Classy: James Wolcott, the number one fan of the late and odious fabulist Albert Goldman, sucks up to one of the leading lights in the lefty blogosphere:

But all of Las Vegas's top dominatrixes cleared room and clung to the walls last week when Firedoglake's Jane Hamsher hit the neon strip for Yearly Kos, her arrival heralded by whipcrack lightning and the baying of distant coyetes. Now Jane Hamsher looked amiable and sweetly accessorized hosting a panel on C-SPAN, almost schoolteacherly in her glasses; but cross her, displease her, and the cruel lash will be one's crimson reward.* She has visited her wrath upon the former Wonkette, shown here flanked by a jovial pair of freeloaders. But even that pales beside the rejoinder she offers a critic in the comments section. It's quite a pithy exchange.

"margaret says:
June 12th, 2006 at 2:16 pm

"Well, now, we have a bunch of folks who love the nastiness, and we have a small bunch who like some intelligent analysis, sans vituperation. And, we have a few who suggest if you don’t like what you read, go……..somewhere else. And, a really physically lovely, intelligent woman with a gift for language, i.e., Jane, abuses her gifts with really the kind of words, I’m afraid I have never encountered, not even on bathroom walls while in college. I don’t even know what they mean.

"The problem with these dark words is that they stay in the head, and change one’s internal grace as a human being. I simply don’t want certain images in my head, be it bathroom graffiti, or, to carry it further, detailed descriptions of beheadings by Middle East terrorists, or stories about rape victims, or accident victims, or any other victims of horrendous action. Words have great power, and we should be careful how we use them. They can incite the unhealthy to assassinations and other kinds of violence. On the FDL level, it doesn’t amount to anything with any depth. It’s only word-slinging back and forth to give the Poster and the bloggers who share the Poster’s low-mindedness strokes. Weird, to me. And, a form of word-rape.

"It’s responsible to be inventive and creative with language; it’s dangerous to sling language around, carelessly, insensitive to whom it may hurt or offend. Ah, for the days of Addison and Steele."

"Jane Hamsher says:
June 12th, 2006 at 2:17 pm

"Margaret 116 — 'Ah, for the days of Addison and Steele.'

"You’re a smug, self-righteous bitch. How about those words?"

To which I say, the compassionate liberalism of MLK and RFK is truly dead. We have become our enemies.