Melissa,
Since Sunday I've cooked 35 pounds of turkey. I'm tired. But it's the hatred that keeps me moving forward — hatred for these blogs. It's no accident that my culinary efforts were limited to lunch on Wednesday, since I was feeling pretty good after we talked about Feministing. And it's a good thing that I have a metric ton of leftovers, because for our final day schvitzing, we've got a great story about an overhyped blog that was great for a few months, then fell the fuck off for a long time, before re-upping with a new editor and returning to glory. I'm talking about Wonkette.
Urrbody knows about Wonkette. Ana Marie Cox took over a D.C.-corner of the Nick Denton Gawker empire, started talking about dudes fucking her in the ass, and all of a sudden The Note was reading her and touching itself. Lots of people played themselves on Wonkette, and I was one of them: my friend Julian hosted Ana's launch party, and she & husband Chris Lehmann were nice enough to drive me home (waaaaay too drunk to drive, BTW). Within a few hours, I woke up in a still-drunk cold sweat, with a vague sense of dread that I was about to feed Wonkette's first week with a ton of liquor-fueled shit-talking about TNR. It embarrasses me to admit it, but I grabbed my laptop and pounded out a pleading e-mail to Ana to keep whatever I said off the site. She was kind enough to oblige me, and perceptive enough to notice that I was acting retarded. We never hung out again.
The rest is history. Ana discovered a Hill intern who turned on the red light to supplement her $22,000 pre-tax income, and the Washingtonienne phenomenon began. The New York Times Magazine photographed Ana between Jack Germond and Johnny Apple for a cover story on blogging the 2004 election. Everything was going great. Except that the blog started to rest on its Craigslist-personal-filled laurels. In early 2006, after nearly a year of repetition — what do you do for a second act when you do anal so early? — Ana decided to defect to Time, and I have no idea what she writes anymore.
What happened to Wonkette? It's now in the more-than-capable hands of Alex Pareene, and it's better than ever. While lesser lights have tried to get at Katherine Harris, Alex has presented the best takedowns possible, entirely suited to the zoological phenomenon masquerading as a zany failed Senate candidate. Friends of mine who had given up on Wonkette started IMing me links to Alex's targets, like the GOP-only hookup forum Late Night Shots. (I beg you: click through to this link.) My roommate, an early Wonkette favorite, has returned as an object of whimsy. And while the item I linked to is completely false, we all had a good laugh about it at DC9 the evening after it ran, and convinced Yglesias to start talking about The MattYglesias in the third person. Wonkette is back, and it's about time.
(Finally, I should say, in the interests of full disclosure, that Alex was very nice to me after I got fired. Even to the point of misreporting that I quit.)
Spencer
[Movable Snipe is a Daily Shvitz feature wherein two writers spend a reading a handful of blogs and offering constructive (or savage) criticism in epistolary form. This week's Snipers: Spencer Ackerman and Melissa Lafsky.]