" Do you know Mr. Harry Evans?" Rep. Lindsey Graham suddenly asked Sidney Blumenthal at his Feb. 3 deposition. This was rather like asking whether teenage girls know Leonardo DiCaprio; Blumenthal is a major-league fixture of fashion-magazine intellectualism and used to work for Mrs. Evans at the New Yorker, so of course he knows the Queen's lesser half, Prince Harry. THE SCRAPBOOK is betting that Sidney rolled his beady little eyes with disgust when he said, "Yes, I do," in response to Graham's hopelessly out-of-it inquiry.
But Graham persisted. "Who is Mr. Harold Evans?" he wanted to know. And just as Sid was getting warmed up to the subject, his White House colleague, Lanny Breuer, registered a strenuous objection to "this line of questioning" -- as "well beyond" the appropriate scope of the deposition. "I have never heard of Mr. Harold Evans," Breuer complained.
Oh, dear. Cancel Lanny's table at Elaine's; he won't be coming. And neither, it seems, will Senators Arlen Specter and John Edwards, who supervised the Blumenthal deposition. On Breuer's objection, they both demanded an "offer of proof" from Lindsey Graham that this so-called "Harold Evans" might be an even remotely significant character.
No wonder so much of Washington hates Sidney Blumenthal. Turns out it's a city full of rubes.