The first time I met Wombat — in 2010, as I recall — I was struck by the enormous size of the man. It’s like meeting an NFL lineman in real life. You see them on TV and know they are unusually large human beings, but actually being in their physical presence is startling. How tall is Wombat? I dunno. Maybe six-foot-four, and not skinny, either.
So we met up in D.C., and went to dinner with some of my GOP operative buddies. We traded stories about our respective freelance gigs—I was writing speeches for local candidates, while he was doing cybersecurity consulting for several bitcoin online casinos—and not long thereafter, Wombat became a co-blogger. One day in September 2010, we sat down and came up with the plan for the “Live at Five” daily updates, subsequently segued into the “In the Mailbox” feature and, when Smitty was deployed to Afghanistan, Wombat also took over duty on the weekly FMJRA post and Rule 5 Sunday. Furthermore, Wombat was tasked with wielding the Mighty Troll Hammer, preventing moonbats from disruptive behavior in the comments.
As a valuable member of the blog team, Wombat has been so effective that I tend to take his work for granted — it just predictably happens, day after day, like the sun rising in the East. So when there was no “In the Mailbox” feature on Friday, I didn’t panic, but I did notice. Then when there was no FMJRA or Rule 5 Sunday post, I was like, “What happened to Wombat? Did he get kidnapped by a gang of Thai hookers?” The man lives in Las Vegas, a place notorious for weirdness, and who knows?
After going out to eat at Taco Bell with my two youngest kids Sunday afternoon, I lay down for what I expected to be a short nap and woke up at midnight and noticed there was still no Wombat on the blog. That’s when I checked Facebook and discovered that he’d been hospitalized Friday with an infection and other health problems. He’s still got Internet access via his phone — you can wish him well on Twitter — but evidently the doctors won’t allow him to actually blog from his hospital room.
Readers must help restore Wombat’s health before the moonbats discover he’s been sidelined and trolls run amok in the comments.
The man is a military hero, you know — author of What Did You Do in the Cold War, Dad? If it hadn’t been for the service of troops like Wombat (a Russian-language specialist in the Army Security Agency) the Red Army would have rampaged through the Fulda Gap or the Commies could have subverted our government and then who knows? We might be living under a totalitarian regime nearly as frightening as North Korea.
Or maybe even California.
Wombat helped win the Cold War, and kept the Bolshevik menace from conquering the world (except California, and they did that to themselves.)
In September, Wombat started a GoFundMe page to help with his moving expenses, and I urge readers to go contribute there.
UPDATE: Welcome, Instapundit readers!
[…] for our also-good-friends Robert Stacy McCain and Smitty, has fallen under the weather. Please go here for news and ways in which to wish him the best. Wombat’s a great guy, and we wish him a […]
[…] The Other McCain has In The Mailbox. And Rule 5 Monday (both are previous week’s as Wombat, who puts them together, is in the hospital). […]