LUDIC LOG

It all began innocently enough back in October.

Beloved lefty blogmaster Atrios, writing on his Eschaton web log, made reference to demented right-wing National Review columnist Donald Luskin with a link entitled "Luskin is a Stalker". This raised few eyebrows in the contentious political blogosphere; after all, Donald Luskin obviously is not only a demented right-wing thug but also clearly a stalker, as evidenced by this column in which he urges his readers to assault Paul Krugman with pastry, and this one, where he refers to himself as a stalker in the title of the column. One bushy pair of sociopathic eyebrows, however, did go up: those of Luskin himself. Sensing the same opportunity for partisan bullying that has lately led to the theft of the 2000 presidential election, the ouster of a legally elected Democratic governor in California in favor of the steroid-addicted offspring of a Nazi stormtrooper, and the censorship via prior restraint of a TV movie implying that former president Ronald Reagan is an asshole, Luskin had his lawyers draft a threatening letter accusing Atrios of libel and promising dire consequences.

The blog world did not sit idly by. Plans were announced for a "Luskin is a Stalker" day, in the great tradition of "Make Fun of Dick Cheney Day", "Invite a Frivolous Lawsuit from Bill O'Reilly Day", and "Have a Bunch of Pizzas Delivered to Condoleezza Rice's House Day". Since, as always, when Maximum Leader Neal Pollack commands, I obey, I began to draft a log entry in which I detailed the full infamy of Donald Luskin's stalker tendencies, slated for today -- November 4, 2003 -- the scheduled date of "Luskin is a Stalker Day". However, at the request of Atrios himself, the Maximum Leader backed off the assault, and eventually, Luskin and Atrios made peace.

Sorry, boys. You don't stop me that easily.

Like Luca Brasi in The Godfather, even Neal "Sonny Corleone" Pollack cannot stop me when the wheels are in motion. Relentless, deadly, overweight, socially awkward, and portrayed by an Italian-American professional wrestler, I press forward. I cannot be reasoned with. I cannot be bargained with. I will not stop until I am dragged into court by Mr. Luskin's suddenly idle attorneys. I hereby present to you "DONALD LUSKIN: A LIFE IN STALKING", in hopes that I too might receive a threatening letter from the Luskin team, as well as the attendant publicity.

1. DONALD LUSKIN ASSASSINATED PRESIDENT KENNEDY. In the company of his old Army buddy and fellow-traveler Lee H. Oswald, a young Donald Luskin -- a violent socialist hothead not yet under the sway of neo-conservativism -- spends the evening of November 21, 1963 doing whippets in a roller rink in Houston, TX. Deranged by illicit drugs and hot Marxist gay sex, he suggests to Oswald that it would be "a lark" to shoot President Kennedy several times in the head during his upcoming trip to Dallas. Although freed of complicity through the machinations of his future masters, Lucienne Goldberg and Norman Podhoretz, Luskin can nonetheless be seen in the Zapruder film near the grassy knoll, wearing a pointed Junker helmet and a nautical outfit, firing at the president with a carbine.

2. DONALD LUSKIN IS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE VERY NOTION OF MODERN STALKER LAWS. After having developed an unhealthy obsession with My Sister Sam co-star Rebecca Schaeffer after seeing her in Radio Days, Luskin began calling her on a nearly daily basis. The unstable Luskin was convinced that her role as a communist's daughter in the Woody Allen film was a reflection of reality, and believed that his love for her could save her from growing into a full-blown Stalinist herself. When Schaeffer rejected the columnist's advances, he gunned her down in cold blood. Again framing an innocent friend (Robert James Bardo, his roommate at the time), Luskin was freed to kill again while the case became the legal basis for our existing stalking laws.

3. DONALD LUSKIN IS, EVEN NOW, STALKING DELIGHTFUL ICELANDIC POP SENSATION BJORK GOTMUNDSDOTTIR. Luskin, having caught Bjork's act on Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve in 1993, became sexually compulsive about the singer. Frequently interrupting conversations with his National Review co-workers about politics, economics and culture with the comment "Hey, what do you think of Bjork? I would so do her", Luskin would fly into a rage whenever someone did not share his obession, once punching Michelle Malkin in the stomach for claiming that she liked the Sugarcubes better. Degenerating into a spiral of hatred and blind psychotic rage, Luskin mailed Bjork a hollowed-out book containing an acid bomb in hopes of ruining her face so that no one would love her and he could have her all to himself. When this plot failed, Luskin kidnapped an innocent retarded man from a Norwegian rest home and blew his head off with dynamite in a faked "suicide" that would leave him free to stalk Bjork at his leisure.

In addition, as of this writing, Donald Luskin is currently stalking Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton, Dr. Drew Pinsky, Teena Marie, Emeril Lagasse, Morton Kondracke, Melissa Rivers, Lucy Liu, Lisa Ling, and Lana Lang (who he mistakenly believes to be an actual person and not a fictional character). Please, friends: stop Donald Luskin before he kills again.