Wolcott:

Hindered by the bashful modesty that is the byproduct of my Catholic upbringing, I can’t take credit for the swift cosmic justice meted out to Michael Fumento after he saw fit to challenge me in a war of wits. It was a war he could not win, given the egregiousness of his Boogie Nights mustache, and his paucity of sophistication. He may wow the other guys in the tanning salon with his “clever comebacks,” but the Algonquin Round Table would send him back into the kitchen for additional seasoning if he laid his lame stuff on them. It’s true that I did appear shamanistically prescient when I accused Fumento being jealous of a successful magazine like Vanity Fair when he was so obviously dependent on the metallic tit of donorship (”Like so many rancorous rightwing underachievers, he resents a magazine–any magazine–that is successful on its own and carries actual advertising rather than being bankrolled by some billionaire madman or non-profit think tank itself dependent on corporate slush funds”), only to have this bit of news brighten the following day (courtesy of Editor and Publisher):

“Scripps Howard News Service (SHNS) announced Friday that it severed its relationship with Michael Fumento — a senior fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute — for not disclosing he had taken payments in 1999 from agribusiness giant Monsanto. The payments were revealed by BusinessWeek Online, which also broke a similar story revealing columnist Doug Bandow receiving payments. Copley News Service subsequently dropped Bandow. [The Hudson Institute is the also the ideological inn that recently invited the indicted "Scooter" Libby in from the chill.]

Heh heh heh….