On the website thecheckplease (which I am reliably informed is based “as of now” in Illinois, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maryland, New York, and California), the satirist E.F. Watley has written a very complimentary piece about me and The Coup, which he calls my “most ambitious effort to date, a more sophisticated and viciously imagined world where the stubborn partisan divisions within the Beltway lend themselves all too easily to lies and blackmail with huge stakes.’’ Thanks, E.F. I eagerly welcome the support of all my fellow satirists who enjoy thecheckplease.com and E.F.’s other amusing website, The Watley Review, although I can just imagine the flood of snarkiness I am inviting. Hey—bring it on.
Elsewhere on the web, some savant putatively named Keith (no last name given—I suppose it’s not Keith who sung the pleasant pop hit 98.6 in 1967 and then supposedly disappeared in Vietnam but instead merely wandered into obscurity) writing at a website called inwhichourhero says “The Coup isn’t a great book; there are better political satirists (Christopher Buckley comes to mind) and there are better con man stories. But it combines the two things reasonably well, and it’s a pleasant enough diversion.’’ Thanks, Keith, for a pleasant enough review.