North and South

By Zamboni

Before we cats tuck ourselves down for a satisfying, end-of-a-wonderful-week snooze, we must send some PURRs over to Scott Horton at Harper's magazine.

Mr. Horton's is the byline on a meow-y but really enjoyable little story about Condoleezza Rice's lack of, um, popularity at the State Department.

It seems that the career folks there were so happy to bid farewell to the imperious, it's-all-about-me Ms. Rice that they were referring to their joyful, boisterous welcome of Hillary Rodham Clinton as "The Glinda Party."

As if that weren't fun enough, here's why Mr. Horton deserves a scratchy kiss or two.

"I asked..." he writes, "if Hillary was Glinda, the Good Witch of the South from The Wizard of Oz, did that make Condoleezza Rice the Wicked Witch of the West?"

The emphasis is ours. You see, Glinda the Good was the Witch of the South — as L. Frank Baum, author of the Oz books, originally created her. It was Louis B. Mayer and the gang over at M-G-M who turned her into the Witch of the North. Whether Mr. Horton's accuracy was intentional or not, we're glad he got it right. (And a rub against the ankle to Keith Olbermann, who repeated it correctly on "Countdown" tonight.)

Meanwhile, we'd love to hear more about this Wicked Witch stuff — particularly now that the worthless Condoleezza, like her fellow war criminals from the Bush Administration, has melted.

(Image: www.thewizardofozmovie.com)