Michael B. Duff

Still can’t sleep, so I’m going to tell my Wonkette story.

Technology has basically given me a new way to stalk Ana Marie Cox today, so this seems like a good time to recout my (fleeting and pathetic) brush with net.fame.

I like to tell people I almost interned for Wonkette.

I used to send in items from time to time, when Ana Marie ran the place. Dishing dirt on Libertarians, mostly. She linked me a couple times and I thought I was hot stuff. This is less impressive now that I know the reality of her working conditions.

She was working in a Nick Denton sweatshop at the time, struggling to fill a ridiculous daily quota. When I got my first link, I was beside myself with joy, assuming this had something to do with the cleverness of my pitch or the quality of my humor.

The truth is, catch a Wonkette editor during a slow news cycle and she’ll post pictures of your cat with a political caption underneath, if she thinks it’ll keep the lights on.

Ana put out a call for interns and asked them to prove their worth by composing a haiku about Al Gore.

I got her attention by ignoring the rules and offering…never mind what I offered. The point is, it worked and she told me I had made the first cut. I spent two hours in a joy/fear coma and started to seriously consider a move to DC.

I didn’t understand the mechanics of internships, of course. Jobs like this are not meant for hardworking Texans who pay their own bills. They’re meant for brats with trust funds, milking that last bit of parental goodwill as they run off to “find themselves” in New York or DC.

I was too old, too scared and too poor to chase a job meant for college kids, so I told Ana I was “just kidding” and wept into my pillow until my ambition faded to a more reasonable level.

Looking back on it, I wonder how many guys were in my position — frantically feeding links to Wonkette in hopes that Ana or someone like her would wave a magic wand and invite them into the big leagues.

Political geeks are a sad, desperate lot. It doesn’t take much to win our love, and it doesn’t take much to keep us going. One little sentence of encouragement was worth a dozen tips from me.

I don’t blame her for exploiting her appeal. Working for Nick Denton is like being in a prison movie from the 70s. Gawker editors will do awful things to keep the hits coming, if only to avoid the lash.

I was never very close to the world of high-stakes blogging, but I see Ana and Rachel eating cupcakes and I wonder what might have been.