We're a little late in reporting this, but Vanity Fair honcho and spanking-new author Graydon Carter was put on the spot by none other than the feckless housewife of news, Deborah Norville. Why didn't we update you sooner? Because it was on MSNBC, silly, and we don't even watch television anyhow. Thankfully, a reader subjected themselves to the talking box and writes with an account:

When Cruella Deborah asked him why he had never voted, Carter responded that because he "was a journalist for 25 years," he wanted to avoid "a conflict of interest." Can you sneeze "bullshit?"

When she read damning passages from the New York Times review of his anti-Bush book (What We've Lost), Carter took the tack of attacking the reviewer, calling him "pro-war."

Carter also denied that Vanity Fair is a "celebrity magazine," while admitting in the same breath that they put a celebrity on every cover (Like we hadn't noticed) When asked if he "got a rush," from helming the celeb mag and hosting the infamous annual VF Oscar party, he denied that, mumbling something about the importance of "getting home with the kids."

Finally, in defending his book that has been trashed by any oracle that bothered to give it notice, he noted that he had "five researchers" and a band of fact checkers working on it. Hmm... His former lackey, author Toby Young speculates that the book was indeed written by someone else. And a VF insider suggests that his research "help" received no additional pay for their trouble on a book that, to date, has not cracked 1000 on amazon.com.

Graydon Carter really has become the person he used to love to mock.