Not content with his sinecure at the Dirty Digger's New York Pus or whatever status is accorded to him as the spawn of right-wing harridan and Linda Tripp BFF Lucianne Goldberg, little Jonah has come forth with a witless screed masquerading as a serious work of political and intellectual history.

Jonah's buddies in the Bizarro-intellectual universe of Fairfax County commuter colleges, holy roller academies, Washington "institutes" and "foundations" and publications bankrolled by noted deep thinker Rupert Murdoch all have a vested interest in taking this drek seriously. Some fatuous media outlets (Hi, Slate!) have played along.  

Not us.  Jonah's syllogisms run along the following lines:

• Mussolini mobilized popular support
• Mussolini was a fascist
• Franklin Roosevelt mobilized popular support
• Conclusion: Roosevelt was a fascist.

If that makes sense to you, then you'll accept this Goldberg Variation on logical argument:

• Jonah Goldberg hates liberal values
• Osama bin Laden hates liberal values
• Jonah Goldberg is a dangerous terrorist who should be immured at Guantanamo and tortured by simulated drowning.

We're persuaded.

What's the most important thing in publishing? It's just like the theater: you need a catchy title. An accurate title for this book might have been Starve Yourself on a Fanatic Vegan Diet.  

Less catchy perhaps but what would you call a book devoted to promoting an anorexic regime of tiny portions of inedible vegan swill, free from the proteins women desperately need that are available from dairy products? Put down that yogurt, you fat pig. You know how much it hurts the cow to be milked.  Remember the time you were pawed in the taxi by that Merrill trader?

Combine an unhealthy diet with attacks on any woman larger than size 2 and a relentless regime of exercise, and you've got a recipe for eating disorders.  Did we mention that you marinate this crap in female self-loathing and serve it up with a garnish of supposed fashion?

Let's face it: if you bought this book, you'll swallow anything.

We've always liked Valerie Bertinelli for some reason [She was cute in 1987, maybe? – Copy Ed.], but unreadable books are unreadable even if their authors were adorable in a previous century.

We're going to guess wildly that she's telling a story that has never been told before, at least since last night's Entertainment Tonight: sweet innocent young girl is thrust into early stardom and responds by snorting up half of Bolivia, cavorting with a few Hollywood big names, taking up with a fading rock star, shepherding said loser through the collapse of his career and nasal passages, divorcing the cretin and dealing with her subsequent obscurity and loneliness by putting on about 40 pounds.

Then, we're going to speculate that she she finds Jesus or Tom Cruise, thereby gaining the faith and willpower to purge those 40 pounds on either cable reality television or diet food commercials.

Finally, the book will close by thanking her children, her manager, her agent and her publisher who forked over a six-figure advance to recycle this swill.

How close did we get?