Andrew Sullivan reviewing Sid Blumenthal's new book:

There�s no one like Sid. Not even in Washington. I�m still immensely fond of him, although it�s quite clear by now that, in some respects, he is completely out of his mind. Those jokes that no one else in the universe got; those pauses at the end of anecdotes, while he grinned and puffed and waited for you to assent to his latest impenetrable concoction; the sweet-natured way in which he assassinated characters who violated his sense of manifest destiny and the tenets of his secular religion: Nope, there is no one quite like Sid.

I guess that's what makes you a real writer--you can read stuff that turns your stomach and make fun of it. What makes you a really good writer is when someone reads what you've written, they don't think "I'd like to see how James Lileks would have covered that."