Man bites lap dogs!

So how do you think it works? Do you think that Michelle Malkin is smart enough to know that she's laying a groundwork, or do you think someone's coaching her?

They don't necessarily need the coaching. You see that with people who follow a guru, the guru teaches up to a point, but then at a certain point the guru doesn't have to say anymore because they know.

I don't want to make it sound as if they're all simply assigned hit men, because a lot of them just are into their shameless careers. One of the things you find out about people is that there is a real addiction to being on TV. And once people start appearing on TV, they can't bear not appearing on TV. If you get to a certain point, the car will pick you up, take you to the studio, you go in, do your bit, the car brings you home. If you watch cable news on cable TV, you see the same people, sometimes the same person on two different networks the same night. That car service is really working overtime.

A lot of what these people do for projects, is simply another way of getting a round of TV appearances. Like Ann Coulter has a book coming out -- it's about something like, "How to Talk to Liberals, if You Must" or something like that, and I thought, that's real desperation, that's sort of when you really run out of topics.

You end the book prescribing more "wolfhounds" on the left to maul the attack poodles on the right. It's a sort of grim solution, fighting one form of attack artist with another. Is it the only way?

Frankly, I think it is. I don't think there are any grown-ups anymore. I think the adults have left the building. I think it's the only way. When I look at the Swift boat saga, it shows you that the media is too slow in unraveling the lies.

Do you have a favorite wolfhound?

I think Paul Krugman has just been heroic, particularly because Paul Krugman was very much alone. This is interesting because it shows me part of the media phenomenon of today: Krugman was not only being attacked by conservatives, by people who like Bush, but he's getting ripped regularly by people who are considered more liberal. "Oh here's Paul Krugman again, being shrill ... " Krugman's really off on his own.

On TV?

Even ones I think do get good at it, like Paul Begala and James Carville, they do become caricatures of themselves. That whole show is just a caricature. I love Carville. For me, one of the great moments was when Carville went on "Meet the Press" and said he was gonna take on Ken Starr. When you look back on that, again, nobody else was doing it. Ken Starr was really being able to run amok. For me, that was a real wolfhound moment, Carville saying,"I'm gonna do it! I'm gonna get this guy!"

I wouldn't call him a wolfhound, but I will tell you who I think is great, just because of the way that he thinks and his skepticism, is Keith Olbermann. I think he is one of the best. He does not run with any pack. He clearly thinks for himself. Chris Matthews has had some great moments recently with the Swift Boat Veterans and with Michelle Malkin, but he gets so excitable you never know what he's gonna do.

Slate ran a piece recently about the cult of A.J. Liebling, and the frequent obsession over who his successor is as Great American Press Critic. You're frequently mentioned. But why is there that obsession? Is there a great need for press criticism today?

There's always a nostalgia for the "where are the so and so's of today?" Every once in a while I even repeat that. "Where are the Lester Bangs of today? Where are the Pauline Kaels of today?" What people don't realize is that the people who are sitting down and writing are bringing it from their lives. Pauline wasn't really getting published big time until her late 40s. She was a child of the Depression, she came out of a whole different world. Pauline I knew very well. I mean she was incredibly sweet, incredibly smart, but she had a toughness to her that, frankly, all the women writers I know today, all the feminists, Pauline could just run roughshod over them. Because she came out of a different generation that had it very, very tough.

The writers who really had more to do with influencing me were not Mencken or Liebling, although I respect them, but from the ranks that I like to call Jewish hipsters: Albert Goldman, who I was friends with, Pauline -- she had a sort of Jewish hipster side -- Marvin Mudrick. These are the guys whose style and swagger on the page I really liked. I can't pretend to do Jewish hipster, but they had a lot more to do with my style than this notion of Liebling and Mencken and these other people. Marvin Mudrick said, "If I don't entertain the reader, I've failed." And that doesn't mean you do setup jokes -- "I want to make people laugh." The humor has to come from the energy you bring to the page.

What about your peers who you think are really good? Culture critics?

There really aren't that many. William Logan does wonderful stuff in the New Criterion for poetry. But there really aren't that many that I get excited about the way I used to. There are a lot of bloggers I like, but not so much because of what they do with media criticism. It's a very strange time now. No film critics have the power that Pauline Kael did. If you asked people to name a theater critic they draw a blank. The loneliness writers feel now -- a lot of writers feel like they're on their own. So much of the great work has been done and we don't know what's coming next. There's a sense of real isolation.

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