Norman Mailer Bites George Will

I have witnessed the wrath of nature, and it is not a pretty sight. When a mighty predator makes a meal of a slow-witted, defenseless, helpless creature, one can hardly help but cringe. It can be almost impossible to restrain one's sympathy for the poor victim, whom natural selection has chosen for extinction. The springbok fallen prey to a pride of lions; the plankton and krill sluiced into the mighty maw of the baleen whale; George Will when he pisses off Norman Mailer.


Alas, poor George, he hardly knew what hit him.


It goes without saying that Mr. Will's days as a right-wing wunderkind belong to that twilit past when giants like James Watt, Anne Gorsuch, and William Casey roamed the earth. Today, he is mostly known as a member of the Hair Club for White Men, the Sunday morning ABC chat show during which George Stephanopolous tries every week to prove that he can make real hair look every bit as weird as Mr. Will's and Mr. Sam Donaldson's. But, even as he waits for his species to finally fall victim to natural selection, Mr. Will must be thinking fondly of the glory days when he would meet Nancy Reagan to dish dirt over lunch at Maison Blanche -- and be routinely written up by the gossip columns as the most powerful commentator in Washington.