Upstairs at the cocktail party -- 20 bucks admission, cash bar -- Kushner looked relieved to see so many cheerful people. He told Salon that he'd been wary about letting Mitchell stage the reading, mostly because of the mixed reception the work had received so far. "The Boston Globe column freaked me out," he said, noting that he was particularly haunted by accusations that the scene was classist or mean. "They [his critics] claim I take a cheap shot at [Laura]. They say she's not an elected official. But look, I think she is an official of the Bush administration. She works in an office that I pay for, she has a staff that I pay for, she acts as a spokesperson."

He added that the reaction to the scene's publication in the Nation had also troubled him. "I have published things in the Nation before and gotten a huge positive response. This time we got a huge positive response, but also a large negative response. There were people who said 'what a ridiculous thing,' and that it's really evil. They didn't read the play or they didn't get it. But I've also never written about a living person before."

Kushner said he'd also been nervous about how his quickly written new scene would play. When Salon pointed out that in it, he'd made the first lady an instrument of biting criticism toward his own party, he smiled and said, "That's what makes the left the left. One is constantly needing to interrogate one's own assumptions." Of the vocal interrogating going on in the audience that night, Kushner said, "That was thrilling. To have a bunch of people in the same room responding to political material and to have a fight start in an audience? That's great. I loved it." He put his hand to his chest and smiled happily.

Across the room, Clarkson had finally gotten that drink and was kvelling about the fight. "I thought a little blood was going to be shed," she said with her throaty, florid laugh. "It just shows you that even though people have this knee-jerk reaction to an organization like MoveOn -- like they're all left-wing deep, deep liberals -- actually they are a cross-section of many different kinds of Democrats." The actress said that she has supported Kerry for a long time. "Anyone who can raise those two daughters, I mean the proof is in the pudding!" said Clarkson, one of five sisters from New Orleans.

On a hunch, Salon asked Clarkson if she was a Teresa Heinz Kerry fan. She grabbed our arm, looked into our eyes, and said with both volume and intensity: "I want to be her."

Explaining the Teresa appeal, Clarkson said, "She's like Garbo. All these great iconoclastic women -- if you combined them all, you'd have Teresa. She is surprising and unorthodox, and she is going to be a great ambassador for our country, I love love love her." Clarkson said she wants to campaign, but that in New York there's nothing to do. "I guess I'll have to get on a bus," she said. Would she knock on doors in Pennsylvania? "Yeah! Sure! Why wouldn't I?" she asked, loudly.

Reno, the comedian who had kicked up the evening's dust, was seated at a table as the party began to drain. She said that she had raised her voice -- which is about as distinct as Clarkson's -- because she wanted to make sure that people knew about the march. "It is just as important to voice our disrespect for the Republican administration as it is to get out the vote," she said, noting that "at a cancer benefit, you write your check and then you think, 'good, now I don't have to think about cancer for the rest of the year.' This is a benefit where you need human energies to keep it going."

But mostly, she said happily, as friends motioned for her to walk out with them, "It is really so heartening to see the house afire -- that everyone is really giving a shit."

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