Wankerback Draft Guide: Steady Performers

11. Tim Blair

Salary: $22 | PF: 5 | WPP: 6 | ID: 8

Until just a few years ago, Blair was limited to spewing the sort of mundane obnoxiousness that can be traded, fart-like, for the evacuation of the barstool next to you in a typical Melbourne pub. Then he discovered the wingnutosphere. Immediately embraced by the international orc contingent as their favorite pet koala bear with dull teeth and blunted claws, Blair has never looked back. - AP

Fast Fact: Blair is an assistant editor for news at the weekly magazine "The Bulletin", which until 1961 featured on its masthead the charmingly inclusive slogan, "Australia for the White Man".

12. Stephen Green

Salary: $22 | PF: 6 | WPP: 8 | ID: 5

During his early teenage years, Green's parents began to notice a strange pattern: Whenever the new Sharper Image or Banana Republic catalogues arrived in the mail, their son would lock himself in the bathroom for long stretches of time. Chalking it up to the boy's self-imposed high-fiber diet, the Greens thought little of it. Little, that is, until that fateful day they returned home unexpectedly from a weekend getaway to discover their fully clothed son examining the contents of the family's linen closet and muttering coherently about "thread count". Mr. and Mrs. Green, disinterestedly concerned, immediately banned all wearing of madras for a month, revoked the lad's cocktail-serving robot privileges and returned to their policy of strict parental neglect. But the die was cast. Stephen Green, as the Wingnutosphere's Vodkapundit, would go on to give voice to the inner pettiness that he just knew would strike a shallow, fleeting chord with the like-minded carboard cut-out people whom he dispassionately suspected might exist in the theoretically real world that lay outside the IKEA-Pottery Barn corridor of his own pleasantly bored life. - AP

Fast Fact: Stephen Green has to return some video tapes.

13. Patterico

Salary: $22 | PF: 7 | WPP: 6 | ID: 9

Despite his stellar statistics, particularly in the crucial metric of Intellectual Dishonesty, Patterico has yet to prove his staying power in the wankerback ranks. Still, if there's a steal to be had in your UWFW draft, it could well be this up-and-comer. Smart owners will snatch him up to fill their No. 2 wankerback slot, and late-position drafters might even want to consider him for a No. 1 pick. - AP

Fast Fact: Patterico, by day a Los Angeles County prosecutor, has convicted dozens of gang leaders on the basis of suspicious IP addresses.

14. Dan Riehl

Salary: $21 | PF: 7 | WPP: 5 | ID: 8

When you're looking for someone to outwank the Little Green Footballs gang, Sweet Danny's the real deal. Whether it's Photoshopping an image of an Arab man being crushed by a steamroller or obsessively cranking out dozens of wild-ass guesses about the Natalee Hollaway case (including an entry entitled without irony or self-awareness, "Natalee Holloway Case Marred by Rampant Speculation"), Riehl comes through. He's not just an armchair wankerback, though! His blogroll includes a link to Centcom, putting him on the front lines of right-wing participation in the War On Terror. - S

Fast Fact: Behavioral scientists employing cutting edge facial recognition software have determined that Riehl's bone structure is uncommonly attractive to wielders of cream pies.

15. Eugene Volokh

Salary: $21 | PF: 7 | WPP: 7 | ID: 6

Eugene Volokh currently holds an endowed chair at UCLA School of Law, proving that a Bruin won't let a head injury slow him down. His "Volokh Conspiracy" blog has attracted a like-minded cadre of otherwise unemployable attorneys. That's right, a conspiracy of tenured professors. Now that takes balls! - S

Fast Fact: "Eugene" is short for "Eugenics".

16. David Frum

Salary: $21 | PF: 7 | WPP: 5 | ID: 9

The story goes that David was actually fired by George Bush, putting him in the rarefied company of Michael Brown ... and, um, that's pretty much it. A downwardly mobile Canadian who spends his post-White House days reading Little Green Footballs and Garfield, David's wife is the author of the question that answers itself, "What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us: Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman." - S

Fast Fact: David cries himself to sleep most nights.

17. Roger L. Simon

Salary: $20 | PF: 4 | WPP: 7 | ID: 7

Roger's all about the hat. That is, if you disregard "Scenes From a Mall," something the movie-going public did years ago. When he's not writing for the intergalactic media conglomerate "Pajamas Media" (motto: What the Fuck Were We Thinking?), Roger can be found complaining about Muslims, Hillary Clinton, the UN and anyone else not sufficiently interested in hats. - S

Fast Fact: A stupid person wearing a hat is still stupid.

18. TigerHawk

Salary: $18 | PF: 8 | WPP: 5 | ID: 6

TigerHawk is a middle-aged businessman with "any number of other trappings of the affluent life in a college town in the Northeast." A fan of freelance psychopath Ralph Peters, but curiously not a military veteran himself, Tigerhawk loves violent war movies and collecting coins. Much to the shame of his Princeton professors, he also names "Atlas Shrugged" as one of his favorite novels. His wife and children fear the day that he tries to reconcile this with his affection for the movie "Trading Places." No need to worry. Nature? Nurture? As long as one has an affluent life, why quibble? - S

Fast Fact: As an equestrian, Tigerhawk knows that President Bush isn't the only man who's tried to milk a horse.

19. Justin Darr

Salary: $17 | PF: 5 | WPP: 8 | ID: 7

Justin has served in political offices ranging from election judge to election judge. He's a battle-hardened veteran, of retail management. In a remarkable display of candor, he acknowledges being a "fountain of relatively useless knowledge." - S

Fast Fact: Justin has a dog named Xena. He is also the only resident of the Philadelphia area unfamiliar with the United States Constitution.

20. Ross Douthat

Salary: $16 | PF: 4 | WPP: 8 | ID: 8

Ross got his start as a National Review intern, where he was in charge of compiling rumors about the Gary Condit scandal. Although serving as K-Lo's bitch would be humiliation enough for most people, Ross now writes for the quasi-illustrious American Scene, a blog best known for impenetrable essays on "hegemonic liberalism," the Duke lacrosse team and "Starship Troopers" (the last, deliciously irony-free). - S

Fast Fact: Some people claim that Ross knew more fart jokes than anyone else at Harvard.

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KEY - PF: Posting Frequency ... WPP: Wankage Per Post ... ID: Intellectual Dishonesty

AUTHORS - AP: Assparrot ... S: Snag

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