“Clinton’s blowjob was the worst thing to happen to political comedy ever,” Ms. Winstead said emphatically. “Because it just became a blowjob joke. It didn’t become satire; it wasn’t about his policies. There was a lot to mock the right about that the left didn’t get the opportunity to do.” After that, she said, humor across the political spectrum degenerated.

The other fateful fellatio-related incident is the reason Ms. Winstead left The Daily Show, which she co-created for Comedy Central with Madeline Smithberg in 1995. The show was the crowning achievement of a career that had started in the grueling trenches of stand-up comedy. While Ms. Winstead served as one of the show’s chief writers, there was growing friction with the then host, Craig Kilborn. The final straw for Ms. Winstead was an interview Mr. Kilborn gave to Esquire magazine for the January 1998 issue. “There are a lot of bitches on the staff, and, hey, they’re emotional people. You can print that!” he said. “You know how women are--they overreact. It’s not really a big deal. And to be honest, Lizz does find me very attractive. If I wanted her to blow me, she would.”

Mr. Kilborn, who declined through a spokesman to comment for this article, was suspended for a week. Ms. Winstead left.

If Mr. Kilborn’s blowjob line--he later said he meant it “as a joke”--impelled Ms. Winstead to leave her beloved Daily Show, it also freed her up to find other ways to resuscitate left-leaning political comedy. Enter Central Air, scheduled to hit the airwaves as early as March. Its masterminds say it will be tailored to appeal to people with MoveOn.org politics who crave Rush Limbaugh–style bite. Less earnest than National Public Radio and not as strident or suffused with the victim-oppressor paradigm as Pacifica, they say, it will bring a populist, late-night-television sensibility to radio.

Ms. Winstead has a lot on the line: Not only will she mastermind the network’s entertainment element, she will host her own three-hour show, which will air Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to noon. She will have a co-host, whom she has not yet chosen. The show will be a mixture of her own riffs and co-host banter and reported pieces. There will be frequent guests. “It won’t be completely scripted,” Ms. Winstead said. In her show as well as the other hosts’, there will be “some fantastic pre-produced written pieces,” she said.

Each show, she explained, will have “universal comedy and then branding elements,” like the Top 10 List on The Late Show with David Letterman. “We’ll do legitimate newscasts, really diving into the day’s news, and we may have a recap that’s more satirical.”

Most programming will be produced in the network’s midtown studio, which they’ve been occupying since December. The New York–generated content will be supplemented by material out of studios in Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. While the network has yet to finalize its staff, this much is set: When it launches in March or April, it will broadcast 14 to 18 hours a day, seven days a week, on the stations it is buying--or whose airtime it will lease--in major cities like New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Miami, Pittsburgh and Boston, said Mark Walsh, the chief executive officer of Progress Media, which he co-founded and which is the parent company of Central Air. “In division, there’s a media opportunity,” Mr. Walsh continued. “In a divided nation, at least there are opinions, information which takes a side.”

A former AOL executive, onetime news anchor and HBO executive, Mr. Walsh was named in 2002 as the first-ever technology adviser to the Democratic National Committee. The network, however, will not be formally affiliated with the D.N.C. Nor is it the same fledging liberal-media project that Vice President Gore was working on. Progress Media has “no official business relationship” with Mr. Gore, Mr. Walsh said. “I love how the right seems to drop that this is a vast left-wing conspiracy,” he added.

Mr. Walsh wouldn’t say which stations they were buying, but said they expect to sign the paperwork by next month. “They’re full-power stations with good to very good broadcast footprints,” he said. The main investor is Evan Cohen, a New York–based venture capitalist who’s worked in radio and advertising in the Pacific Rim. Mr. Walsh is also an investor.

A host has not yet been chosen for the all-important morning slot, from 6 to 9 a.m., Eastern Standard Time. Central Air is in talks with Al Franken, whom they are hoping will take the mike from noon to 3 p.m.--meaning he’ll go head-to-head with Rush Limbaugh. After that comes a show hosted by A. Whitney Brown, who collaborated with Ms. Winstead on The Daily Show in the mid-90’s. Talks are also going on with Janeane Garofalo for a late-night show. Martin Kaplan, an academic and former screenwriter and Mondale speechwriter, will discuss the media from 7 to 8 p.m.

Every host will have a partner, Ms. Winstead said: “No monologues. We feel people should be kept in check all the time.” They haven’t locked in any co-hosts yet, but “if this plays out the way we think, there will be a woman on every show” as one of the hosts, Ms. Winstead said. “That’s important.” Progress will also have a lot of women running the show, chief among them Shelley Lewis, a former executive producer of CNN’s American Morning, who will oversee the network’s news division.

As for the short, satirical features that, in Ms. Winstead’s vision, will make Central Air more akin to late-night TV than to any existing radio network, details are still sketchy. A weekly 90-second feature called “The Red and the Blue States,” “on each state and how it became what it is today,” is planned, as are satirical profiles of “people in the news,” according to Ms. Winstead.

The Daily Show looms large over the enterprise. Jon Stewart is a success because, Mr. Walsh said, “he does both sides of the fence. His whole point is making fun of stupidity.” While Ms. Winstead said they’d like to share the Daily Show audience, she hopes they will weigh in more forcefully on issues than Mr. Stewart does. “The Daily Show is a specific genre: comedy wall-to-wall,” she said. Central Air will be a news network, with satire interspersed throughout its coverage. “We’re taking a stand and having an opinion,” Ms. Winstead said. “I don’t think I feel comfortable sucking up to Henry Kissinger or promoting his book”--a dig at Mr. Stewart. “Someone else on the network may,” she added.

Progress Media will have a decidedly populist take. “Absolutely!” said Ms. Winstead, who said she turns off NPR “when there’s a presupposition that I know more than I know, and then I feel like I’m not in the club.” She said she turns off Pacifica when they drone on with stories on topics like Charles Taylor. “That’s relevant, and we will talk about those things,” she said. But they really want to appeal to the guy “who’s figuring out why his paycheck is so little and he can’t make ends meet and he’s working 50 hours a week and still has to get government assistance,” Ms. Winstead said. “I don’t think those people are really being serviced.”

While liberal, the network’s target audience is “everybody that’s upset or bored or tired of what is available on radio today,” Mr. Walsh said. “The business answer is, we want an audience that advertisers care about,” he added. “We want to have shareholder value and create a profitable, sustainable, long-term company.” The company’s business plan “has us making no money for many, many months from launch,” Mr. Walsh said. “We’re expecting a slow trial.”

Ms. Winstead will oversee and edit a stable of 10 writers, most of whom have worked with her before on different shows. A handful came from The Daily Show, others from Court TV, where Ms. Winstead developed Snap Judgment, a satire of the legal system. Others come from network TV or from the Oxygen network, where Ms. Winstead developed O2B, a spoof of women’s talk shows that was pulled after one season in spite of good reviews. “I have basically hired people who are funnier than me and smarter than me, and who understand me,” she said.

Asking Ms. Winstead about her political views elicits somewhat predictable lefty boilerplate. She is vehemently opposed to President Bush, tax cuts for the rich, school vouchers and the war in Iraq, not to mention Wal-Mart, “the No. 1 destroyer of American main streets.”

Yet she is more often than not riotously funny on specifics. The New York Times, she said, acts “like a celebrity who gets pregnant--expounding on things everyone already knows as if they were the first to discover them.” On Madeleine Albright: “What’s up with that brooch? Can’t she tone it down? Is she getting Dish TV on that? It’s out of control.”

“Lizz is a news and information whore,” said the comedian Sarah Silverman, who is Ms. Winstead’s best friend. “She’s like a beautiful flower that blossoms in election years. The Daily Show was her dream show, and now this radio project is. The programming of this network has been living, burrowing in her brain for years.” Ms. Winstead and Ms. Silverman often talk politics. “We agree on almost everything,” Ms. Silverman joked. “Except that I think that the Holocaust happened.”

Ms. Silverman also confirmed that her friend is narcoleptic. “Did she tell you that?” Ms. Silverman asked. “She has no problem taking pills to make her stay awake. Otherwise, she’s out by 9.” Ms. Winstead’s condition was diagnosed about 15 years ago. Medication, she said, makes her nearly normal. “Before, I just thought I was tired all the time,” she said. Bizarrely, Ms. Winstead’s friend and Ms. Silverman’s main squeeze, Jimmy Kimmel, also suffers from it. “It’s nice to have a friend who’s narcoleptic,” Ms. Winstead said cheerily, as she finished her omelet.

Ms. Winstead is 42 years old and wears a lot of rings, none a wedding ring. “I reject traditional marriage. I’ll never get married; I don’t want kids,” she said. “Having a dog is a big enough thing for me.” Besides, she added, “I can’t imagine doing this and having a family.”

The youngest of five kids, Ms. Winstead grew up poor in Minneapolis. Her dad, a Mississippi native, sold carpeting, and her mom stayed home and volunteered at their Catholic church. She was sent to Catholic school and lobbied for girls to be allowed as altar boys. Her parents, who are now in their early 80’s, are “the funniest conservatives out there,” she said. “Everyone was a liberal around me, except for my parents,” she said. Her family would argue about the Vietnam War. “Someone was always having a conversation with my parents and storming from the table--someone with beads and some sort of fringed outfit,” she said. (Her brother is the Republican mayor of Bloomington, Minn.)

It was the land of Paul Wellstone and Walter Mondale and Hubert Humphrey. She calls the late Senator Wellstone one of her heroes. “My politics are liberal from being from Minnesota,” she said. “I went back last fall and there were signs up on people’s lawns in Minneapolis that said, ‘We will pay more taxes for a better Minnesota.’ That’s the kind of state it is. It’s a state that I just firmly believe is always looking out for people who are disadvantaged and need some help.”

When she was 16, she got pregnant. An ad on a bus for free pregnancy testing led her to the Lambs of Christ. There, a woman in a white lab coat whom Ms. Winstead assumed was a doctor--“until I realized you could work at the Lancôme counter and wear a lab coat”--told her it was “mommy or murder.” She opted for Planned Parenthood. “Someone said to me, ‘What do you want for your future? Do you feel like you’re ready to be a mom?’ ‘Well, no, I don’t.’” She had an abortion. It was 1979, and “Roe v. Wade was six years young,” Ms. Winstead said. “My mom still prays for me, God bless her.”

At the University of Minnesota, she was studying to be a history professor, but 18 credits shy of graduation she left to do stand-up. She drove around the Midwest doing one-night gigs. That was 1983. “It was the Reagan era, big time,” she said. “It was ‘Mourning in America,’ I must say--that’s an O, U, mourning.” The experience was like comedy basic training: “Half the time people like you, and half the time people hated you,” she said. “It was fun to see the pulse of America. Traveling that much, I have a pretty good idea what it’s like.”

She took her act to Los Angeles, but “what I was offering was not what anyone was asking for,” she continued. “In 1987, no one wanted to hear political comedy in L.A. It was not a money-maker.” Eventually, she landed a job as the head writer on a Comedy Central show called Women Aloud. This led to a job as a segment producer on Jon Stewart’s syndicated show. Then, in 1995, came The Daily Show, with Craig Kilborn as host. Mr. Stewart didn’t take over until 1999.

After leaving The Daily Show, Ms. Winstead moved back to L.A., started a production company with her friend Brian Unger, and produced shows for MTV, Oxygen and others.

When Progress Media called in August, she leapt at the chance to move back to New York, especially for such a perfect job. “Aside from my stand-up, it’s the first time in my career I can hone a muscle I think I’m best at, which is political satire,” Ms. Winstead said.

For all Ms. Winstead’s enthusiasm and talent, the challenges she faces are considerable. Can the network find the right tone and sustain it, 18 hours a day? Will they need to aim to the far left to get listeners, yet aim to the center to get ad dollars? How will the TV-honed skills of both Ms. Winstead and Ms. Lewis, the news producer with the CNN background, make the transition to radio?

It all depends on whether Ms. Winstead’s dream audience--semi-well-informed liberal populists with a sense of humor--tunes in. “They do want to be strident and appeal to the angry left, because that’s how you build a legitimate base and build out. That’s how conservative talk radio started,” said Brian Lehrer, host of a weekday morning call-in show on WNYC. Mr. Lehrer said he wasn’t concerned about losing listeners to Central Air. Still, he said, “they shouldn’t sound like NPR if they know what’s good for them. NPR is about context and depth and nuance and things like that. They want their network to be like liberal Rush Limbaugh.”

Yet here’s one reason why that might be difficult. Consider this statement of Mr. Walsh’s: “The Republicans see everything as binary, black or white,” he said. “We think the world is a little more analog: There’s some gray in between the binary stances.” His statement--reductive at best and arguably false--might just also explain why conservative radio tends to draw more listeners than liberal radio. After all, militant open-mindedness doesn’t exactly have the same pull as a visceral argument.

Democrats, Mr. Walsh acknowledged, are “reasonably criticized” for striking an “eat your vegetables” tone. “We definitely can find ourselves sinking into a lecturing, hectoring mode.” He said that “plays into the hands” of Republicans. Central Air will “nuggetize” news and opinions into entertaining programming, he said. “The way that if you have a dog, you crush up the vitamin pill into the dog food.”

To Ms. Winstead, Dennis Miller stopped being funny when he became conservative. “I would definitely say the right is not in any way funnier than the left because the right, especially now, is spending way too much time deteriorating the civil liberties of human beings and inserting God into all walks of our lives---so that if liberals don’t seem funny, maybe they’re too busy being pissed off,” she said.

As for Ms. Winstead’s own show, just who listens to the radio from 9 a.m. to noon anyway? People who don’t work, or who work from home? “I don’t even know, actually,” Ms. Winstead said. “That’s a good question. I’m guessing it’s people who are already at work or people who are at home.”

Well, you can’t argue with that. Only doesn’t the network need to have a clearer idea of its demographics to sell ads? “Radio advertising is mostly local,” Ms. Winstead said. “We have a President who did not get elected by a popular vote. Those numbers haven’t dramatically changed. If 50 percent of the electorate didn’t vote for him and feels disenfranchised, those people still buy soap, and they buy toilet paper, and they go to the local auto-parts store,” she said. Besides, she added hopefully, wrinkling her brow in an expression that is at once intensely focused and endearingly warm, “everybody likes beer!”

So one could hardly imagine an odder couple than Mr. LaHaye and Mr. Applebaum, who happens to be Jewish (and therefore left behind). But there they were, mapping out Mr. LaHaye’s largest deal yet with a major secular publisher: The four-book Babylon Rising series, featuring a swashbuckling, evangelical Indiana Jones–like archeologist who acts out biblical prophecies.

"He was taking a big leap of faith, and so was I," Mr. LaHaye, 78, said of Mr. Applebaum, 49. That leap entailed Bantam paying Mr. LaHaye about $40 million for a four-book series, the second of which came out last month. (Mr. LaHaye said that he and Bantam had since "readjusted" the sum downward.) Bantam is part of Random House, which in turn is owned by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, founded in the 19th century as a Bible publisher. "So it’s kind of coming full circle," Mr. LaHaye said.

The Rancho Mirage get-together was also a meeting of two Americas. At Bantam, the tall, imposing Mr. Applebaum is known for his affectless manner, his ability to create best-sellers and his clout with Peter Olson, the chairman and chief executive officer of Random House. (Through a spokeswoman, Mr. Applebaum declined to comment for this story.) If Mr. Applebaum represents a certain kind of American bottom-line thinking combined with an airport-reading aesthetic, then Mr. LaHaye represents a similarly American strain of earnest religiosity. Mr. LaHaye, a co-founder of the Moral Majority, runs the Tim LaHaye ministries from his home in Rancho Mirage, a posh city near Palm Springs known for its golf courses. The 12 books in Mr. LaHaye’s Left Behind series, which takes its name from the ones who’ll be left behind on Judgment Day—who will burn in hell because they haven’t accepted Jesus—have sold more than 60 million copies since the Illinois-based religious publisher Tyndale House published the first one in the mid-1990’s.

Bantam, it turns out, is just the beginning for Mr. LaHaye’s mainstream deals. He is on the brink of signing multi-book fiction deals with two other New York–based secular houses. Mr. LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, his co-author for the Left Behind series, have a deal pending with Viking for a four-book series called The Jesus Chronicles. Joel Gotler, Mr. LaHaye’s literary agent, said that the Viking contract was "about to be signed," that the deal was in the "many millions of dollars," and that Leslie Gelman would edit it. (Ms. Gelman did not return requests for comment.)

Mr. LaHaye is also expected to sign a contract shortly with the pulpy Manhattan-based Kensington for at least two holiday-themed trade-paperback books focusing on Easter and Christmas. Hollywood is also starting to take an interest. Last year Mr. LaHaye turned down a movie proposal based on the Babylon Rising series, and he’s currently in talks about another movie deal based on the series, said Mr. Gotler.

Even Esquire magazine is getting in on the action. Alongside essays by pop conservatives Tucker Carlson and Andrew Sullivan, this month it published a pro-Bush screed by Mr. LaHaye in which the minister makes outlandish claims that a Kerry victory might lead to Alan Dershowitz and Laurence Tribe winding up on the federal bench. According to Peter Griffin, Esquire ’s deputy editor, the magazine was looking for "conservative writers" and asked Mr. LaHaye to write the piece.

The New York publishing and media establishment hardly shares Mr. LaHaye’s evangelical, pro-life, anti-Darwinian, anti-gay views. How it came to embrace him is part cosmic irony, part business as usual. Secular publishing houses stand to profit from tapping into Mr. LaHaye’s wide evangelical fan base, while the author himself—who has already made millions off his books—sees secular publishing houses as a means to his evangelical ends.

"They bring to the environment their vast network of resources of marketing, and I bring the Christian community," Mr. LaHaye said. "I am driven with the concern to get my message into the largest number of people’s minds that I can get into, and the book industry gives me a vital avenue in the secular market." His message, of course, is that everyone should accept Jesus: "I’m convinced that most people that are not Christians have really never been exposed to the truth about Jesus Christ."

Joel Gotler,

Matchmaker

Mr. LaHaye’s growing coziness with the New York publishing world appears to be driven in large part by Mr. Gotler, a Los Angeles–based literary agent who specializes in turning books into movies and who has represented Mr. LaHaye for about four years. "I’m instrumental in branding him, yes," Mr. Gotler said by phone from his office in Los Angeles. Never mind that Mr. Gotler, like Mr. Applebaum, happens to be Jewish.

It was Mr. Gotler, who said he’s known Mr. Applebaum since the 1980’s, who made the match with Bantam for the Babylon Rising series. Mr. Gotler also found Mr. LaHaye a co-author, another of his clients, Greg Dinallo.

"Before I went to meet with Tim, I read the first book in the [ Left Behind] series—or most of it, anyway—on the plane going to Palm Springs," said Mr. Dinallo, a former television writer who lives in the East Village and writes global thrillers. He said he was up front with Mr. LaHaye about his own religious beliefs. "I’m not a specifically religious person. I’m certainly not born again—it’s just not me. But I knew what to do with this. I wrote The Six Million Dollar Man, but I’ve never been bionic."

Mr. Dinallo said that he wrote Babylon Rising in five months during 2003. For the first draft, he said, he thought it made sense for some of the bad guys to say "damn" and "hell"—"meaning let’s not make the bad guys sound like fundamentalist Christians," Mr. Dinallo added. "Tim called me up and he said, ‘We just can’t do this.’ I said, ‘I didn’t mean to offend you.’ He said, ‘Greg, you didn’t offend me—I spent four years in the Army.’ He said, ‘We just don’t want to turn the readers off, and I know my people will just not read on.’"

Small wonder that for the rest of the Bantam series, Mr. LaHaye picked as a co-author his old friend Bob Phillips, an evangelical psychologist who runs a string of Christian camps in California and has written 80 books, including The Best of the Good, Clean Jokes (Harvest House, 1989) and Phillips’ Book of Great Thoughts, Funny Sayings: A Stupendous Collection of Quotes, Quips, Epigrams, Witticisms and Humorous Comments for Personal Enjoyment and Ready Reference (Tyndale House, 1993). (Among them: "It is not good to wake a sleeping lion." "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day." Etc.) Although Mr. Dinallo was dropped from the Bantam series, he said he had a "really lovely" rapport with Mr. LaHaye and is writing the books in the Kensington series.

Bantam in Action

Mr. Gotler said a secular house could offer Mr. LaHaye one thing that a religious one couldn’t: "Advertising!" Indeed, Bantam is going all out for The Secret on Ararat, which came out on Aug. 31. The marketing entails "national network and spot radio advertising, national print and electronic advertising, Web promotion at www.babylonrisingbook.com and in-store displays," said Susan Corcoran, a spokeswoman for Bantam.

"I’ve been impressed with what I’ve seen so far," Mr. LaHaye said of working with Bantam. "They did a good job on the first one, as far as the secular market. They much improved their marketing strategy for the second—which is why it was No. 12 on the New York Times best-seller list," he added, referring to the Sept. 19 issue.

Bantam is also involved in shaping the books themselves. Mr. LaHaye’s co-authors described an extremely tight publication schedule and a writing process that relied heavily on editorial directives from the powers-that-be at Bantam, chief among them editor Bill Massey and Mr. Applebaum.

"Between Tim LaHaye and Bantam Books and myself, that’s where the story comes from," said Mr. Phillips, the co-author of The Secret on Ararat. Because Bantam was in such a rush, Mr. Phillips said, he wrote the book in 51 days. "It was scary," he said, adding that Bantam had just asked him to write the third book in the series.

If it’s anything like The Secret on Ararat, then it will most likely offer a preachy blend of flat characters tackling extreme situations. In one scene in The Secret on Ararat, the character Shari confesses to the book’s hero, archeologist Michael Murphy, her concerns that her boyfriend, Paul—whom she’d been seeing ever since "she’d nursed him back to health after the bomb explosion in the church"—was getting mixed up with the wrong kind of ideas. "He had a copy of Darwin’s The Origin of the Species and wanted to show me these passages he’d underlined," Shari says. "Things about fossils and how they prove different kinds of animals evolved from one another and weren’t all created at the same time the way it says in the Bible."

Mr. LaHaye’s forays into the Darwinian world of New York publishing reflect the smash success of other religious titles, which in turn owes something to the ability of publishers to sell such books in bulk through chain stores like Costco and Wal-Mart, as well as through major book retailers like Barnes & Noble and Borders.

In November, Doubleday, another division of Random House, will become the first trade house to publish The Book of Mormon, which has generally been available only through the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Doubleday approached the church and "they were extremely responsive to the idea," said Michelle Rapkin, the vice president and director of Doubleday’s religious publishing division. The hardback will retail for $24.95; the church was paid an advance, and it and the publisher will share royalties.

The Purpose-Driven Life by Pastor Robert Warren, a guide to using Christian teachings in one’s daily life, has sold more than 19 million English-language copies and 1 million Spanish-language copies since its release in the fall of 2002. It’s published by Zondervan, a division of HarperCollins, which in turn is owned by News Corp. To celebrate the book’s success—and profits—Rupert Murdoch, the chairman and chief executive of News Corp., threw a lavish party for the good pastor at the Rainbow Room on Monday night. "When one of our authors sells a million books, we think he’s a genius," Mr. Murdoch said at the event, according to Publishers’ Lunch, an industry newsletter. "When a book sells 20 million copies, we think we’re geniuses."

If Mr. LaHaye’s productivity is any indication, New York publishers won’t have any trouble feeling good about themselves and their Christian successes. As Mr. LaHaye said of his Babylon Rising series: "There’s no limit to the number of prophecies."

What Ms. Hendra has taken on is her father, the English comic writer and former National Lampoon editor. In an article in The New York Times last month she accused him of molesting her when she was a young girl. Ms. Hendra said that she found the molestation glaringly absent from Father Joe , Mr. Hendra's account of his decades-long friendship with a Benedictine monk he credits with "saving his soul," which Random House published to great acclaim in May. Mr. Hendra has vociferously denied his daughter's charges, claiming that she has "psychological issues," including false-memory syndrome.

The story of the House of Hendra is an intensely painful and intimate tale, only it has been played out in the very public pages of The New York Times and will soon play out on the screens of millions of viewers when Good Morning America airs Diane Sawyer's interview with Ms. Hendra in the coming weeks. In Hendra v. Hendra , it's arguable who has the "bigger machine." "Should the media be a court of law? I don't know," said Ms. Hendra, 39, who is a mother of two daughters and a former actress. "I go back and forth. In some ways I feel I would like more, I don't know, validation from the media, but it's not a court of law, it's the media," she said.

Since July 1, when The Times first published Ms. Hendra's claims in a carefully reported 2,400-word story by veteran reporter N. R. Kleinfield that ran on the front page of the Arts section, a strange radio silence has set in-one which will surely be broken by Good Morning America .

Only a few media outlets picked up the allegations, including People magazine, The Village Voice and the National Catholic Reporter . Don Imus, who had been touting the book on his morning show, stopped mentioning it. Catholic Digest , which was slated to publish excerpts of Father Joe in its November issue, is now reconsidering, its editor in chief, Joop Koopman, told The Observer . Meanwhile, Mr. Hendra has been laying low in the French Pyrenees, and speaking through his P.R. representative, Greg Miller.

Yet through the silence, Father Joe has been on the New York Times best-seller list for 10 weeks, ranking at No. 8 last Sunday. Random House said it has about 335,000 copies in print, after 13 printings. According to Nielsen Bookscan, which tracks book sales, sales of Father Joe have dropped steadily from 24,400 copies the week ending June 20, to 7,480 the week ending Aug. 1. But, allegations aside, that may be in line with normal book sale trends.

"Sales are very good," said Daniel Menaker, the editor in chief of Random House who brought the book from HarperCollins when he moved to Random House last year. Mr. Menaker said Random House planned to re-solicit sales for the holidays and to keep the book in hardcover as long as possible, then publish a paperback edition next spring. He said he doubted that any future editions would carry an acknowledgment of Ms. Hendra's allegations.

"Professionally, we absolutely stand by Tony Hendra," he said.

Mr. Hendra's memoir features himself, a lapsed Catholic and professional ironist. Through years of family turmoil and alcohol and drug abuse, he maintains a deep rapport with, Father Joe, a monk on the Isle of Wight, who teaches him about the world of the spirit. The book carries ecstatic back-cover blurbs from Frank McCourt, Adam Gopnik and Christopher Buckley.

Ms. Hendra said accolades like these are part of what spurred her to action. It was reading Andrew Sullivan's glowing front-page review in The New York Times Book Review that first led her to come forward with her allegations-to The Times . "Reading the reviews, that he's being lauded as completely truthful, I felt I couldn't completely sanction it," Ms. Hendra said. First she submitted an op-ed, which The Times decided to have Mr. Kleinfield report out instead.

"I certainly would never have done this if my father had never written this book. Once I read it, I realized I could never make an impact on his conscience," Ms. Hendra said. But she said she would have come forward even if the book hadn't been such a huge success. "It wasn't really about the fact that it was a best-seller, because I knew that actually by doing this it might improve the sales. That didn't matter," Ms. Hendra said. "I just thought people should know that this was not an honest book and it was being recognized as an honest book."

The Times ' public editor, Daniel Okrent, wrote a July 11 column airing the paper's internal debate about whether it should have published the story. Mr. Okrent concluded, "As an editor, the verities of the profession might have led me to publish this article. But as a reader, I wish The Times hadn't."

In his Web journal the following week, Mr. Okrent acknowledged his ambivalence about his first column, and reprinted a lengthy response from Nina Bernstein, a reporter who covers child welfare for The Times . Ms. Bernstein wrote: "Your reference to 'the private miseries of the Hendra family' by definition accepts that only Tony Hendra can decide what from the family can be made public. It allows him to impose secrecy on other members of the family. And why should that be so?"

Mr. Hendra's literary agent, Jonathon Lazear, is among those who question why The Times published Ms. Hendra's allegations. That Mr. Hendra is "being tried not only by The New York Times but also by reviewers on Amazon-it's repulsive to me that this can happen," Mr. Lazear said.

Indeed, on Amazon.com, one Father Joe reviewer writes, "[The] beautiful and uplifting prose turns to ashes in one's mouth when one learns of Hendra's history of child molestation." The reviewer adds, "Reading Hendra's piece in the 1971 National Lampoon , 'How to Eat Your Daughter,' should be a requirement before sitting down to the sanctimonious and self-serving mess that is this book."

The Lampoon piece in question, which The Village Voice also excerpted in late July, is a satire which reads like Swift's A Modest Proposal meets Lolita . But in light of the allegations, the column takes on a decidedly more sinister air, especially as it was published around the same year that Ms. Hendra claimed the molestation took place.

"People so often ask, 'How do I tell when my daughter is ready for the table?'" Mr. Hendra wrote in 1971. "Generally the exact age falls somewhere between the fifth and sixth birthdays. During this period the daughter acquires a smooth firmness totally free of flab or muscle, especially in the shoulders, buttocks, and thighs, areas which are the gourmet's delight."

He continued, "A slight nip of the teeth will quickly reveal the precise degree of succulence. An ancient and surprisingly accurate test of readiness is to hold the buttocks one in each hand and squeeze gently. If the daughter says, 'Grrrugchllllchllll,' she is not yet quite ready. If she slaps your face, you have missed your opportunity. But if she giggles, she is just right."

And, later: "Now turn the daughter on her tummy in a kneeling position so that her head rests on her hands."

On the opposite page, National Lampoon featured a companion piece, "How to Cook Your Father," a cartoon by Mr. Hendra's oldest daughter, Katherine, who was then 8. "Put him in a very big mixing bowl," Katherine wrote in her childish scrawl.

Through his spokesman, Mr. Hendra said: "This was nothing more than an amusing father-daughter collaboration that, in fact, has been excerpted in various National Lampoon 'best ofs' over the years. I think it's fair to say that, if there is any prurience here, it is in the mind of the reader, not the writers."

Even as Mr. Hendra's P.R. machine tried to downplay Ms. Hendra's allegations and the Lampoon article, Mr. Hendra's response, in effect, encouraged cross-examination in the media court. "If I were still a working journalist and my editor handed me this story, I would certainly want to ask Jessica: if you first made these allegations to your father 10 years ago, why did you wait until the success of his new book, Father Joe , to go public with them? … If your mother knew something this serious, why did she do nothing to protect you and your sister? What mother would do that?" Mr. Hendra wrote. He also included a link to a Web site that deals with recovered memory.

What all this means for Mr. Hendra's career is far from clear. Mr. Lazear, the literary agent, said Mr. Hendra has a proposal out for a book on coming to America. Mr. Menaker said Random House was "actively" considering the proposal. "We have a wonderful book, a best-selling author. We're taking his future writing very seriously," Mr. Menaker said.

Before that chapter begins, the Hendra family must first weather the scrutiny of the television close-up. "We interviewed Jessica Hendra because we felt she had an important story to tell. We invited Tony Hendra to be a guest but he declined. So we have a written statement from him," said Bridgette Maney, a spokeswoman for Good Morning America . "We have every intention of airing this piece and hope to do so very soon."

Jimmy Breslin is in hot water with a clergyman again. This time, a Roman

Catholic priest Mr. Breslin quoted-unnamed-in his most recent book says the Newsday columnist put words in his

mouth.

The Reverend Patrick Fitzgerald of Mary Immaculate Church in

Bellport, Long Island, told The Observer that he never discussed

abortion at a baptism earlier this year, nor did he say that Presidential

candidate John Kerry "talks crap," as Mr. Breslin reported on page 2 of his

book about the Catholic Church's sexual scandals, The Church That Forgot Christ . "That is a pack of lies," Father

Fitzgerald said. He said he moved to Long Island in 2003 after living in Zambia

for 21 years and has never heard of Mr. Breslin. "I'm an Englishman, as you may

detect from my accent," he told The

Observer . "I haven't come across Jimmy Breslin."

In April, The Observer

noted that the Reverend Lou Sheldon, the founder of the Traditional Values

Coalition, had accused Mr. Breslin of fabricating quotes. Mr. Breslin had

quoted him saying that "homosexuals are dangerous." In response, Newsday published an editor's note in

which it said that Mr. Sheldon's words were "not precise quotations" but were

nevertheless "an accurate reflection of the essence" of his conversation with

Mr. Breslin.

The new flap began on Aug. 1, when the Washington Post Book World published a scathing review of Mr.

Breslin's book by Kenneth Woodward, a contributing editor of Newsweek and the magazine's religion

editor for 38 years. In his review, Mr. Woodward called the book "a columnist's

rewrite job" and accused Mr. Breslin of sloppy reporting and possessing a

limited knowledge of church history. Mr. Woodward honed in on an incident in

the book's opening pages. The scene is a baptism "on a Sunday afternoon on Long

Island, at the beginning of the Hamptons." Mr. Breslin said he "stood way out

in left field" during the ceremony, which he attended with a friend of the

family.

In Mr. Breslin's account, an unnamed priest-"your usual

white-haired Irish"-addressed the baby, saying that he must "stand up against

abortions." Afterward, Mr. Breslin writes, the priest told his friend that

priests "have been ordered that at every liturgical ceremony, we must make a

statement against abortion."

Mr. Woodward was, to say the least, skeptical. He wrote: "I've

covered the Catholic church for as long as Breslin has been writing, and I

don't believe this ever happened."

This sparked Mr. Breslin's ire. On Aug. 2, a letter identified as

Mr. Breslin's reply to The Washington Post appeared on the

Poynter.org media news Web site. Jim Romenesko, who runs the Web site's

media-news page, said Mr. Breslin had sent him the letter to post on Aug. 2.

The following day, however, the editor of The

Washington Post Book World , Marie Arana,

said the paper had received a slightly different, shorter version of the

letter, which she provided to The Observer . "Of course, we'll consider

publishing it in Book World ," she

said.

In both letters, Mr. Breslin filled in details that were missing

in the book. He wrote: "On February 8, 2004, in Mary Immaculate Church in

Bellport, Long Island, Father Patrick Fitzgerald baptized Peter Joseph Verity.

Upon finishing the blessing, Father Fitzgerald announced that the infant had to

fight against abortion. Was he going to hand the kid a sword and tell him to

crawl out and slay people? … He also announced, 'Kerry talks crap. All

politicians talk crap.'"

Father Fitzgerald said he has "never referred to abortion" at a

baptism.

"My concern is the 30,000 children who are dying needlessly

inAfrica because the world doesn't care enough," he said.

Both in the book and in his letters, Mr. Breslin said that he had

attended the baptism, and that afterward his friend, Ed Ward, had questioned

Father Fitzgerald about whether it was appropriate for the priest to discuss

abortion and politics on such an occasion. Mr. Ward, who is the spokesman for

the Republican minority leader of the Nassau County legislature, told The Observer that Father Fitzgerald's

denial was "an outright lie."

Mr. Ward said he had spoken privately to the priest in the

sacristy after the baptism and that Mr. Breslin wasn't in the room for the

conversation. Yet in the book, Mr. Breslin wrote, "At the finish, I heard Ward

say to the priest, 'Don't you think it was a little out of context to be

criticizing a politician like Kerry and then yelling about abortion?" If Mr.

Breslin wasn't there for the conversation, how could he have heard it? "I don't

know," Mr. Ward said. "You'd have to ask him that."

Mr. Breslin didn't seem eager to discuss the issue. "If you want

to check on me, you can spend your life [doing it] and make an enemy very

fast," Mr. Breslin told The Observer .

"What the hell do I care? You're sneaking around. Do me a favor, leave me the

fuck alone."

An Advertisement?

Mr. Woodward seemed rather ruffled by Mr. Breslin's letter on

Poynter.org. "He has every right to write The

Washington Post a letter, but I can't

imagine why he'd post it on a Web site, unless, as I suspect, like his pal

Norman Mailer, this is an advertisement for himself," Mr. Woodward told The Observer . "What are you supposed to

do with a letter in which he ignores the eight or so errors I found in his

book? He will not acknowledge it," Mr. Woodward continued. "I would say his

letter is angry, maudlin, self-absorbed, defensive and dishonest, just like the

book."

But beyond the he-said/he-said, beyond Mr. Breslin's righteous

anger at the Catholic Church, there's another level to the controversy, which

has more to do with who best understands outer-borough, middle-class Catholics

and captures them most clearly. "If you've never visited Jimmy Breslinland,

you'll need directions," came the opening salvo of Mr. Woodward's review. "It

is centered in the borough of Queens, N.Y., where Breslin grew up, and extends

to the Hamptons on eastern Long Island and west to Manhattan, where Breslin now

lives and writes a column for Newsday .

Everyone in Breslinland talks a lot, and they all sound like Jimmy Breslin."

In his letter posted on Poynter.org, Mr. Breslin turned the

debate into one of Queens versus Westchester, blue collar versus white collar.

"That he writes about a Queens that has not existed for a half century, shows

that he has detested it from first scorn and never looked again," Mr. Breslin

wrote. "Woodward says he can't conceive of such a church scene. Of course he

can't. If he didn't instantly feel that the ceremony is one of these sad,

laughable tales from every church, then he stands on his lovely rich suburban

lawn and lives in blind dislike of a place called Queens that doesn't even

exist anymore."

But just what is irking Mr. Breslin? That Mr. Woodward has

savaged his book, that a reporter is questioning his reporting, or that the

Queens of his youth doesn't exist anymore? Or perhaps everything combined.

After all, as fellow Queens native Mario Cuomo writes in a back-cover blurb,

Mr. Breslin's book is a "real cri de

coeur by a forever Christian, badly wounded by the church's betrayal of the

religion he clings to."

Even as he fanned the flames on Aug. 3, Mr. Breslin acknowledged

that the controversy couldn't have come at a worse time. His daughter,

Rosemary, recently died after a long battle with a rare blood disease. "I lost

a daughter. I don't use it as an excuse," Mr. Breslin said. "Now you make the

priest look bad, you make him lie in public."

He called back later in the afternoon, clearly upset. "I never

thought the priest would wind up in a freaking international scandal," he said.

"He's an old man, a retired priest! When the guy's telling a lie, I'm trying to

protect him. He'll kill himself! Give the man a break. Goodbye." And with that,

Mr. Breslin hung up the phone.

On Sunday evening, at a reception for Harvard alumni in U.S. government held in the airy main lobby of Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Robert Boorstin, the senior vice president for national security at the Center for American Progress, summed up Cambridge's enthusiasm for Mr. Kerry with a noncommittal "Eh!" as he turned his hands palms up in a gesture that drove home the point. "He's not like Teddy Kennedy," said Mr. Boorstin, eyeing the bar.

It's peculiar: Teddy Kennedy doesn't have a strong Cambridge brain trust, but somehow that doesn't seem to matter. The Cambridge intelligentsia is more forgiving of Mr. Kennedy. Perhaps it's because he speaks to a part of their past that they will hold forever dear, or because he sweeps them up—entrances them, really—with his constant motion. Not so Mr. Kerry. Over the years, he has forged on, dutifully and dully, in his steady path to power-just like them. Familiarity, as they say, breeds contempt. Mr. Kerry, their local wonk with the wooden face and the logy voice, communicates the same sense of entitlement as his Massachusetts Senate colleague does, but lacks the Kennedy thrill, the visceral delight in life. Some even say that in spite of his wonkiness, Mr. Kerry lacks an identification with particular issues for them to embrace.

"He's a hometown boy. A lot of people know him, and so he's not a god," said Amy Domini, who runs a socially conscious investment firm in Cambridge and serves on the board of the Cambridge-based Progressive Government Institute. But knowing Mr. Kerry, Ms. Domini said, as she looked around the crowd at the Kennedy School reception, means "they trust him completely."

He's not J.F.K.-he's not even Teddy-but he is still the ticket back to Washington for these Cambridge intellectuals. That much was palpable at Sunday's Kennedy School reception. There, guests sipped wine and ate sushi off little crimson-lined plates, talking about vacations, kids' summer plans-everything but the reason they were there, namely that they wanted more than anything for John Kerry to win the election so they could flee the fluorescent lighting of their university holding pens and get back into the game.

If Mr. Kerry were to win, "I'd say the population [of Cambridge] would go down no more than 23 percent," wisecracked David Gergen, the director of the Kennedy School's Center for Public Leadership and a former White House adviser to President Clinton, as he dashed off from the reception to the Harvard television studio to appear on Larry King Live.

Even so, the Cambridge smart set's affections for Mr. Kerry are surprisingly lukewarm, not unlike those of so many Democratic constituencies who dated other candidates before marrying Mr. Kerry. Of course, Mr. Kerry is a Yale man, and so perhaps the situation is different in New Haven. As Mr. Peretz put it, "This sounds very parochial, but there's not the intrinsic Cambridge interest in Kerry the way there was for Kennedy and Gore, simply because there's no Harvard connection." Still, it's strange that for all the years he spent as a Massachusetts career politician, this year's Democratic contender never seems to have forged particularly close ties with the Cambridge intelligentsia.

Unlike Mr. Gore, whose enthusiasm for the environment made him the darling of Cambridge scientists, "such enthusiasm as there is for Kerry is not because of any prior deep commitment that Kerry had to any issue that people identified with intellectually or politically or morally," said Mr. Peretz. "I think that Al-I'm prejudiced about him-that Al was never threatened by meeting with people who were smarter than him. He pursued those contacts to enhance himself. I don't know that Kerry has ever really done that."

As he stood in uniform near the portrait of J.F.K. at the Kennedy School reception on Sunday, Officer Michael Rea of the Harvard Police Department offered a similar view. "I have no idea of his policies," Mr. Rea said. "It's more either you hate Bush or are willing to put up with Kerry."

Indeed, it's not as if Cambridge is going to vote Republican anyway. "Canterbridgians are a very peculiar, narcissistic lot. But everybody is for him," Mr. Peretz said. "And if one raises a friendly word, however modest, about Bush, one is sent into the dunce corner: 'How could you?', etc."

"We're a little bit spoiled in Cambridge," said firebrand Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz, speaking by phone from his home on Martha's Vineyard. "People my age remember Bobby Kennedy and John Kennedy. Everyone remembers Clinton, and whether you love or hate him, he was the most charismatic guy in the room. Kerry is not the most charismatic guy in the room. He may be the tallest guy in the room. He used to be the best-looking guy in the room."

But Mr. Dershowitz said he's known Mr. Kerry for more than 25 years and was supporting him for President. "He's a guy I would trust with the nuclear trigger," the Harvard law professor said.

It's not that Mr. Kerry doesn't already have a brain trust in Boston, because he does. Robert Reich, the Secretary of Labor in the first Clinton administration and a distinguished professor at Brandeis University, is said to be a close Kerry adviser. Richard Goodwin, the former Kennedy adviser, is said to be helping write speeches. John Sasso, the Boston political operative whose genius is best reflected in the fact that he helped Michael Dukakis, a disastrous candidate, win the Democratic nomination in 1988, is Mr. Kerry's campaign link to the Democratic National Committee. And some Kennedy School faculty members are already actively advising Mr. Kerry, chief among them Graham Allison, the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and an assistant secretary of defense for policy and plans in the first Clinton administration, and Joseph Nye, the former dean of the Kennedy School and a chairman of the National Intelligence Council under President Clinton. The two seem to be among the Harvard faculty with the closest ties to Mr. Kerry, and both said that they'd attended informal policy-discussion dinners at Mr. Kerry's house over the years.

John Holdren, a former member of President Clinton's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and, yes, the Teresa and John Heinz Professor of Environmental Policy and director of the Program on Science, Technology and Public Policy at the Kennedy School, is also said to be a Kerry adviser. William J. Perry, the Secretary of Defense under Mr. Clinton and a professor at Stanford, and Ashton Carter, a former undersecretary of defense under Mr. Clinton and professor at the Kennedy School, who co-directs the Preventive Defense Project, a joint Harvard-Stanford institute, is advising Mr. Kerry on Iraq and national defense.

At the Kennedy School reception, "Bush has some supporters here, but nowhere near as many supporters as Kerry has," said Dan Glickman, the outgoing director of the Institute of Politics at the Kennedy School, the incoming president of the Motion Picture Association of America and former Secretary of Agriculture in the Clinton administration, as he affably greeted guests in his yellow-and-white-striped tie. Harvard students "were clearly more impassioned for Dean," Mr. Glickman said. "After Iowa, there was more enthusiasm for Kerry."

Mr. Allison, an expert on nuclear proliferation, seems to be the one with the longest-standing rapport. "I've known John Kerry for 25 years. He's been an excellent Senator," Mr. Allison said enthusiastically as he ate sushi at the reception, hunching over a little so as not to drop any on his goldenrod-yellow tie. "I've had dinner at his house in Washington and here with groups where he's kicking around a topic. People say, 'Who's advising him about this?' Well, he's been in the Senate for 20 years. When you say 'nuclear terrorism,' he doesn't ask, 'What's nuclear? What's terrorism? Where is Pakistan?'" Discussing policy with Mr. Kerry involves "much less shaping his views than reacting to his questions." According to Mr. Allison, the Senator is wont to say, "Here's what I said—do you disagree?" Mr. Allison said he'd advised Mr. Kerry on an investigation he launched in the late 1980's into BCCI, a Middle Eastern bank that Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega was said to be using for money laundering, and that he helped Mr. Kerry work on a "far-sighted" policy speech the candidate delivered in West Palm Beach this spring. In it, Mr. Kerry discussed the preventable threat of nuclear terrorism. Mr. Allison, it just so happens, is the author of a forthcoming book called Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.

Mr. Nye said that he'd been "a member of a continuing conversation" with Mr. Kerry at dinners over the years and had advised him on foreign-policy issues.

Nearby, Ted Carr, a former member of Mr. Clinton's advance team who now directs the Progressive Government Institute, was chatting with Sam Natapoff, an exchange-rate expert who also worked in the Clinton administration, and who said he had just signed on as a Kerry speechwriter. The Progressive Government Institute's Web site says that it intended to "look at the unelected presidential appointees who make decisions that affect the lives of all of us." As he eyed a room filled with a dozen such Presidential appointees—albeit from the Clinton administration—Mr. Carr had this to say about Mr. Kerry: "Harvard should look to get along with him better."

Mr. Moore waddled on stage in his usual frumpy outfit of billowy jeans; a black shirt and a ball cap perched atop his frock of tussled brown hair.

After grossing more than $100 million to date on a budget of just $6 million, with a potential to reach a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue from ticket sales and DVD's, has Fahrenheit 9/11 lined his pockets?

"I have never seen a dime from any of my films," Mr. Moore told The Transom at a press conference as the screening got underway. "Not a dime. So, I am always on the pessimistic side when you deal with this business," he said. "The so-called net? The back end? As soon as I get a check, I'll let you know."

And if the figure on that check is followed by plenty of zeros, what would he do? Buy a new baseball cap, at least?

"I'd use it on a wardrobe, or a big yacht" Mr. Moore said igniting a chuckle from the throng of reporters gathered in the room. "A couple mansions, something in the South of France would be nice for me, I think. Don't you?" he continued, before noting he'd most likely forgo extravagant luxuries and give the proceeds away to groups sharing his message. "Again," he added, "I'm a dangerous guy to give a lot of money to."

-Gabriel Sherman

Dog-and-Pony Show

On Tuesday morning at 1:15 a.m., a short-statured Boston Police lieutenant and a tall captain hustled the Reverend Al Sharpton out of a 7-Eleven, his arm bent behind his back.

"Rev, we got to get one more photo, but this is going to be a special one," the lieutenant had said, and Mr. Sharpton shrugged off the late hour to oblige. "You got me shoplifting!" he crowed, waving his pink Tropicana Smoothie overhead as a fireman flashed his digital camera and the cops released him.

It wasn't really a bust. It was racial reconciliation as screwball comedy, so routine around Mr. Sharpton that his press secretary, Rachel Noerdlinger, flipped idly through Us Weekly as the antics proceeded. Mr. Sharpton, his suit and his bobbed hair both still crisp, was on his way back from his interview with Larry King, on whose show he'd split time with Ben Affleck.

The white cops set upon him just outside the double-fenced perimeter of the Fleet Center, site of Democratic National Convention.

By the end, Boston's finest and bravest had collected pictures of him with his arm around the captain, pictures of him with his arm around the lieutenant, and one gag shot with him up against the wall, ready to be searched.

"Oh man, this is a pisser," said the lieutenant. "He's a funny bastard."

-Ben Smith

We Are the World

In the cavernous expanse of the main exhibition hall at the Boston Convention and Exposition Center on Saturday night, thousands of journalists covering the convention milled about in an atmosphere that resembled a Palestinian refugee camp where management had been taken over by Cirque du Soleil.

Tents with what looked like Ikea divans and rugs dotted the vast chamber, punctuated by enormous Bedouin tents where Indian and Chinese hors d'oeuvres were ladled out by toqued attendants. Projected on the walls were images that seemed like they were culled from the jacket art for the We Are the World album; every once in a while, a Red Sox pitcher at the mound flashed onto the walls.

Drinks were free, as they must be in order to attract off-duty journalists, and they couldn't get them fast enough when they first caught a glimpse of the hall. Several high-profile attendees, including Alexandra and Vanessa Kerry, seemed to be eyeing the exits soon after descending the escalator into the room.

The huge hall managed to swallow all chatter, and the darkness banished every parting glance, leaving guests stumbling past each other.

"When is a place big enough to be called 'outside'?" asked a local Boston reporter, fingering a pack of cigarettes nervously.

Near the front, an enormous, neon-lit Ferris wheel churned, its generator humming over the subdued noises of the crowd. A blue carpet made a path from the Ferris wheel to a fountain that flowed with chocolate-the decadence of which was slightly marred by the inevitable dirt the chocolate picked up in its cycle. Sauza, the tequila maker, was there to provide amusement-park-style girl drinks; the brave and the stout-bellied slurped as they strolled among the costumed performers-including a marching band in full majorette regalia and several ethnically dressed people who seemed to be there only to wander around and be looked at.

The same vague "world" theme was evident on the stage, which seemed a speck on the horizon of the party, and which somehow managed to make the tens of thousands look like a kind of sparse crowd. A sound system that was loud in a deep, thrumming, inner-ear kind of way pulsed with music that sounded-well, ethnic.

By 10 p.m., you could hear a pin drop in the V.I.P. room upstairs, and it seemed a few of the Big People decided to see what was happening down in the World Village of Drunken Newshounds. Television Foxes Greta van Susteren and Shepard Smith chatted quietly under one of the tents; Terry McAuliffe had been spotted; one journalist, stringing for Joyce Wadler's Boldface Names column, said she'd gone up to ask two men at the V.I.P. party what they thought of the event.

"Who are you writing for?" she remembered one of them asking. She told him, and he said he was familiar with the venue but wasn't going to give an interview.

"I'm Arthur Sulzberger," he said, before gesturing to his friend and introducing executive editor Bill Keller.

A little girl in traditional Native-American dress, with a giant feathered headdress, slouched half-asleep in a chair. A dozen listless guests shuffled in place waiting their turn at the Ferris wheel, the hum of which resounded through the room, louder than any conversation, even drowning out Little Richard, who was belting "Tutti Frutti" on a giant stage at the back of the room.

Ann Coulter was halfway through a Sauza margarita on the rocks when a young aspiring journalist approached the table she was sharing with Slate 's Mickey Kaus and a few other reporters.

"I have read all your books, and I absolutely love what you do," said the young dreamer, a 2002 Yale grad named Sean Westmoreland, "and I'm the biggest fan you'll find in Boston.

"That's like being the tallest building in Peoria," Ms. Coulter said dryly.

And how was the crowd treating Ms. Coulter, whose acerbic wit and conservative commentary have given her a permanent role on almost every cable news talk show?

"There are a lot of Democrats here," Ms. Coulter said. "I've basically been staying at the same table all night, sipping the free booze, with my eyes trained straight ahead-at the stage.

Ms. Coulter was on assignment at the party for USA Today , for which she'll be penning a daily column about the convention. The paper's 36-year-old op-ed-page editor, John Siniff, who was standing at the elbow-high table with Ms. Coulter and Mr. Kaus, said he has also arranged for Michael Moore to write a week's worth of columns during next month's Republican convention in New York.

"I've had this job two months, and this was my first big idea," Mr. Siniff said.

Onstage, Little Richard was getting weirder-maybe taking the cue to pick up the multiculti theme?

"Are there any Jews in here?" he was howling, in a weird approximation of a shout-out to the crowd. "Are there any Mexicans?"

-Blair Golson

Post -Dated

How to stick out in the ever-increasing stack of Election 2004 convention editions? On Monday morning, The Washington Post greeted convention-goers with the first must-read section of the week: a very special "Election 2000" offering.

The two words were plastered banner-style over a special section featuring a photograph of Senator John Edwards and Senator John Kerry, fists raised, accompanying a news analysis by Washington Post staff writer David von Drehle.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the offending section hadn't been distributed precisely in the place where competitors would get the most joy out of the politically authoritative paper's goof-the two-story media tent sitting astride the Fleet Center and several dozen hotels where journalists were ensconced.

Post managing editor Steve Coll said that the Post 's production department in Washington accidentally inserted a four-year-old template as it was laying out the special section last night, and the error sailed past everyone involved-till it began arriving on some 7,000 hotel doorsteps.

The error was confined to the Post 's convention-only press run, which is being contracted out to a Boston printer for the occasion, Mr. Coll said. "Because the special edition in Boston did not conform to any of the section sizes or advertising shapes in the main Washington editions, entirely new electronic pages had to be created last night, so that the printing plant in Boston could create the edition there," he wrote in an e-mail.

That means it went to the convention hotels where delegates, reporters and party brass were bunkered. It was also distributed throughout the media pavilion at Boston's Fleet Center, where competitors indulged in a little good-natured Schadenfreude before, early in the day, Post circulation staff set out to round up some of the 3,000 copies destined for the convention site.

With the assembled media already tipped off to the mistake-and with no corrected copies to hand out-the Post decided to abandon the recall effort.

"At this point, we're just going to let it go," Mr. Coll said.

-Tom Scocca

Ben Diction

Breakfast had barely ended at the Marriott in Boston, home base for the Florida delegation, but Congresswoman Coreen Brown made sure that the roomful of Florida delegates was wide awake.

"We've got the best hotels! We've got center stage at the convention!" she shouted. "All eyes are on Florida!"

All eyes were on Florida this morning, as the Democratic National Committee has brought out the heavy artillery to win over last year's hot-button state. Word had gotten out about who would be the speaking at the morning event-Ben Affleck and Howard Dean-and what began as a routine meeting reached a fever pitch before the hour was through.

The delegates, who had somehow coordinated a dress code of flowered vacationers' gear, eagerly played around with Ms. Brown's call-and-response routine, which, with free coffee, is pretty much the M.O. for rousing the politically minded and hung-over at convention-delegate breakfasts.

"The truth is, we won in the 2000 elections, and the question is, will we win again-or will they steal it from us again?" she cried.

"No!!" came the response.

Governor Dean entered, beginning with a riff on his own fatal Iowa blunder: "We're gonna win in Pennsylvania! We're gonna win in Iowa! We're gonna win in Wyoming! We're gonna win in South Carolina ... and we're gonna win again in Florida!

"I'm not gonna say anything bad about the President, but it is a hard task," he said.

In the middle of his comments, someone from the crowd shouted, "Give 'em hell, Howard!"

"We're gonna give 'em hell!" Mr. Dean responded gleefully. He quoted Senator Truman-"I don't give 'em hell. I tell the truth and the Republicans think it's hell!"-and struck a few populist notes, encouraging ordinary people to run for office and give small amounts to the campaign.

The shouting match didn't falter over a less-than-fiery Janet Reno, who delivered a nonconfrontational speech but evoked a clamor nonetheless.

"I hope we've identified the problems with the machines and everything will go more smoothly this time," she told The Transom calmly about Florida in the coming election.

But the room really got on its feet when aspiring politician Ben Affleck burst in a little after 9 a.m., thundering from the pulpit with a speech chockfull of tricky facts and figures. He waxed eloquent about the importance of this election, employment numbers and Senator Kerry's support of the military, before making his own jab at Bush-with a line he's been using for some time now.

"I received over $1 million last year in tax cuts," he said, raising a shapely eyebrow, "and I can tell you personally, I don't need the money."

Asked if he felt comfortable talking politics, Mr. Affleck leaned down from the stage and put his arm comfortably around The Transom's shoulder. "It feels good," he said warmly. "Very satisfying."

"Ben," an exuberant Florida Democrat shouted, "why are you so pretty?"

"You're pretty, too!" he replied.

Mr. Affleck was mobbed by button-clad female delegates on his way out, gasping, "Ben, will you take a picture?!?"

"Sure, gorgeous," he grinned.

Two women asked if he would pose in a picture for Florida Latinos.

"Latinos!" he echoed in a sultry Spanish accent, which apparently meant yes.

"Ooh," one cooed in approval, "that was good."

-Elizabeth Widdicombe

The Speechwriter

"Stronger at home, respected in the world," said Terry Edmonds, Senator John Kerry's chief speechwriter. He was in the back of a Boston taxi on the evening of Sunday, July 25, on his way to the Yankees-Red Sox grudge match, where his boss was throwing out the first pitch-an event that was kept so secret for so long that Senator Kerry diverted his campaign plane to get there.

Mr. Edmonds was trying out Mr. Kerry's current slogan for what must be the thousandth time. "It's not punchy, but it's the theme."

Mr. Edmonds, who was President Clinton's top speechwriter, isn't the sort to pull rank or even push his way to the front of a taxi line. Unfortunately, he came downstairs from his room at Boston's Park Plaza Hotel around 8 p.m. It's just the wrong time to get a ride to Fenway Park for a game that was set to start in 10 minutes. A New York delegation party had just broken up, and its highest rollers were hurrying over to Hillary and Bill Clinton's private party overlooking Boston Harbor. Mr. Edmonds and a reporter standing nearby appeared to be at risk of being trampled in a crowd of Clinton donors, among them the performer Anna Deveare Smith. Mr. Edmonds was wearing what pass for work clothes at a convention: a "Team Kerry" T-shirt, a rumpled, hooded sweatshirt and a Wimbledon hat. His dark, pleasantly lined face looked a bit tired: He'd been e-mailing drafts of speeches all day as Senator Kerry made his way across the country. He reports to Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, the convention's dominating presence, but Mr. Edmonds hadn't yet taken a look at the caricature of Mr. Shrum on the front page of The New Republic . It's the luxury of being a speechwriter-you're the private part of an intensely public event, and hardly anyone recognizes you outside the Park Plaza. "I'm a ghost-I don't exist," Mr. Edmonds said, getting out of the taxi outside Fenway. "That's my credo." Inside the stadium, Mr. Kerry had already thrown the first pitch and departed. Mr. Edmonds headed for the left-field side and apologized in an exchange with a reporter for not having business cards. "I don't have any," he said. "Because I don't exist."

-Ben Smith

Intelligentsia, Post-Sex

Monday's party of the night was hosted by The Economist , The New Republic and Roll Call , and sponsored by the National Spirits Council, but guests gravitated to John Fox Sullivan, the white-haired, bespectacled publisher of the National Journal group, to thank him for throwing such a great shindig.

A high-octane mix of journalists, Hill staffers and a few Congressman schmoozed, boozed and shouted at each other over the music at Anthem, a bar around the corner from the Fleet Center with the cheesy-yet-elegant 80's Art Deco redux aesthetic of a Cosi coffee shop, as waiters brought around trays of nourishing hors d'oeuvres.

Just before 11 p.m., as the visage of President Clinton speaking to delegates shone down from the television set above the bar, Ana Maria Cox, who runs the much-buzzed-about Beltway blog Wonkette, was chatting with Matt Labash, a senior writer at The Weekly Standard . Ms. Cox said she's spent all day giving interviews about blogging.

Nearby, several dozen Washington-type journalists and staffers of indiscriminate import mingled by the bar. "These people are not even famous for D.C.," Ms. Cox said. "They are if you follow electricity deregulation," said Mr. Labash. How could one tell? "The static in their hair," he said. "They glow," Ms. Cox said. The Transom asked Mr. Labash if he'd met anyone who actually liked John Kerry personally. "I think Vanessa is on the fence, but could be persuaded," he said of the Senator's blond medical-student daughter.

Downstairs, people clustered together on benches, or crowded around a table where enthusiastic pushers from the National Spirits Council were plying guests with thimble-sized glasses of high-end whiskies like Laphroaig and Jack Daniels Old Forester.

"You better try some," one booze-pusher told The Transom. "Because you're not going to find these in stores."

Some time after midnight, The Transom looked around the bar's cavernous downstairs and tried to gauge just what it was about the crowd that made it immediately clear we weren't in New York. Hans Nichols, a dashing curly-haired staff writer for The Hill , took one steady look around the room and figured out the vibe: "Because these people," he said, "are more interested in networking than in sex."

-Rachel Donadio

Suspicious Minds

The New York Times ' Michael Cooper was in his room at the Park Plaza Hotel on Monday filing a summary of that day's reporting when the Secret Service called to say they'd searched that very room earlier in the day.

The agents had descended in response to a tip that he had-a gas mask! Did he know something everyone else didn't?

"They were like, 'Why do you have a gas mask?'" said Mr. Cooper, The Times ' even-tempered Albany bureau chief.

There was a good reason he had one - his employer had offered it to him. An internal memo, leaked to Wonkette.com, informed Times reporters that "[Escape] hoods are not mandatory but if you would feel safer with one please bring yours along."

"I said they were giving them out," he said. The Secret Service agent was incredulous: Who was giving them out? The convention?

"Just the paper," he explained, and the agent was apparently satisfied.

Mr. Cooper said he hadn't noticed that his not-entirely-immaculate room had been searched. The underwear and socks, he said, were in their usual places.

-Ben Smith

Mr. Moore waddled on stage in his usual frumpy outfit of billowy jeans; a black shirt and a ball cap perched atop his frock of tussled brown hair.

After grossing more than $100 million to date on a budget of just $6 million, with a potential to reach a quarter of a billion dollars in revenue from ticket sales and DVD's, has Fahrenheit 9/11 lined his pockets?

"I have never seen a dime from any of my films," Mr. Moore told The Transom at a press conference as the screening got underway. "Not a dime. So, I am always on the pessimistic side when you deal with this business," he said. "The so-called net? The back end? As soon as I get a check, I'll let you know."

And if the figure on that check is followed by plenty of zeros, what would he do? Buy a new baseball cap, at least?

"I'd use it on a wardrobe, or a big yacht" Mr. Moore said igniting a chuckle from the throng of reporters gathered in the room. "A couple mansions, something in the South of France would be nice for me, I think. Don't you?" he continued, before noting he'd most likely forgo extravagant luxuries and give the proceeds away to groups sharing his message. "Again," he added, "I'm a dangerous guy to give a lot of money to."

-Gabriel Sherman

Dog-and-Pony Show

On Tuesday morning at 1:15 a.m., a short-statured Boston Police lieutenant and a tall captain hustled the Reverend Al Sharpton out of a 7-Eleven, his arm bent behind his back.

"Rev, we got to get one more photo, but this is going to be a special one," the lieutenant had said, and Mr. Sharpton shrugged off the late hour to oblige. "You got me shoplifting!" he crowed, waving his pink Tropicana Smoothie overhead as a fireman flashed his digital camera and the cops released him.

It wasn't really a bust. It was racial reconciliation as screwball comedy, so routine around Mr. Sharpton that his press secretary, Rachel Noerdlinger, flipped idly through Us Weekly as the antics proceeded. Mr. Sharpton, his suit and his bobbed hair both still crisp, was on his way back from his interview with Larry King, on whose show he'd split time with Ben Affleck.

The white cops set upon him just outside the double-fenced perimeter of the Fleet Center, site of Democratic National Convention.

By the end, Boston's finest and bravest had collected pictures of him with his arm around the captain, pictures of him with his arm around the lieutenant, and one gag shot with him up against the wall, ready to be searched.

"Oh man, this is a pisser," said the lieutenant. "He's a funny bastard."

-Ben Smith

We Are the World

In the cavernous expanse of the main exhibition hall at the Boston Convention and Exposition Center on Saturday night, thousands of journalists covering the convention milled about in an atmosphere that resembled a Palestinian refugee camp where management had been taken over by Cirque du Soleil.

Tents with what looked like Ikea divans and rugs dotted the vast chamber, punctuated by enormous Bedouin tents where Indian and Chinese hors d'oeuvres were ladled out by toqued attendants. Projected on the walls were images that seemed like they were culled from the jacket art for the We Are the World album; every once in a while, a Red Sox pitcher at the mound flashed onto the walls.

Drinks were free, as they must be in order to attract off-duty journalists, and they couldn't get them fast enough when they first caught a glimpse of the hall. Several high-profile attendees, including Alexandra and Vanessa Kerry, seemed to be eyeing the exits soon after descending the escalator into the room.

The huge hall managed to swallow all chatter, and the darkness banished every parting glance, leaving guests stumbling past each other.

"When is a place big enough to be called 'outside'?" asked a local Boston reporter, fingering a pack of cigarettes nervously.

Near the front, an enormous, neon-lit Ferris wheel churned, its generator humming over the subdued noises of the crowd. A blue carpet made a path from the Ferris wheel to a fountain that flowed with chocolate-the decadence of which was slightly marred by the inevitable dirt the chocolate picked up in its cycle. Sauza, the tequila maker, was there to provide amusement-park-style girl drinks; the brave and the stout-bellied slurped as they strolled among the costumed performers-including a marching band in full majorette regalia and several ethnically dressed people who seemed to be there only to wander around and be looked at.

The same vague "world" theme was evident on the stage, which seemed a speck on the horizon of the party, and which somehow managed to make the tens of thousands look like a kind of sparse crowd. A sound system that was loud in a deep, thrumming, inner-ear kind of way pulsed with music that sounded-well, ethnic.

By 10 p.m., you could hear a pin drop in the V.I.P. room upstairs, and it seemed a few of the Big People decided to see what was happening down in the World Village of Drunken Newshounds. Television Foxes Greta van Susteren and Shepard Smith chatted quietly under one of the tents; Terry McAuliffe had been spotted; one journalist, stringing for Joyce Wadler's Boldface Names column, said she'd gone up to ask two men at the V.I.P. party what they thought of the event.

"Who are you writing for?" she remembered one of them asking. She told him, and he said he was familiar with the venue but wasn't going to give an interview.

"I'm Arthur Sulzberger," he said, before gesturing to his friend and introducing executive editor Bill Keller.

A little girl in traditional Native-American dress, with a giant feathered headdress, slouched half-asleep in a chair. A dozen listless guests shuffled in place waiting their turn at the Ferris wheel, the hum of which resounded through the room, louder than any conversation, even drowning out Little Richard, who was belting "Tutti Frutti" on a giant stage at the back of the room.

Ann Coulter was halfway through a Sauza margarita on the rocks when a young aspiring journalist approached the table she was sharing with Slate 's Mickey Kaus and a few other reporters.

"I have read all your books, and I absolutely love what you do," said the young dreamer, a 2002 Yale grad named Sean Westmoreland, "and I'm the biggest fan you'll find in Boston.

"That's like being the tallest building in Peoria," Ms. Coulter said dryly.

And how was the crowd treating Ms. Coulter, whose acerbic wit and conservative commentary have given her a permanent role on almost every cable news talk show?

"There are a lot of Democrats here," Ms. Coulter said. "I've basically been staying at the same table all night, sipping the free booze, with my eyes trained straight ahead-at the stage.

Ms. Coulter was on assignment at the party for USA Today , for which she'll be penning a daily column about the convention. The paper's 36-year-old op-ed-page editor, John Siniff, who was standing at the elbow-high table with Ms. Coulter and Mr. Kaus, said he has also arranged for Michael Moore to write a week's worth of columns during next month's Republican convention in New York.

"I've had this job two months, and this was my first big idea," Mr. Siniff said.

Onstage, Little Richard was getting weirder-maybe taking the cue to pick up the multiculti theme?

"Are there any Jews in here?" he was howling, in a weird approximation of a shout-out to the crowd. "Are there any Mexicans?"

-Blair Golson

Post -Dated

How to stick out in the ever-increasing stack of Election 2004 convention editions? On Monday morning, The Washington Post greeted convention-goers with the first must-read section of the week: a very special "Election 2000" offering.

The two words were plastered banner-style over a special section featuring a photograph of Senator John Edwards and Senator John Kerry, fists raised, accompanying a news analysis by Washington Post staff writer David von Drehle.

It wouldn't have been so bad if the offending section hadn't been distributed precisely in the place where competitors would get the most joy out of the politically authoritative paper's goof-the two-story media tent sitting astride the Fleet Center and several dozen hotels where journalists were ensconced.

Post managing editor Steve Coll said that the Post 's production department in Washington accidentally inserted a four-year-old template as it was laying out the special section last night, and the error sailed past everyone involved-till it began arriving on some 7,000 hotel doorsteps.

The error was confined to the Post 's convention-only press run, which is being contracted out to a Boston printer for the occasion, Mr. Coll said. "Because the special edition in Boston did not conform to any of the section sizes or advertising shapes in the main Washington editions, entirely new electronic pages had to be created last night, so that the printing plant in Boston could create the edition there," he wrote in an e-mail.

That means it went to the convention hotels where delegates, reporters and party brass were bunkered. It was also distributed throughout the media pavilion at Boston's Fleet Center, where competitors indulged in a little good-natured Schadenfreude before, early in the day, Post circulation staff set out to round up some of the 3,000 copies destined for the convention site.

With the assembled media already tipped off to the mistake-and with no corrected copies to hand out-the Post decided to abandon the recall effort.

"At this point, we're just going to let it go," Mr. Coll said.

-Tom Scocca

Ben Diction

Breakfast had barely ended at the Marriott in Boston, home base for the Florida delegation, but Congresswoman Coreen Brown made sure that the roomful of Florida delegates was wide awake.

"We've got the best hotels! We've got center stage at the convention!" she shouted. "All eyes are on Florida!"

All eyes were on Florida this morning, as the Democratic National Committee has brought out the heavy artillery to win over last year's hot-button state. Word had gotten out about who would be the speaking at the morning event-Ben Affleck and Howard Dean-and what began as a routine meeting reached a fever pitch before the hour was through.

The delegates, who had somehow coordinated a dress code of flowered vacationers' gear, eagerly played around with Ms. Brown's call-and-response routine, which, with free coffee, is pretty much the M.O. for rousing the politically minded and hung-over at convention-delegate breakfasts.

"The truth is, we won in the 2000 elections, and the question is, will we win again-or will they steal it from us again?" she cried.

"No!!" came the response.

Governor Dean entered, beginning with a riff on his own fatal Iowa blunder: "We're gonna win in Pennsylvania! We're gonna win in Iowa! We're gonna win in Wyoming! We're gonna win in South Carolina … and we're gonna win again in Florida!

"I'm not gonna say anything bad about the President, but it is a hard task," he said.

In the middle of his comments, someone from the crowd shouted, "Give 'em hell, Howard!"

"We're gonna give 'em hell!" Mr. Dean responded gleefully. He quoted Senator Truman-"I don't give 'em hell. I tell the truth and the Republicans think it's hell!"-and struck a few populist notes, encouraging ordinary people to run for office and give small amounts to the campaign.

The shouting match didn't falter over a less-than-fiery Janet Reno, who delivered a nonconfrontational speech but evoked a clamor nonetheless.

"I hope we've identified the problems with the machines and everything will go more smoothly this time," she told The Transom calmly about Florida in the coming election.

But the room really got on its feet when aspiring politician Ben Affleck burst in a little after 9 a.m., thundering from the pulpit with a speech chockfull of tricky facts and figures. He waxed eloquent about the importance of this election, employment numbers and Senator Kerry's support of the military, before making his own jab at Bush-with a line he's been using for some time now.

"I received over $1 million last year in tax cuts," he said, raising a shapely eyebrow, "and I can tell you personally, I don't need the money."

Asked if he felt comfortable talking politics, Mr. Affleck leaned down from the stage and put his arm comfortably around The Transom's shoulder. "It feels good," he said warmly. "Very satisfying."

"Ben," an exuberant Florida Democrat shouted, "why are you so pretty?"

"You're pretty, too!" he replied.

Mr. Affleck was mobbed by button-clad female delegates on his way out, gasping, "Ben, will you take a picture?!?"

"Sure, gorgeous," he grinned.

Two women asked if he would pose in a picture for Florida Latinos.

"Latinos!" he echoed in a sultry Spanish accent, which apparently meant yes.

"Ooh," one cooed in approval, "that was good."

-Elizabeth Widdicombe

The Speechwriter

"Stronger at home, respected in the world," said Terry Edmonds, Senator John Kerry's chief speechwriter. He was in the back of a Boston taxi on the evening of Sunday, July 25, on his way to the Yankees–Red Sox grudge match, where his boss was throwing out the first pitch-an event that was kept so secret for so long that Senator Kerry diverted his campaign plane to get there.

Mr. Edmonds was trying out Mr. Kerry's current slogan for what must be the thousandth time. "It's not punchy, but it's the theme."

Mr. Edmonds, who was President Clinton's top speechwriter, isn't the sort to pull rank or even push his way to the front of a taxi line. Unfortunately, he came downstairs from his room at Boston's Park Plaza Hotel around 8 p.m. It's just the wrong time to get a ride to Fenway Park for a game that was set to start in 10 minutes. A New York delegation party had just broken up, and its highest rollers were hurrying over to Hillary and Bill Clinton's private party overlooking Boston Harbor. Mr. Edmonds and a reporter standing nearby appeared to be at risk of being trampled in a crowd of Clinton donors, among them the performer Anna Deveare Smith. Mr. Edmonds was wearing what pass for work clothes at a convention: a "Team Kerry" T-shirt, a rumpled, hooded sweatshirt and a Wimbledon hat. His dark, pleasantly lined face looked a bit tired: He'd been e-mailing drafts of speeches all day as Senator Kerry made his way across the country. He reports to Democratic strategist Bob Shrum, the convention's dominating presence, but Mr. Edmonds hadn't yet taken a look at the caricature of Mr. Shrum on the front page of The New Republic . It's the luxury of being a speechwriter-you're the private part of an intensely public event, and hardly anyone recognizes you outside the Park Plaza. "I'm a ghost-I don't exist," Mr. Edmonds said, getting out of the taxi outside Fenway. "That's my credo." Inside the stadium, Mr. Kerry had already thrown the first pitch and departed. Mr. Edmonds headed for the left-field side and apologized in an exchange with a reporter for not having business cards. "I don't have any," he said. "Because I don't exist."

-Ben Smith

Intelligentsia, Post-Sex

Monday's party of the night was hosted by The Economist , The New Republic and Roll Call , and sponsored by the National Spirits Council, but guests gravitated to John Fox Sullivan, the white-haired, bespectacled publisher of the National Journal group, to thank him for throwing such a great shindig.

A high-octane mix of journalists, Hill staffers and a few Congressman schmoozed, boozed and shouted at each other over the music at Anthem, a bar around the corner from the Fleet Center with the cheesy-yet-elegant 80's Art Deco redux aesthetic of a Cosi coffee shop, as waiters brought around trays of nourishing hors d'oeuvres.

Just before 11 p.m., as the visage of President Clinton speaking to delegates shone down from the television set above the bar, Ana Maria Cox, who runs the much-buzzed-about Beltway blog Wonkette, was chatting with Matt Labash, a senior writer at The Weekly Standard . Ms. Cox said she's spent all day giving interviews about blogging.

Nearby, several dozen Washington-type journalists and staffers of indiscriminate import mingled by the bar. "These people are not even famous for D.C.," Ms. Cox said. "They are if you follow electricity deregulation," said Mr. Labash. How could one tell? "The static in their hair," he said. "They glow," Ms. Cox said. The Transom asked Mr. Labash if he'd met anyone who actually liked John Kerry personally. "I think Vanessa is on the fence, but could be persuaded," he said of the Senator's blond medical-student daughter.

Downstairs, people clustered together on benches, or crowded around a table where enthusiastic pushers from the National Spirits Council were plying guests with thimble-sized glasses of high-end whiskies like Laphroaig and Jack Daniels Old Forester.

"You better try some," one booze-pusher told The Transom. "Because you're not going to find these in stores."

Some time after midnight, The Transom looked around the bar's cavernous downstairs and tried to gauge just what it was about the crowd that made it immediately clear we weren't in New York. Hans Nichols, a dashing curly-haired staff writer for The Hill , took one steady look around the room and figured out the vibe: "Because these people," he said, "are more interested in networking than in sex."

-Rachel Donadio

Suspicious Minds

The New York Times ' Michael Cooper was in his room at the Park Plaza Hotel on Monday filing a summary of that day's reporting when the Secret Service called to say they'd searched that very room earlier in the day.

The agents had descended in response to a tip that he had-a gas mask! Did he know something everyone else didn't?

"They were like, 'Why do you have a gas mask?'" said Mr. Cooper, The Times ' even-tempered Albany bureau chief.

There was a good reason he had one - his employer had offered it to him. An internal memo, leaked to Wonkette.com, informed Times reporters that "[Escape] hoods are not mandatory but if you would feel safer with one please bring yours along."

"I said they were giving them out," he said. The Secret Service agent was incredulous: Who was giving them out? The convention?

"Just the paper," he explained, and the agent was apparently satisfied.

Mr. Cooper said he hadn't noticed that his not-entirely-immaculate room had been searched. The underwear and socks, he said, were in their usual places.

-Ben Smith

But coziness with the Saudis is a bipartisan phenomenon. Once it emerged that the majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi citizens, the Middle Eastern country began mounting an increasingly sophisticated charm offensive whose scope goes far beyond Crawford, Tex., and Kennebunkport, Me., landing squarely in other American power bases-including the one in Chappaqua. When it comes to forging ties with Democrats or winning over hawkish types who want the U.S. to stop depending on Saudi oil, the Saudis are more likely to offer a scintillating roundtable conference than a plum business contract. In January, for example, the Saudis funded a lavish three-country junket for Bill Clinton and an entourage of about 40 former Clinton administration officials and Lincoln Bedroom guests. And last month, the Saudi government underwrote a remarkably frank journalists' roundtable discussion on Saudi Arabia and its discontents with editors of The New Republic , which was published as paid advertising in that magazine's July 5 and 12 issue.

Held on June 8, the roundtable discussion was moderated by New Republic senior editor Lawrence Kaplan and featured the magazine's editor in chief, Martin Peretz; New Yorker staff writer Lawrence Wright; the chief investigative correspondent of U.S. News and World Report , David E. Kaplan; and the Washington bureau chief of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram , David Montgomery, all of whom had either traveled in or reported from Saudi Arabia. Called "Inside the Kingdom: The Views and Perspectives of Journalists in Saudi Arabia," the edited transcript was printed in the same font as the rest of the magazine, although it was labeled a special advertisement "sponsored by the people of Saudi Arabia, allies against terrorism." Peter Beinart, the editor of The New Republic , said he had selected the panelists and agreed to the panel on the grounds that it be "intellectually honest."

These ambitious but not overbearing P.R. moves are a sign of "a growing sophistication" in the Saudis' understanding of how to soften relations with Americans critical of the country's repressive regime, according to Noah Feldman, a professor at New York University Law School and a Middle East expert. Even "sponsoring stuff that's critical on the whole might turn out to be better" for the Saudis, Mr. Feldman said. None of the critics debating the future of Saudi Arabia on the government's dime, after all, are Saudi citizens. As the New Republic panelists pointed out, within Saudi Arabia, would-be reformers are deathly afraid to speak their minds.

"Education is the most important part of the program, to send our message to the American people directly and have them decide the facts when presented with them" was how Nail Al-Jubeir, the director of the Information Office at the Saudi embassy in Washington, summed up the Saudi P.R. offensive, which is being coordinated by the Washington firm Qorvis Communications. "Unfortunately we have too many people, so-called pundits and experts, and a majority have never set foot in Saudi Arabia and are speaking nonsense."

There is also the care and feeding of former office holders-which, of course, sends a message to those currently in office of what awaits once they retire to the lecture circuit. Mr. Al-Jubeir said Mr. Clinton had attended the Jeddah Economic Forum two years in a row. "He was invited to come, and it was an honor," Mr. Al-Jubeir said. "We extend our friendship to former Presidents …. Our friendship to them extends beyond when they leave office."

So it was that in January, a plane belonging to Crown Prince Abdullah took off from Newark Airport to shuttle Mr. Clinton and his entourage to the Jeddah Economic Forum-where Mr. Clinton delivered the keynote address. Then, for good measure, the prince's plane took the whole gang on to the World Economic Conference in Davos and a German media-prize dinner in Baden-Baden.

Beyond a write-up in the New Jersey Jewish News -"First Stop: Saudi Arabia; West Orange Woman Joins Bill Clinton on Whirlwind Overseas Speaking Tour"-the ex-President's Saudi-funded junket barely got any press attention, certainly not from the likes of Michael Moore, who seems to train his viewfinder only on Republican-Saudi ties, with Democrats conveniently out of range.

Even Mr. Unger said he was "not familiar" with the Jeddah Economic Forum and did not know that Mr. Clinton had brought a group there. "This is news to me, to be honest. I haven't really investigated it, so I don't want to comment," he said.

Indeed, schmoozing with the Saudis is a bipartisan sport. Just ask Sylvia Steiner, the West Orange woman who was with Bill Clinton's entourage in January. "The Saudis paid for everything. They told Clinton, 'Bring your friends.'" How did she get invited? "Possibly because we donated to his library. Maybe this was a thank-you," Ms. Steiner said. Her husband, New Jersey real-estate developer David Steiner, has given more than $1.3 million to Democratic causes.

Although an injury prevented Mr. Steiner from traveling with his wife, Ms. Steiner was in good company. It was a real Clinton crowd-Hollywood meets Park Avenue meets the Beltway. Guests included Chevy Chase and John Cusack, who spoke on an ad hoc media panel; New York financier Alan Patricof; Stanley Shuman, the managing director of Allen & Co.; the chief executive officer of Google, Eric Schmidt, and the company's youthful founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page; former Undersecretary of State Strobe Talbott and his wife, Brooke Shearer, a member of the board of the International Center for Research on Women; Ira Magaziner, who directs AIDS efforts for Mr. Clinton's foundation; Arthur Schechter, Mr. Clinton's ambassador to the Bahamas; and Elizabeth Bagley, Mr. Clinton's ambassador to Portugal, along with her husband, Smith Bagley, an heir to the R.J. Reynolds tobacco fortune. "He wanted it to be a really interesting bunch," Ms. Steiner said.

A spokeswoman for Mr. Clinton, Tammy Sun, said the President "did not receive payment for his speech." She did not respond to requests asking her to confirm that the Saudis had funded the entire junket and set the itinerary. "We really weren't allowed to see very much outside of royal palaces," said Mr. Schechter. "There was definitely a feeling of isolation of our group, which I'm sure had to do in large part with security."

By most accounts, the Jeddah Economic Forum is not just a public-relations ploy. It's seen as a generally legitimate undertaking, a mini-Davos aimed at encouraging Western investment and diversifying the Saudi economy-which some say will lead to greater political reform in the Middle Eastern monarchy. It was founded in 1999 by Amr Dabbagh, a leading Saudi businessman and former head of the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce, according to John Quelch, a dean of the Harvard Business School who said he knows Mr. Dabbagh and took part in the conference three years out of five. With about 800 people attending, most of them from the Gulf states, the conference is "an important vehicle for women business people in Saudi Arabia," Mr. Quelch said. Four years ago, women could only attend sitting behind a screen. This year, women and men were separated by a glass partition, and a Saudi businesswoman addressed the audience. "That may not sound like progress, but I think it actually is," said Mr. Quelch.

"If we're serious about promoting reform in the Arab world, these are exactly the kinds of conferences we want to be at," said Rachel Bronson, a Middle East expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, who said she didn't attend the conference. This year, the Council on Foreign Relations sent a delegation of 20 people, said Judith Kipper, a Middle East expert who was among them. Other conference attendees included Michael Golden, the publisher of the International Herald Tribune , which published an eight-page advertorial in conjunction with it, and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

But there is also the nagging question of whether bringing important Western political and business leaders to a conference sponsored by a deeply antidemocratic country only serves to legitimize the status quo.

The week after the Saudi businesswoman spoke at the Jeddah Economic Forum–with her face uncovered– the country's highest religious authority, the grand mufti, railed against the transgressiveness of the conference. "Allowing women to mix with men is the root of every evil and catastrophe. It is highly punishable," the mufti reportedly said.

After all, it is still the Middle East. "I think it's fair to say there's never been a keynote speaker from Israel, which of course does not appear on many maps of the region which are published in Saudi Arabia," Mr. Quelch pointed out. Indeed, another speaker at the conference this year was Mahathir Mohamed, the former prime minister of Malaysia, who at a summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference in Malaysia in October had said: "The Europeans killed six million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them." (Mr. Clinton "never saw or appeared with Mr. Mahathir Mohamed, who spoke on a different day of the three-day event," Ms. Sun said.)

Did any of Mr. Clinton's guests have reservations about hopping on the crown prince's plane, paid for by the same money that directly or indirectly funds the spread of Wahhabism? Apparently not. All seemed to view the trip as a way of exploring their own horizons, not as a well-oiled piece of the Saudi P.R. machine. "It didn't even occur to me. It was a nice opportunity to visit a country I hadn't been to," said Mr. Patricof, the New York financier. "It was a lovely trip-all people who are friends of the President." The Saudis were "very gracious," Mr. Patricof added. "That's all I thought about."

"I had been to Saudi Arabia before, and I had no reservations," said Mr. Shuman, who served on Mr. Clinton's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. "I think things such as [the Jeddah conference] are very helpful in causing mutual understanding. We had an audience with the crown prince in Riyadh, and I think those things can be nothing but helpful."

In the meeting with the crown prince, Mr. Clinton "was very clear in telling them we were a group of Muslims, Christians, Jews, and it's important to emphasize that," Ms. Steiner said. The crown prince "responded well until Strobe Talbott's wife, Brooke Shearer-a very bright young woman-asked him some tough questions about how women are treated. Then he said it was 6 o'clock and he had to go pray," Ms. Steiner said. "We were in his palace. It was just a tremendous experience." (Neither Mr. Talbott nor Ms. Shearer responded to requests for comment.)

"These homes that the Saudis live in look like Miami Beach hotels. They entertain 700 people at a time!" Ms. Steiner said. The Saudis were "very gracious, and we were always told to mix with them. I got to meet some lovely women who each had a home in California and spend their summers in California. To me, it's kind of amazing that they come back to Saudi Arabia and can't drive."

In his keynote address at the Jeddah conference, Mr. Clinton told the Saudis that "blaming other people for your problems" is "self-defeating" and "disempowering," according to a speech Mr. Clinton made upon his return that summarized the Jeddah speech, and which his foundation provided to The Observer . He also said that the Saudis needed "to stop judging us through their take on American/Israeli situations …. Our support for Israel and Israel's security has nothing to do with wanting to deny the Palestinians their legitimate aspirations.

"And I caused a little bit of a stir in the country, 'cause I said, 'Look, how can you build a modern economy? You ask us to come over here and talk about a modern economy. And how could you build a modern economy, when you won't even let women drive?'" Mr. Clinton said. "And I said, 'You know, that Muhammad's wife, the prophet's first wife, was a successful businesswoman…if they had had cars 1,400 years ago, she'd have been driving one.'"

During Mr. Clinton's Jeddah speech, "the woman could see the men, but the men couldn't see the women," Ms. Steiner said. "Clinton was really giving them a pep talk about letting women drive. The women applauded wildly; the men didn't. The newspaper the next day said that the audience was ambivalent!"

At the New Republic panel, Mr. Wright, the author of a recent New Yorker article about his experience training young reporters at the Saudi Gazette , lamented the country's lack of a free press, and said his trainees had an ingrown "fear of repercussions" that prevented them from investigative reporting. Mr. Montgomery, who said he travels "back and forth" between the United States and Saudi Arabia, called for "a greater American news presence" in Saudi Arabia. Mr. Peretz said he visited Saudi Arabia in the mid-90's with Michael Kinsley, Fouad Ajami, and New York businessman Thomas Tisch, "under the most favorable circumstances" as a guest of Prince Bandar, the longtime Saudi ambassador to the U.S., whom Barbara Bush dubbed "Bandar Bush."

The Saudis "did a whole-year ad buy, and it featured three panels which started last fall," said Stephanie Sandberg, The New Republic 's president and publisher. "They're looking at it again for next year." She declined to say how much the Saudis had paid, but said that the magazine's rate for a four-page color advertisement is $9,060.

"I suppose it's to their credit that they let us stock this panel with people who think the U.S. should be applying much more pressure on Saudi Arabia than going to someone softer," Mr. Beinart, the New Republic editor, said. "But ultimately the only way they're going to impress people in Washington is to allow this kind of open critical discussion in Saudi Arabia itself."

"Look around you," declared Leon Wieseltier, the silver-haired literary editor of The New Republic , as he stood in the Random House area on Friday morning, dressed all in black. He was gesturing toward the vast rows of book-filled booths stretching out in all directions. "The best thing for the book business right now is George W. Bush," he said. "Even Valerie Solanas-do you know who she is? Right, she shot Andy Warhol-even she has a Bush book out," he continued. (It's a re-release of her SCUM Manifesto , with a new introduction.) "I don't expect it to have much of an impact in the red states, but this is precisely Bush's problem: The hostility has seeped from politics into culture, which is less easily controlled or called back."

As publishing-industry types flirted, drank and ran up their expense accounts, it seemed safe to say that the industry is once again in decent shape. Or maybe it was more of a "tonight we drink, for tomorrow we die" kind of exuberance.

Indeed, there was something of an air of desperation about the whole thing. Sure, election years always see a spate of quickie books, but one gets the sense that this time publishers are flailing around, publishing even the dumbest political books in the hope that the average citizen will wander into a bookstore and pick up-or better yet, buy!-a copy of, say, The O'Reilly Factor for Kids (HarperEntertainment, October) or 50 Ways You Can Show George the Door in 2004 , co-written by ice-cream maven Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry's. For that worthy title, Perseus Books Group had selectively placed in convention bathrooms rolls of designer toilet paper that read: "Wipe Bush, Vote in 2004."

If nothing else, the political books have finally forced publishing to catch up to the pace at which the rest of the world does business. "Second only to their interesting content, the reason political books are enjoying such an incredible renaissance this year is because publishers are now able, because of technology, to turn them out in five weeks," said an upbeat Robert Barnett, Mr. Clinton's lawyer, who has negotiated book deals for politicians for two decades. "The content is current. It used to take a minimum of six months, and the content was much more stale. Now you can go from finish to bookstore in five weeks." In that time, Mr. Clinton's publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, is even cranking out a record-breaking 1.5 million copies of Mr. Clinton's My Life -more than the 1.2 million first printing for Pope John Paul II's 1994 Crossing the Threshold of Hope . Knopf was not being overly ambitious: Preorders from bookstores have already exceeded 1.5 million, according to Knopf spokesman Paul Bogaards, which means a second printing will begin before the first is even released.

In the case of Mr. Clinton's memoir, however, five weeks from manuscript to finished copies might be pushing it. Mr. Barnett said he'd read the Clinton memoir over Memorial Day weekend, but a rumor making the rounds in Chicago had it that the book wasn't entirely finished until some time after that. Even as the Knopf guys were high-fiving all over the Windy City, they must be kicking themselves at least a little. If the former President had finished his 922-page memoir a few weeks earlier, they would have had the book out before Father's Day. Instead, it will hit stores on June 22.

Will the surge in time-sensitive political books speed up the publishing of other kinds of books? Most publishers doubt it, because most authors-with the possible exception of Mr. Clinton-need weeks, if not months, of pre-publication marketing before their books catch on. Will books with no shelf life that are rushed into bookstores become even more semi-disposable products, not as well-edited as leading cultural magazines and four times as expensive? Ever cautious, publishers didn't dare to speculate on that. But one hopes that they're at least posing the question.

It's also far from clear whether the current hot-selling political books will help sustain the industry financially. "The real question is, can the publishing industry grow into the double digits?" said Laurence Kirschbaum, the head of Time Warner Book Group, as he greeted passers-by in the Warner area. For the next few years, he said, growth forecasts were "only 2, 3, 4 percent."

Of course, the prognosis varies publisher by publisher. And Knopf is expected to have a very good year. Indeed, if BEA took on the tenor of a political convention, then Sonny Mehta, Knopf's inimitable publisher, played the role of political kingmaker with his characteristic understated panache. On Thursday, it was Mr. Mehta who-dressed in a sober dark suit and red tie, his face broadcast onto the movie-sized screen-introduced Mr. Clinton to the crowd of 3,000 booksellers, publishers and librarians, many of whom had lined up all afternoon for seats. Mr. Mehta drew thunderous applause after every sentence of his introduction-much to his surprise, it seemed. "Among his notable achievements," Mr. Mehta began, as the crowd laughed, "is the longest economic expansion in the history of America." (Thunderous applause.) "He moved the nation from a record deficit into a record surplus." (Thunderous applause.)

"It was a huge hall. It was kind of spooky," Mr. Mehta said quietly the following day, as he stood greeting well-wishers on the plush carpet of the Random House area on the trade-show floor, dressed with his usual casual flair in tan desert boots, jeans and a slate gray jacket. "There was such a degree of anticipation," he said. "It was coming off in waves." Random House employees and others kept walking by to thank him for bringing the former President to BEA.

Nearby, Mr. Barnett seemed impressed with Mr. Mehta's new role. "The Wizard of Oz came out from behind the curtain to greet the residents of Emerald City!" he said eagerly. Mr. Barnett was chatting with Random House spokesman Stuart Applebaum, who took a more sartorial view. "One of the great insider questions in publishing has finally been solved," the rather tall Mr. Applebaum said, pointing across to the rather diminutive Mr. Mehta. "Who is the author for whom Sonny Mehta will put on a suit and tie?"

Mr. Applebaum pooh-poohed the notion that publishers were especially eager to cash in on political books. "If you had an off-the-record truth session with the most effective publishers, they'd say they'd much rather have a successful diet book than a political book-a book that transcends all ideologies, genders, all personal backgrounds," Mr. Applebaum said. "You can be apolitical, but being thin and fit-that's something that makes a permanent difference," he continued. "More people want to look fit than sound politically opportune."

Warner's Mr. Kirschbaum agreed. "The big kahuna is still the broad general list," he said as he greeted passers-by with a friendly handshake and eyed a tray of cupcakes that an assistant carried past. In the next booth over, Michael Pietsch, the polished senior vice president and publisher of Warner's Little, Brown literary imprint, stood by a circular stack of galleys for a forthcoming novel called The Ha-Ha , by Dave King, and charted some of the difficulties with the glut of political books. "The general concern is that best-selling books are selling more than ever and faster than ever," Mr. Pietsch said. "Something that hits can hit and sell in unprecedented numbers. More books are chasing that little bit of attention, trying to be heard above the cacophony." That, he said, means that publishers have to market books even more carefully and aggressively, planning months in advance.

The consensus was that besides Clinton's memoir, no one big book emerged from the convention. But several books were mentioned again and again as the fall's most anticipated titles: Philip Roth's new novel, The Plot Against America (Houghton Mifflin, October); Tom Wolfe's I Am Charlotte Simmons (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, November); Cynthia Ozick's Heir to the Glimmering World (Houghton Mifflin, September); John Updike's Villages (Knopf, October); Anita Desai's The Zigzag Way , (Houghton Mifflin, November); and V.S. Naipaul's Magic Seeds (Knopf Canada, November).

Do You Have a Card?

In the past, BEA was where bookstores placed orders from publishers and publishers made deals for foreign rights. These days, sales are mostly done through visits from sales representatives, while the Frankfurt and London book fairs have long since eclipsed BEA as the place for foreign rights. Which means that BEA is basically an opportunity for New York publishers to travel to another city to network-and get seriously tipsy-with colleagues who work blocks away. Sure, catching the interest of the booksellers is at the top of everyone's putative agenda, but the real function of BEA is ceremonial. As Daniel Menaker, in his second week with the new title of executive editor in chief of Random House/Ballantine, put it, "It's like primates gathering around the watering hole." (The genial, white-bearded Mr. Menaker said he didn't have a business card. "My parents were Communists," he said.)

This year, the Random House watering hole was the place to be. Dressed in a smart pantsuit, Gina Centrello, the president and publisher of the Random House Publishing Group, was holding meetings at a conference table. Nearby, Jonathan Karp, the boyish and rising (if not already risen) Random House senior vice president and editor in chief, aggressively introduced passers-by to Robert Kurson, a slightly frightened-looking author whose book, Shadow Divers , is about divers who find a U-boat off the coast of New Jersey. It is expected to do well.

Nearby, a steady stream of booksellers and publishing insiders came by to congratulate Mr. Mehta on the Clinton book. Mr. Wieseltier introduced Mr. Mehta to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, who was pushing Bushworld , a collection of her columns on W. and his cohort, which Putnam will publish in August. "I've noticed a real vacuum in books criticizing the Bush administration," the petite Ms. Dowd deadpanned the next day, speaking on a panel about political books with former Gore campaign manager Donna Brazile, libertarian pundit P.J. O'Rourke, conservative author Linda Chavez and Ron Suskind, the author of The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill . (On the same panel, Ms. Dowd cooed that Mr. Suskind had once been her copy boy at The Times . "Coffee, light; bagel, schmear," Mr. Suskind responded, without missing a beat.)

Jon Stewart for Veep!

If the politicians had become authors, the television personalities had begun to take on the import of politicians. At an authors' breakfast featuring The Daily Show 's Jon Stewart on Sunday morning, one audience member drew cheers after asking Mr. Stewart if he'd accept the nomination for Vice President. "In vetting a candidate, we talk about criminal record, drug history, sexual proclivities," Mr. Stewart answered. "I would not accept."

The comedian was at BEA to promote his America (the Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction (Warner Books, September.) "It's a book about nation-building," Mr. Stewart told the crowd on Saturday night at the jam-packed and slightly surreal party that Warner Books threw him at the kitschy House of Blues club. "If you complete it, you'll be prepared to build your own nation."

On the Sunday panel, Mr. Stewart was joined by Mr. Wolfe, whose forthcoming novel I Am Charlotte Simmons concerns itself with the wild world of casual sex on American college campuses, and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, who painted an extremely dark picture of the economic, environmental and political apocalypse brought about by the Bush administration. (For all those who haven't kept their back issues, Farrar, Straus & Giroux is bringing out a collection of his Vanity Fair editor's notes in September.)

Party Time

In Chicago, you can still smoke inside. This must please Mr. Mehta, who on Friday night held court, cigarette in hand, at the stately Standard Club, Chicago's old traditionally Jewish club, where Knopf fêted 50 years of its Vintage and Anchor paperback imprints with a sit-down dinner. In the cocktail hour, Mr. Mehta's wife, the novelist Gita Mehta, lounged elegantly on a sofa wearing a pink and purple sari with gold embroidery.

Bushy-bearded diet doctor Andrew Weil mingled, as did Alexander McCall Smith, the author of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency , who had flown in from his home in Edinburgh and was wearing a red plaid kilt and gray tweed jacket and vest. The writer Alice Munro looked very much the grand dame in her black dress with elegant slits on the outside of the sleeves. One guest, a bookstore owner, stood up and proposed a toast to Mr. Mehta. She said she'd been "moved to tears" by Mr. Clinton's speech. Mr. Mehta in turn thanked his Knopf colleagues. "I just kind of weasel by," he said.

And then there were the parties, where an upbeat mood was the rule. One blended into the other: On Friday, The New Yorker hosted cocktails and a buffet dinner at a cozy restaurant with exposed brick walls. New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell and his wig-like head of curly hair were there. Little, Brown is aggressively pushing his new book, Blink , about the role of intuition in decision-making, due out in January. Henry Finder, the editorial director of The New Yorker , stood at the bar next to Keith Kelly, the media writer for the New York Post . Nearby, HarperCollins editor Daniel Halpern chatted with his mustachioed HarperCollins colleague David Hirshey, who said he'd be spending the summer editing Seymour Hersh's book, based on his reporting for The New Yorker on the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Terry Gross, the diminutive host of Fresh Air on National Public Radio, was in evidence, as was the novelist Louise Erdrich, who sat somberly in a chair on the edge of the crowded room.

W. W. Norton and Atlas Books threw a late-night party at the shabby-chic Kingston Mines blues club for Rich Cohen's Machers and Rockers . Sam Tanenhaus, the new editor of The New York Times Book Review , arrived with a backpack slung over his shoulder and three Times ad sales reps in tow. Jonathan Galassi, the president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, stood nearby, as did Drake McFeely, the president and chairman of Norton, who chatted with Elizabeth Taylor, the Chicago Tribune 's literary editor.

On Saturday, news of President Reagan's death didn't seem to make a big splash at a cocktail party thrown by The Nation for its literary editor, Adam Shatz. As a young crowd that looked as though it had spent the Reagan era in junior high school ate empanadas and mini coconut cupcakes, the 40th President's passing barely registered.

BEA's final frontier is traditionally a raucous party thrown by Publishers Group West, a distributor for independent presses, and this year was no different. After 10 on Saturday night, hundreds of people made their way to the Green Dolphin Street, a restaurant and jazz club with a dark back garden and patio, with stairs leading down to the Chicago River, which glowed brownish orange in the post-industrial light.

David Rosenthal, the bear-like vice president and publisher of Simon & Schuster, wandered into the back garden, Heineken in hand, and deferentially greeted an increasingly important player in the industry, Pennie Ianniciello, the book buyer for Costco.

Grove Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin sauntered in with James Atlas and a handful of others. Mr. Atlas, whose memoir on middle age, Life in the Middle Ages: A Survivor's Tale , is due out from HarperCollins next spring, confessed that he'd rented a convertible for his trip to Chicago, his old hometown.

Mr. Entrekin headed straight for the bar, where bad-boy chef/author Anthony Bourdain-dressed all in black, with white sneakers and a gold ring on his right thumb-was talking to Canongate editor Jamie Byng, who shares with Mr. Entrekin a penchant for wearing his hair long and curly. "They're the Mick Jagger and the Keith Richards of publishing," Mr. Bourdain told The Observer , as he lit another cigarette.

Well, sure. At BEA this year, publishers could seriously pretend to be rock stars, with former Presidents as the opening act.

She was discussing what she has learned in the aftermath of her controversial March cover story in The Atlantic Monthly , "How Serfdom Saved the Women's Movement," a sprawling, 12,000-word polemic in the guise of an observational essay. In her signature prose-biting and witty, full of a writerly flair hard to find in discussions of "women's issues"-Ms. Flanagan argued that upper-middle-class women have achieved their goal of having both a career and a family more often than not by employing-or, she maintained, exploiting-other women lower on the class ladder: nannies, on whom they don't always bestow the same benefits they demand for themselves, like Social Security and maternity leave.

Tapping into the turgid well of upper-middle-class women's guilt, the piece drew "an extraordinary number of letters," according to Julia Rothwax, a spokeswoman for The Atlantic . It set off a debate among women writers who still proudly wear the "feminist" mantle: Ellen Willis and Lynne Sharon Schwartz, among others, raged against Ms. Flanagan in The Atlantic 's letters column, while book groups, bloggers and dinner-party conversations from Scarsdale to Santa Monica have busily dissected in the piece.

But it's the plum New Yorker gig that really riles Ms. Flanagan's critics. "Why the hell did The New Yorker hire this person who's utterly not serious and turn her loose on a serious social issue?" asked Ann Crittenden, a writer for The American Prospect and author of The Price of Motherhood . "It's a really big issue bothering a lot of people." Ms. Crittenden added, "She's got a shtick: attacking other women. Catfight sells. Nasty, ad hominem, bitchy attacks on other women sell magazines. She's made her name by this stuff."

The vitriol kept coming, just as Ms. Flanagan was edging out the door of The Atlantic , on her way to The New Yorker . For his part, New Yorker editor David Remnick said he was excited to have Ms. Flanagan "joining in on the conversation" on family issues. "Caitlin's got a very sharp mind and has that rare thing-real wit," he said. Ms. Flanagan is at work on her first piece for The New Yorker , which is expected to run this summer.

Ms. Flanagan has only been publishing regularly for three years, ever since her friend Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic Monthly 's literary and national editor, signed her on as a book critic soon after he joined the magazine in 2000. "She did kind of come out of nowhere," said Reagan Arthur, a senior editor at Little, Brown who last year bought the book Ms. Flanagan is currently working on, Housewife Heaven , a nonfiction treatment of the evolution of the housewife. The book is scheduled for publication in the fall of 2005. (Ms. Flanagan's agent is Jennifer Rudolph Walsh at William Morris.)

Ms. Flanagan's first feature-length piece for The Atlantic , called "The Wedding Merchants," looked wryly at the decadence of American weddings. After that she quickly put herself on the map with more book-based essays on domestic issues that few mainstream cultural magazines tended to explore-the difference between a housewife and a stay-at-home mom, essays on the appeal of Dr. Laura and Martha Stewart. She caused something of a stir with her piece on sexless marriages among successful professionals ("The Wifely Duty," January/February 2003), in which she expressed tempered nostalgia for a time when "A housewife understood that in addition to ironing her husband's shirts and cooking the Sunday roast, she was-with some regularity-going to have relations with the man of the house." She also gleefully poked fun at the New York professional elite: "During two strange days in New York last winter," she wrote, "three married people–one after another–confessed to me either that they had stopped having sex or that they knew a married person who had stopped having sex. Like a sensible person, I booked an early flight home and chalked the whole thing up to the magic and mystery that is New York."

Then came the nanny story. Two years in the works, it is her longest essay and by far her most problematic. In it, Ms. Flanagan confessed that not only did she stay home after her twin boys were born, but she also employed a nanny to help care for them, and someone else to do domestic chores-in fact, she confessed that she has never even changed a sheet since she got married. Then she wrapped it all up with a zinger: "When a mother works, something is lost." And added, "If you want to make an upper-middle-class woman squeal in indignation, tell her she can't have something. If she works, she can't have as deep and connected a relationship with her child as she would if she stayed home and raised him."

This did not go over well in many quarters. A common reaction was: Who is this privileged woman to suggest that because I go to work, which I have to do out of necessity, I am not connected to my children? And since when is hiring a nanny necessarily exploitation? Or, as one blogger wrote, "How to Make a Caitlin Flanagan / Take: / One jigger of [anti-gay activist] Anita Bryant / One jigger of [actress and children's advocate] Jane Russell / One jigger of [right-wing firebrand] Ann Coulter / A dash of pretentious language (for faux sophistication and New Yorker credentials) / One quart of self-entitlement, an expendable income / Mix. Serves establishment."

Ms. Flanagan appears to be reeling still. "The nasty things they write!" she said in her breathy, high-pitched voice. "They really hate me! There's something ridiculous about it," Ms. Flanagan said of her critics. "I'll be all alone in my house and I'm reading this, and it starts to take on the weight of the Pentagon Papers!"

Bedlinen Brouhaha

Yet there is something a little disingenuous in Ms. Flanagan professing to be taken aback by the vehemence of her critics. After all, she had attacked some of them in print, including Ms. Crittenden, whose The Price of Motherhood Ms. Flanagan called "the Big Kahuna" and the Das Kapital of books on working motherhood. Ms. Flanagan was equally dismissive of A Mother's Place: Choosing Work and Family Without Guilt or Blame , by Susan Chira, who is now foreign editor of The New York Times , and Life's Work: Confessions of an Unbalanced Mom , by New York Times Magazine writer Lisa Belkin.

In her letter published in the May issue of The Atlantic , the writer and feminist Lynne Sharon Schwartz called Ms. Flanagan's essay "narrow-minded and self-serving." "Anyone who admits to never having changed a sheet should not presume to expound on those who have changed thousands," Ms. Schwartz wrote, suggesting that Ms. Flanagan's husband might pitch in with the linens as well. The debate turned even weirder when, in response, Ms. Flanagan wrote with a kind of wicked glee, "As for my husband's changing sheets-why in the world would I want him to do that? He is the head of the household, and I treat him as such. But I'm not a feminist, so there's no surprise there."

Perhaps this bluster was all part of the anti-feminist mystique Ms. Flanagan appears to be cultivating. "The line that a lot of people have latched onto is her line about never having made a bed," said Mr. Schwarz, who is now The Atlantic 's literary and national editor. "What's interesting about that is Caitlin, for better or worse, is kind of proud of that," he said. "That a lot of people are repelled by that image almost makes her want to advance it more."

"You can't put her in a box," said Ms. Arthur, the Little, Brown editor. "She's not identifiable, she's not a right-wing reactionary nut. I think people have pulled a lot of pull quotes out of her long, thoughtful essays and paint her with that brush." One gets the sense that Ms. Flanagan rather enjoys the misconceptions about her. Added Mr. Schwarz, "She's a smart enough writer that she knows she has to create a persona. She's both revealing and not, and it's a combination that sort of entices readers." Mr. Schwarz said he came to know Ms. Flanagan's writing when she and his wife, Ms. Flanagan's close friend Christina Schwarz, were working on fiction. "I knew that she was a talented writer, but also clearly that fiction wasn't best serving her talent," he said.

A Wit and a Wag

On the phone, Ms. Flanagan is at once a wit, a wag, a delight, and an utterly maddening interlocutor. She sets definitions and then slides out of them. She stirs up emotions and then accuses her critics of using emotion, not reason, to refute her arguments. Consider that line about her husband being the "head of the household." What does she mean by that term, exactly?

"How old are you?" was Ms. Flanagan's response. "What do you think I mean?" To the suggestion that the term implies that the man of the house gets a free pass from doing domestic chores, she responds demurely, "I mean by it whatever anyone would think that I meant," adding, "if my husband pops a button, I sew it back on."

So she doesn't wash the sheets, but she does sew buttons. Does she like to sew buttons? "I do like to sew buttons. I think it's very rewarding that you can take a garment that's shabby and unwearable and in this quick way you can really transform it," she said. "It's an easy little gift for me to give him." Yet this is from the same woman who in her 2003 essay on Erma Bombeck wrote that "I have been married a total of fourteen years to a total of two men, and never once have I been asked to iron a single item of either man's clothing or to replace even one popped button, for which I suppose I have the women's movement to thank. But I realize now, late in the game, that we'd be much better off if I had a few of those skills."

But to accuse Ms. Flanagan of inconsistency misses the point entirely. Who cares that Ms. Flanagan apparently found the redemptive power of button-sewing some time between 2002 and 2004? Ms. Flanagan clearly relishes pushing buttons as much as she does sewing them.

"I used to teach high school. Feminists are very much like adolescents, they get hysterical so often!" Ms. Flanagan said at one point, with a taunting lilt in her voice. "What you need to do as a teacher and a writer is to stay very calm, not get upset, look at core of the argument." Yes, but aren't her arguments as driven by emotion, too? "Give me an example of something that has emotion at the heart!" Ms. Flanagan cried. She disavows that her piece sends the message that women should stay home. "I've never, ever, ever said women should not work and [instead should] stay home," Ms. Flanagan said. "The only thing I told women they should do-everybody springs off into this feeling thing because feelings and emotions are easy to talk about-is pay Social Security taxes on their domestic workers."

But as Barbara Ehrenreich-whom Ms. Flanagan calls one of her heroes-wrote in an e-mail exchange with Ms. Flanagan and Sara Mosle in Slate in February, "If your 10,000 word piece was about how employers should pay their nannies' Social Security taxes, then my reading skills are in serious decline."

An Old-Fashioned Liberal

In fact, Ms. Flanagan (to her credit, some would say) seems to lack some of the central characteristics of punditry. For one thing, Ms. Flanagan certainly sees the gray areas. Indeed, further conversation with Ms. Flanagan seemed to temper her conclusion that a working mother "can't have as deep and connected a relationship with her child." "That's debatable," Ms. Flanagan said. And hiring a nanny? "I don't think it's necessarily exploitation," she said. "I think it's really honorable work." What's more, she added in a later conversation, "It's a very good job. For immigrant women, the Central American women I know are rocketing up through the middle class like the Irish of the 19th century."

Ms. Flanagan grew up in Berkeley in the 1960's. Her mother, Jean Flanagan, was a housewife-Ms. Flanagan's term-and her father, Thomas Flanagan, was a literature professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a critic who in mid-career also came out of nowhere and started writing celebrated historical novels about Ireland. The Year of the French , the first in what became a trilogy, won the National Book Critics Circle award for fiction in 1979. Ms. Flanagan said she took her husband's name, but decided to publish under her maiden name. "This was a tradition in our family, of being writers," she said. "Because I write such strong pieces, it's nice to have that privacy." Her mother died in 2001 and her father in 2002, and one gets the sense that this double loss explains a lot of the raw passion for home that informs her writing. Speaking with The Observer , Ms. Flanagan recalled how her father used to wait out on the porch for her for hours when she drove home from college, and she told oneiric tales of eating apricots and taking naps with her mother in the long afternoons of her girlhood.

She called her parents "Berkeley radicals," and said she basically agreed with them about most things. "Being a liberal is to stand for very good things," she said. "Like working for Cesár Chávez," whose boycotts her mother supported. "It didn't used to be about 'Gay people can get married because my friend is gay and he's really cool!' It wasn't about 'We really have to make sure you can be a mother and work without guilt!'" But don't for a minute get the dangerous assumption from such envelope-pushing statements that Ms. Flanagan is opposed to gay marriage! In fact, she said was not: "The two things I hate most are feminism and homophobia." She also said she supports legal abortion. Ms. Flanagan, it seems, is socially conservative in sensibility only. Not unlike David Brooks, she could also be called a liberal's conservative, because her social conservatism is essentially about mocking liberal pieties, while still supporting many of the values that inform them.

Ms. Flanagan received a B.A. and M.A. in art history from the University of Virginia. In her 20's she was married for five years to a man she met in college. "He is a very nice man and, as they say, we parted amicably," she said. "We did not have children together, so we are no longer in touch." Ms. Flanagan moved to L.A. in the late 80's and taught English at the prestigious Harvard School (now Harvard–Westlake).

The headmaster of the school set Ms. Flanagan up on a blind date with the man she ultimately married in 1994. While she's revealed in print that he went to Princeton, she declined to disclose his last name or the name of his company-saying first that he works "for a Fortune 500 company," then confirming that he works "in the entertainment industry" as a producer, of children's film and television.

Although Catholic, Ms. Flanagan said she's raising her twin 6-year-old boys Presbyterian, her husband's religion. "I still go to Catholic Church quite often in the week, and on Sundays we all go to the Presbyterian church," she said. "It's all one God." Although her kids are now in school, Ms. Flanagan said she employed a nanny for "longer than I had anticipated, because we had serious illness in the family." She declined to go into detail, but one gets the sense that her own domestic situation is perhaps far more complicated than she's letting on her blithe prose.

Ultimately, Ms. Flanagan's headlong hurtling into skirmishes with the feminist establishment and her contrarian delight in upsetting the mores of the East Coast media elite obscures what's really at the core of her work: a longing for a kind of simplicity. Ms. Flanagan says her models are Pauline Kael and Joan Didion, both Californians who've written for The New Yorker , and she shares with them a particularly Western sensibility. Ms. Flanagan's frontier is one in which sophisticated women living lives full of complexity and contradiction on some level long for the clarity of a world that, as Ms. Didion once wrote, "may or may not have existed ever but in any case existed no more."