New Yorker author Hendrick Hertzberg's made a powerful enemy: Bill O'Reilly! O'Reilly selected Hertzberg for the honor of an ambush by that smug "producer" who ambushes people mostly because Hertzberg wrote something mildly critical of O'Reilly that was easy to take out of context and also in terms of imaginary powerful "liberal elitists" to battle, you can't do better than a political writer for The New Yorker. The sadly anti-climactic video of the ambush, attached.

Somewhere in midtown, the smell of chlorine hung heavy above the heads of a group of New Yorker cartoonists. They were at the bar at the Hotel QT, drinking free wine and vodka and celebrating their failures. Most of them were included in the second edition of The Rejection Collection: Cream of the Crap, a compilation of cartoons that didn't make the cut. Also there was Hendrick Hertzberg, who looks like Robert Redford and Warren Beatty and who, when Tina Brown was editor The New Yorker, was the cartoon editor. His friends call him Rick. I called him Rick. Am I his friend? Is he on Facebook? Provisional not yets on both questions. Also, if you, like me, thought the life of a New Yorker cartoonist was all doodling and fat paychecks, the gathered company was quick to disabuse us of that notion. Nikola Tamindzic was disabused too. So hard.