THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

Joe and I used to pal around in Washington. We drank many a beer together at his house and he thought I was great.

Joe did an unbeatable Foreword to my last book.

Then he stopped replying to my messages. If you know about Brer Rabbit and Tarbaby, you know that for a Southerner not replying is the gravest form of insult.

So someone reported a conversation he had with Joe. Joe said, "I am a friend of Bob Whitaker's the way I am a friend of David duke's. That is, not at all."

I replied, "Thanks for telling me that. Joe never had the guts to tell ME that. But I am still a big fan of Joe's."

This wasn't the ODD part.

What you will have trouble with is the idea that my actual reaction to Joe's reaction was odd. How could a normal everyday person like Ole Bob react oddly?

By the way, since Joe and Pat Buchanan are good buddies and dedicated Catholic theologues, I assume Pat isn't speaking to me either.

But this did not crush me.

Of course nobody told me to my face. I am not a person anyone can confront.

Nobody ever had the guts to face me.

Far more important, I have had the experience of hearing lists of people I knew, some of whom detested me, who had been killed. It is a LOT easier to know that Joe doesn't like me than to hear that Joe can no longer like anything.

A really nasty life gives you the emotional skin of an elephant.

But what flattered me was that the grapevine on me got all the way to Washington. When I crossed the Rubicon -- again -- and started working with Stormfront and met David Duke, the word got from Russia to DC.

I have not had any official position in DC for two decades. The normal DC celebrity is forgotten if he doesn't show up for lunch two days in a row.

But I was one of constant figures in DC. As I have said, when it came to long-term policy determination, the constant figures were not mentioned in the news or made Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense.

While others jockeyed for jobs, this tiny group determined what the election after next would be about. We were very, very few.

I'm still doing that.

But I am always astounded when anybody NOTICES.

They STILL know what I do.

And that gives me deep, odd satisfaction.