Derb –

Thanks for the song. It’s excellent. You have a future as a lyricist. I’d love to hear how you set Mitt Romney to music….

I think I am going to print it out and go teach it to my children right this minute. Perhaps it will deflect them from their dreadful intention of watching Ugly Betty. I have forbidden every other vulgar, horrible TV show, but the 12 year old wore me down one night with the (pathetic) argument that she really wanted to be able to discuss the show at the lunch table with the cool girls at her (religious day) school. It was a weak moment. And now she has made it look glamorous to the two younger ones….

By the way, I too am a great fan of P.J. O’Rourke’s. He makes misanthropy hilarious. And– since Stanley Kurtz has been talking about Swat — I will say that I once spent a long weekend in Swat, at the semi-deserted Swat Serena hotel, with PJ and another friend. There were some long nights, since the town closed at dark, and the internet was not yet a gleam in Al Gore’s eye. (They still had teletype machines at the post office to send stories home…) Pakistan being a totally dry country, PJ had the good sense to bring along several bottles of Russian vodka — which were always available on the black market in Peshawar, as the Soviets needed hard currency to continue fighting in Afghanistan. Whatever we thought of the Soviets, their vodka was far less poisonous than the swill produced at the one Pakistani state-licensed alcohol refinery. But still, one needed mixers. The bill for orange juice was ridiculous. Nor were the waiters fooled.