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[Gattigap]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
'Twas the Night before Fitzmas
And that noise that you hear
Is the harping of liberals
As Karl's in the clear

It seems only Libby will hang
And take all of the blame
For some nonexistant crime
Re Wilson. And Plame.

But law must prevail!
And perjury ain't right
So Merry Fitzmas to all
To all and good night

When Slave is inspired to verse, you know it's a good story. Mike Kinsley agrees.

• Confused? Sure. Who isn't? One entertaining aspect of the story that is expected to reach some sort of climax today is the struggle of the media to summarize or label it. Once upon a time someone went to Niger, which is not Nigeria, and off we go in time and space. Even Fox News has been driven to compound sentences.
  
  All the glam elements are there: a secret agent, international intrigue, sex if you know where to look, blogs, moral dilemmas, movie-of-the-week dialogue at the White House. (Aide: "Mr. President, somebody has inserted a lie into your State of the Union address!" The President: "This is clearly the work of al Qaeda. We must invade Iraq immediately. Or is it Iran?") But somehow all these elements don't cohere. Alfred Hitchcock coined the term "McGuffin" to describe the gimmick that keeps the plot moving. He said you need one. The trouble here is not the lack of a McGuffin but a surplus of them.
  
  You can't knock the names, though. Above all, there is the wonderfully Pynchonesque Valerie Plame. And yet the eponymous heroine of the affair has actually been offstage the entire time. Except for a brief appearance in Vanity Fair, posed rakishly with her husband in a sports car, it's been "Hamlet" without the Prince of Denmark.
  
  The husband's name is forgettably bland. Joe Wilson? Then there is the aide to the vice president who answers to the call of "Snooker." Or is it Smoky? Or maybe Sunshine? In the typical movie about Washington, a character labeled as an aide to the vice president might just as well carry a sign saying, "I get killed off in the first five minutes." And yet Skipper, or Snappy, starts out as an obscure minor character and floats up steadily to the point where he is the central figure of the entire drama.