Over at The Corner, John Podhoretz lays out his "12 Commitments to Corner Readers." Item number ten reads:

"I will throw a party for one of the bloggers at the New Republic when he turns five on his next birthday."

Ha! Now, just for a moment, wipe the tears streaming down your face, sit up straight, and try to maintain composure in the face of this comic barrage. Good. Here is item number nine:

I will correct the grammar of anyone who writes me a hostile e-mail, which will send them into even greater fits of hostility.

Now that's more like it: Funny, biting, predictably (if charmingly) infused with solipsism. And then I remembered (as one does frequently in times like these), Hanna Rosin's New York profile of Podhoretz, in which we learn of the word "Podenfreude." This term was coined by the suffering coworkers of Norman's son in order to, well, here's Rosin:

Around the Washington Times offices, [Podhoretz's] column was often read out loud in Podhoretz's absence, for comic value, in a ritual famously called Podenfreude.

And yet, the shoe is now on the other foot. It is Podhoretz, legendarily famous for bad writing, who is coolly correcting his readers' grammar. Well done, John. You will now warrant at least a footnote when someone writes a biography of your father. --Isaac Chotiner