The Waverly Inn on Bank Street, here in the Big Apple, is the hottest ticket in town. Owned by Graydon Carter, the Vanity Fair honcho, it became the chicest place for dinner even before it opened. (Graydon opened it unofficially for friends of his). It is located on a quiet Greenwich Village street which would do justice to an Edward Hopper painting, and the interior resembles the way small inns used to look like before Planet Hollywood and other such atrocities came into being. The clientelle is mostly bold-faced names, artsy fartsy types and lotsa young people. The service is impeccable and the atmosphere friendly and gay, and I’m using the g-word in the old fashioned sense.

On Wednesday evening, September 26, I took my wife and son to dinner there as it was Alexandra’s birthday. In the next booth was a large and noisy party headed by a music lawyer called Grubman, father of Lizzie Grubman, the woman who mowed down 16 people waiting in line outside a Hamptons nightclub with her SUV once she had been refused entrance to the dump. (Grubman got away with a few weeks inside and lots of crocodile tears). There was also Mort Zuckerman, the real estate shark who poses as a writer and pundit and some other people I didn’t recognize.

After a very pleasant dinner despite the noise by Grubman, a cake was served and we were ready to leave. That is when my old friend Edward Jay Epstein came to my table to say hello. Ed is a good writer and a great discoverer of facts people in government don’t like to be discovered, and I have great affection for him. We go back a very long way. “We’re in the back room for a dinner in honor of Paul Wolfowitz,” he told me. I asked him to repeat it. “You are what?” I exclaimed. “You actually are sitting down with that lying pig who has caused so much death and is responsible for tens of thousands being maimed and killed?” Ed saw that I meant what I was saying and walked away.

That is when I decided to go into the back room and spit in that bum’s face. It was, I figured, the least I could do. But my wife beat me to the punch. She got up and announced that it was her birthday and that if I went to the back I would ruin an otherwise good evening. “Please,” she begged me, “do it for me.” Like a coward, I gave in. The interesting part was that some of the nice waiters had witnessed the scene and commiserated with me, saying, “Isn’t it disgusting that we have to serve such a man….” or words to that effect.

Now I know that gentlemen do not go around spitting on people, but neither do unelected officials like the pig Wolfowitz go around lying and manufacturing evidence in order to take a country to war—a country that in the past was looked upon as a beacon of democratic freedoms and fairness. Just imagine that if every time Wolfowitz, Feith, Kristol, Podhoretz, Perle, Frum, Abrams—Bush and Cheney are immune because of their elected position—showed their faces, they were spat upon by outraged citizens. Imagine they could be made to feel responsible for their past propaganda and the actions that flowed from their words. What would result? America would be a far, far better place in which to live.

We should not take these liars lying down. These scumbags have caused so much misery and death, so much suffering to so many people, they should not be allowed to walk around with impunity. Forget the think tanks and networks and newspapers which still employ them. The neo-cons know how to survive. The only way to make them realize that they cannot fool all the people all of the time, as they have done until now, is to humiliate them whenever and wherever they appear in public. I had my chance and blew it. Perhaps I will have a second chance while I’m still around.