This is two clicks away from being the plot of Fatal Attraction. Or maybe Cape Fear. Or perhaps…a Nora Ephron movie??

Over news that the New York Times might be firing conservative columnist Bill Kristol, WaPo's Nora Ephron writes an annoyed love letter to her favorite hate-fuck.

Then Kristol's column began. I read it religiously every Monday. And slowly but surely, I became infatuated with him. How could I not? The man could not write his way out of a paper bag. His column was simply awful. Reading it was like watching someone dance on the head of a pin: his need to prove to his base that he hadn't gone over to the other side was so strong, his need to please his constituency was so moving, that I began to wish he would quit his job as editor of the Weekly Standard and become a Times columnist full-time. It was certainly not going to inconvenience him: the column couldn't have been taking him more than about twenty minutes to write. And it was great having him there, visible, so people like me could see what people like him were like. He was wrong about everything. It was such a comfort.

We see Meg Ryan in the role of Nora, and maybe Billy Crystal as Bill Bristol.

Nora Ephron, who has previously brought us the joys of You've Got Mail and I Feel Bad About My Neck, has outdone herself with her latest installation: a blog entry purporting to be Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's personal diary.

And while necessarily centered around poking fun at Condoleezza, (for her narrow-minded intelligence, her unflagging devotion to the president and her pretentious habit of lapsing into colloquial French), Ephron's literary tour de force also takes every opportunity to knock President Bush ("P") for his less-than-literary tendancies and knocks Laura for being (understandably) threatened by Rice:

But what a week! We had lots and lots o'meetings…And here's the best thing about those meetings: no Laura. Ever since I accidentally called her husband "my husband," things have been a little bit sticky between me and Laura. A couple of months ago she was asked if she thought I should be President, and do you know what she said? She said: "Dr. Rice, who I think would be a really good candidate, is not interested. Probably because she is single, her parents are no longer living, she's an only child. You need a very supportive family and supportive friends to have this job." Was that a dig at me, Dear Diary? Of course it was. I didn't realize it at the time, but now I do.

Of course, aside from implying that Laura Bush's remark was fueled by jealousy, Condi's "diary" also reflects on Barbara Boxer's latest barb, (which Tony Snow and Karl Rove finally convince her is insulting), and includes Rice's post-retaliatory thoughts:

I hope the P. sees what I said [in the Times]. I doubt if he will, though, because he doesn't read the papers. But still, I'm glad I struck back at that Senator Boxer. Was that a dig at me, Dear Diary? Of course it was. I didn't realize it at the time, but now I do.

Poor, innocent Condi. Getting slandered in the press, attacked by fellow-Republican Laura Bush, brow-beaten by resident crazy Barbara Boxer, and now parodied by the author of "When Harry Met Sally." If only there were someone with similar mitochondrial DNA to step forward in your defense!