"Anyone who could make the federal judiciary sexy is a blogger we'd want to work with."

From the WaPo article on the Cox to Lat switch at Wonkette:

[David] Lat ... will take over later this month with Alex Pareene, who has been a guest editor on Gawker.com. The Web site will be redesigned but the name will remain unchanged....

"I would expect [Wonkette] to evolve significantly," said Lockhart Steele, managing editor of Gawker Media, the site's publisher. "New bloggers bring new perspective and new energy."

Steele was impressed by Lat's "Wonkettey qualities": "He was very obsessive about people's good looks. Anyone who could make the federal judiciary sexy is a blogger we'd want to work with."

Lockhart Steele. Is that really his name?

Anyway, the article notes that Cox's book, "Dog Days," is getting bad reviews but that she has a "mid-six-figures" contract for her next book. Hey! This book thing.... I wonder what Gawker Media is paying Lat to be half-of-Wonkette. Or is blogging supposed to be something you do to leverage your way to a book contract? That could be a problem if you've evolved yourself a blogger mind...

UPDATE: Glenn Reynolds is reading "Dog Days" and being charitable: "so far I like it pretty well." He likes the detail about electronic equipment, of which there is a lot. Naming all the products the character uses? Isn't that so 80s?

ANOTHER UPDATE: The humor novelist Christopher Buckley gives "Dog Days" a good review in the NYT Book Review:

I don't spend much time in the old blogosphere myself, and to be honest hadn't clicked onto Wonkette until now. But if this sparkly, witty - occasionally vicious - little novel is any indication of Wonkette's talent, then Cox ought to log out of cyberspace and start calling herself Novelette.