GOLDBERG VARIATIONS. Jonah Goldberg is upset that Jon Stewart took him to the gas chamber:

Yeah, I knew I was in trouble when the interview just wouldn't end — and I got the sense it wasn't ending because Stewart didn't feel like he "won" so he had to keep going. I haven't watched it (though I pretty much never watch myself on TV), but I knew that editing wasn't going to help me. Still, I also went in knowing I wasn't going to get a supportive reaction from the guy.

I don't have cable, but let me guess -- did it go something like this:



Or was it like one of those old Smothers Brothers routines where Dick gets all up in Tommy's face and Tommy goes, "You... you.. you're a fascist"? Or was it like the old Bob & Ray routine in which an author of a book on American History (who is not an academic but a longshoreman, and so has written the book "mostly from memory") is called out for listing Lincoln's birthplace as "Bailey's Mistake, Maine," and responds, "Well, it's a big book, a few mistakes are bound to slip through"? (The author also, when confronted with a obvious 17th Century plate of American Indians parlaying with settlers that he had captioned "FDR signing the Social Security Act," counters, "Well, look, if you want to nit-pick a book...")

Well, such is the life of a legacy pledge when confronted with a world that, to his horror, is not bound by law or custom to be true to his school. I'm just surprised Ramesh Ponnuru didn't warn him off.

UPDATE. It must have been worse than I thought, as Goldberg has hauled out the "letters of support" routine. (I bet the interns hate this: "Get cracking, kids, Jonah needs some love!") As is common in the genre, one of the correspondents says he's a liberal -- though he adds "probably 'classical' by your definition" because even Goldberg fans might find the idea of a liberal saying "Thanks for calling me a fascist" hard to swallow.