there will be no misogynistic wagers with the boys on whether I can convert you into a passionate woman with firm ideas - I'm in it for bigger things and I think you know what you must do now. Do it before it's too late.

Otherwise, you can always write copy for The 700 Club, and I hear they're looking for scribes.

You had me at hello - IMHO
Team Gonzography