Naturally, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” receive all kinds of laudatory e-mails from epistlers world-wide. Every once in a while, however, we encounter a slightly less praiseworthy missive.

We know what you are thinking, dear reader: How can anyone find fault with the luminous animadversions of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly”? Quite frankly, we can’t figure it out ourselves. Even so, we have collected enough hate mail that our “Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Official Complaints Department has begun to complain. Which, if you think really hard about it, is ironic.

One correspondent was so peeved by our petulant dismissal of the word “moist” (which you can read here) that he informed us that he was going to name his first-born son “Moist.”

We know what you are thinking, dear reader: If he is going to name his son “Moist,” what the heck is he going to name his daughter? To be honest, we don’t want to know.

More typically, we receive an angry e-mail penned by a direct target of our opprobrium. For instance, a chucklehead from the marketing department of the University of Chicago Press composed a hate-filled epistle to our staff, because we had the gall to ridicule the chuckleheads from the marketing department of the University of Chicago Press. The fact that the greeting of this angry letter read “Dear Hatemonger” didn’t seem to be foolish enough to stop him from continuing.

Thanks to all this obloquy, the Official Complaints Department of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” has decided to streamline matters, by offering our readers a “Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Official Complaint Form. From now on, irate members of Gillette’s middle-management and other assorted ne’er-do-wells can simply follow our paint-by-the-numbers Complaint Form.

“The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Official Complaint Form:

Dear Crack Young Staff of “The Hatemonger’s Qurarterly,”

I am a regular reader of your “weblog” who loves your wholesome, Family-Circus-esque humor. As a result, I was deeply dismayed by your recent discussion of _________.

In this discussion, you unfairly castigated _________. This is particularly unfortunate, because ______ is actually ________. Accordingly, your tasteless yuks at _______Â’s expense were not only misinformed, but deeply troubling.

In the future, perhaps you could confine yourselves to silly gags about _______.

Cordially,

_________

PS: Go ______ yourselves.

Well, dear reader, that’s the Official Form. Just in case there is some confusion regarding the proper manner of filling out the Official Form, we, the crack young staff of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly,” will offer you a sample version. The following is an example of the Official Form if Peter Frampton (whom we excoriated here) had stumbled out of his decades-long musical hibernation and troubled himself enough to complain:

“The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Official Complaint Form as Hypothetically Filled Out by Erstwhile Music Sensation Peter Frampton:

Dear Crack Young Staff of “The Hatemonger’s Qurarterly,”

I am a regular reader of your “weblog” who loves your wholesome, Family-Circus-esque humor. As a result, I was deeply dismayed by your recent discussion of “Baby I Love Your Way.”

In this discussion, you unfairly castigated my flowing locks and impressive musical gifts. This is particularly unfortunate, because “Baby I Love Your Way” is actually a landmark work of Western culture. Accordingly, your tasteless yuks at “Baby I Love Your Way”’s expense were not only misinformed, but deeply troubling.

In the future, perhaps you could confine yourselves to silly gags about Uriah Heep.

Cordially,

Peter Frampton

PS: Go Phil-Collins yourselves.

That should clear things up. And, just to show our readership that we care deeply about the little people, the new head of “The Hatemonger’s Quarterly” Official Complaints Department will be former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

So, dear reader, you can send your wrathful Official Complaint Forms to Mr. Reich care of: pertinacious.little.fellow@harvard.edu. Mr. Reich or some other Clinton lackey should respond to your grousing in a few short weeks. Maybe even Sidney Blumenthal will deign to write you.

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By now, dear reader, you are probably wondering whether we, the crack young staff of The Hatemonger's Quarterly, want to waste our halcyon days penning feckless barbs and tasteless yuks. Of course not: We have dreams too. And, just like everyone else who's ever read a book or two, we, the crack young staff of The Hatemonger's Quarterly, long to become famous public intellectuals. Or, barring that, Naomi Wolf.

In fact, we have decided to use today's edition of The Hatemonger's Quarterly as a stepping-stone to the glitzy world of the public intellectual. For some time, we have had a collective theory about public intellectuals: We harbor a suspicion that many of them spend at least half of their days looking up their own names in Google, glorying in the manifold mentions of their coruscating genius. Except Richard Posner: He's too busy writing a book every three minutes.

As a result, we figured that we'd simply offer a list of names of fancy public intellectuals, and match these names up with a bevy of compliments. If our supposition about public intellectuals holds true, our "weblog" should become a lodestone for such impressive characters. In fact, dear reader, pretty soon you'll be the only peruser of The Hatemonger's Quarterly who isn't Martha Nussbaum.

The next thing you know, we'll get all kinds of queries from these flattered intellectual pundits, who will shower us with fawning e-mails. We'll make the kind of connections only heard about in Legoland. If all this holds true, it should only be a few short months before the crack young staff of The Hatemonger's Quarterly becomes a regular contributor to The New Yorker. And Vanity Fair, if we need the money.

What follows, then, is merely a list of famous journalists, op-eders, television pundits, and assorted superannuated academics, accompanied by the most fawning, sycophantic remarks we could muster. The names of these intellectual beacons were mostly culled from Richard Posner's Public Intellectuals: A Study in Decline, and thus our conclusions are only as valuable as his. Which is to say, they're totally worthless.

Without further ado, here is the official Hatemonger's Quarterly Case Study in Public Intellectualdom:

Alan Dershowitz: We don't think you've made nearly enough television appearances. When you have your Aaron-Copland-meets-a-prune good looks, you deserve to be on MSNBC 24 hours a day.

Eric Alterman: Your disquisition on conservative bias in the American media may have proved counterfactual to some, but it really convinced us. Perhaps your next book could tackle some other silly theory that the moronic general public foolishly esteems. Like gravity.

Ann Coulter: Your thinking is, if anything, far too subtle for us. Surely everyone but you and Dinesh DÂ’Souza is somehow guilty of treason? If your ideas were as provocative as your skirts, we might actually listen to you.

bell hooks: Nice Lower-Case Name! You are certainly the e. e. cummings of race-baiting pseudo-intellectual demagogues.

Eric Hobsbawm: With the exception of politics, Communism, and history, youÂ’ve been right about everything youÂ’ve ever written. And we, for one, are glad you are an unrepentant Stalinist: If the dream comes true, itÂ’ll be worth the 200 million slaughtered!

Noam Chomsky: YouÂ’re the non-thinking-manÂ’s Oliver Stone.

Camille Paglia: Could you add a few more “ums” and “ahs” to your manifold speeches? We are almost getting the sense that you are preparing for your lectures.

Gore Vidal: Other folks might think you are a bit batty, but we agree with you—you have been totally neglected by the Jew-run publishing industry. If it weren’t for those rabid Zionists, you’d have two palatial mansions in Italy.

Robert Putnam: We’d love to go bowling with you—provided you don’t doctor the scorecard as much as you do your studies.

Susan Estrich: We could listen to your mellifluous voice all day.

Doris Kearns Goodwin: [Insert plagiarized compliment here].

Cornel West: Buckwheat told us he thinks your haircut is “otay.” And your rap album is much better than Irving Kristol’s.

Terry Eagleton: We are totally convinced by your swashbuckling brand of Marxism. But we have one question: From which one of your three fancy homes did you pen your latest book?

Catherine MacKinnon: You have all the intellectual cautiousness of Norman Mailer. Thanks for turning the United States into a sexual police state.

Pat Buchanan: Your championing of HitlerÂ’s organizational skills wasnÂ’t creepy enough for us. And tell us again why the United States should never have fought in World War II! And to think, some have had the audacity to tar and feather you as an anti-Semite.

Well, that should do it. Atlantic Monthly, here we come!

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