It's one of the romantic fallacies of literary life that writers must fasten their girdles and go it alone. Cut themselves off from the common traffic of humanity, tie their dreams into a knapsack, and set forth down the mongrel streets where Edgar Allan Poe staggered and Thomas Wolfe stomped, holing up in their literary hideouts to slave over a manuscript that is sucking their souls dry. It can get pretty hairy inside those hermit lodges. The novelist Richard Yates used to execute a full 360 in the swivel chair behind his desk, leaving a crunchy, brown circle of crushed cockroaches. Even those with nicer studies look up from time to time and wonder where everybody went, why they pursue a creative mission that's like tunneling out of prison with a fork. Happily, there are botanical outbursts in American culture when writers parole themselves from the solitary grind, gravitate toward like-minded spirits, and loosely affiliate to form circles, movements, schools, bands of influence, even salons. Think of the Beats, tooting each other's horns in their nomadic assault on postwar conformity and Pat Boone's white bucks. The literary Brat Pack of the 80s, who converted the downtown scene into their private game preserve. And the metropolitan pioneers of cross-promotion, the Algonquin Round Table group, an ensemble cast of columnists, critics, playwrights, humorists, and other heavy drinkers whose wisecracks crackled like new money, and whose feuds were covered as if they were top-ranked pillow fights. They were the first set of writers to jockey into the gossip columns and conduct themselves as a royal court. In our own century, a novice troupe of authors, tanned under the studio lights of television and outfitted with turbine-driven mouths, have also mastered the art of mutual advantage. Their headquarters, their glassy fort, adjoins the traffic flow of Manhattan's Sixth Avenue, just a few blocks north of the Algonquin Hotel. They are the Fox News literary fight club, leaving their knuckle indents on all the books that bear their names, whether they actually wrote them or not.

You know their names. You've seen their Pan-Caked mugs. You've heard them tell the United Nations to get lost. Bill O'Reilly. Sean Hannity. John Gibson. Neil Cavuto. Oliver North. Cal Thomas. Bill Sammon, who kissed the hem of Bush's buckskin skirt in Strategery. Fred Barnes, a regular panelist on Fox's Special Report with Brit Hume and co-host of The Beltway Boys with Mort Kondracke, who out-obsequioused Sammon with an even more servile tribute to Bush, Rebel-in-Chief (the review of Rebel-in-Chief in The American Conservative was aptly titled "Let Me Shine Your Shoes, Sir"). Dick Morris, with his burp-gun volley of anti-Hillary books (which will probably culminate in 2008 with Hillary Meets Godzilla). It isn't all white guys soothing their aches with foot powder. There's E. D. Hill, with her sunny-side-up Going Places: How America's Best and Brightest Got Started down the Road of Life. (Hill's notion of America's best and brightest has a lot of elasticity, managing to encompass a couple of mediocre senators, Norm Coleman and George Allen, and, oddly enough, Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York.) There's also frequent guest and insult comic Ann Coulter, who's been getting a lot of exercise swatting away recent accusations of plagiarism. And contributing editor Michelle Malkin, one of those fast-swooping controversialists who bring out books on a conveyor belt, one after another in sloppy succession. (Her historical scholarship regarding Japanese detention in the U.S. during World War II in In Defense of Internment was woefully tilted and shoddy.) While cable-news personalities may moonlight as authors—MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, CNN's Anderson Cooper and Lou Dobbs—only Fox News's feisty nonfiction bears the traits of a house brand, the collective mind-set of prickly individualists. Each Fox News host conducts himself like the king of the ring, a gladiator of gab. Open to almost any page at random and prepare to get one in the kisser.

The undisputed heavyweight champ (at least in his own mind) is the prodigious Bill O'Reilly, who's hammered out a small shelf's worth of brawny posturings: The O'Reilly Factor, The No Spin Zone, Who's Looking Out for You?, and the hard-boiled novel Those Who Trespass, with sex scenes worthy of (Cinemax's) Max After Dark: "Using a fair amount of pressure, he kissed her inner thighs, using his lips and tongue." (As opposed to bumping her with his nose and chin.) O'Reilly even sought to broaden his demographic by co-authoring (with Charles Flowers) a self-help guide for the younger crowd, The O'Reilly Factor for Kids, aimed at inspiring, instructing, and nurturing a fresh crop of righteous grumps. It must have been some book marketer's idea of a hoot. Although O'Reilly adopted a comforting guidance-counselor manner ("Friends are there Mien you need them, just as you must be there when they need you"), adding a sprig or two of worldly wisdom ("Some of the saddest occasions you can imagine are parties in New York and Hollywood where everybody is famous and wants to be seen, but no one is there to enjoy and develop friendships"), no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't shake his resemblance to the old neighborhood meanie who yells at kids to stay off his lawn. (If kids look up to him, it's only because he's tall and chasing them with a rake.) Due in September is O'Reilly's latest excuse to cakewalk his ego around the parade grounds, Culture Warrior, whose contents indicate he isn't breaking any virgin turf with this Festivus list of grievances. If anything, he's pawing in the same old litter box. According to the promotional blurb on Amazon, our crusty Culture Warrior "examines why the nation's motto 'E Pluribus Unum' ('From Many, One') might change to 'What About Me?'; dissects the forces driving the secular-progressive agenda in the media and behind the scenes, including George Soros, George Lakoff, and the ACLU; and dives into matters of race, education, and the war on terror. He also shows how the culture war has played out in such high-profile instances as The Passion of the Christ, Fahrenheit 9/11, the abuse epidemic (child and otherwise), and the embattled place of religion in public life—with special emphasis on the war against Christmas." I'm afraid O'Reilly is especially tardy on that last item.

The undisputed heavyweight champ is the prodigious Bill O'Reilly, who's hammered out a small shelf's worth of brawny posturings.

His Fox buddy John Gibson beat him to it. The host of The Big Story, Gibson hasn't enjoyed O'Reilly's chartbusting success on the book lists, but not through lack of zeal, or gall. His first harangue—Hating America: The New World Sport (or Bozo Writes a Book), its back cover featuring what appear to be Muslim fanatics cursing the Great Satan through their beards—reminded readers of the snotty strain of anti-Americanism infecting our phony allies, France and Germany. It also dug deeper, uncovering a new, verminous "Axis of Envy"—Belgium, South Korea, and Canada. If this trio thought they could get away with belittling this great land of ours behind our lazy backs, they should think again. Gibson put these punk nations on notice. "America is on to them, these three unworthies: Belgium, Canada, and South Korea. Three brothers in anti-Americanism: one sullen, one self-consciously outraged, the third looking a whole lot more like Kim Jong IPs new province every day." Those sullen Belgians really get Gibson's goat. "Belgians are proud of their higher consciousness, their at-all-costs pacifism, of a sense of world morality they cling to regardless of the circumstances or risks." They should be like us—semi-comatose, militaristic, and risktaking. The title of the final chapter summed up the book's unambiguous stance: "They're Wrong. We're Right. Get Used to It." That could be the slogan for every Fox News filibuster.

After slapping some sense into the rest of the world, Gibson charted a domestic course with his second book, devoted to the seasonal theme so dear to the news management at Fox News—the aforementioned War on Christmas-subtitled "How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday Is Worse than You Thought." I hope O'Reilly's forthcoming Culture Warrior doesn't rely too heavily on what might charmingly be called Gibson's "research," for a cursory tour of Gibson's case studies reveals that there is no liberal plot or "strategized" campaign; no one of any consequence is trying to drive a stake into Santa's ho-ho-ho or punt the baby Jesus from the manger. What Gibson broad-strokes into a widespread conspiracy are scattered, far-flung instances of school administrators and government officials conscientiously trying to balance the concerns and rights of differing constituencies, and making decisions that may be flawed or debatable but are hardly malign in intent. As in most scary bedtime stories cobbled by conservatives, the American Civil Liberties Union is demonized as the most slithery foe of God-fearing patriots, having the audacity to wrap itself in the Constitution and take its language seriously. Even when the A.C.L.U. doesn't intervene, its hobgoblin specter is enough to spoil everybody's Christmas cheer. "Out of fear of a lawsuit that would probably not materialize, Karl Springer [superintendent of schools in Mustang, Oklahoma] felt he had to do the prudent thing and ban the nativity scene," Gibson writes of one portentous non-event.

Another chapter retails the saga of a pushy mom named Sherrie Versher, who encouraged one of her daughters to hand out pencils with the words JESUS LOVES ME THIS I KNOW BECAUSE THE BIBLE TELLS ME SO On School property, despite having been warned by school officials. When the pencils were confiscated, Ms. Versher either muttered or shouted (depending on whose account you accept), "Satan is in the building." One of Satan's minions then escorted her out of the building. Such a petty contretemps is hardly a significant sign of religious suppression, and Gibson has to skate carefully around the perception that the war on those waging the trumped-up War on Christmas might carry an anti-Semitic taint. He doesn't help when he writes things such as this: "Occasionally, a Jewish organization like the Anti-Defamation League will object to a Jewish religious practice that is carried out under public auspices, but in my opinion the objection is lodged only to maintain the rhetorical standing to object to Christian practices." Those Jews, they're so crafty.

But make no mistake, insists Gibson, "it's not just liberal Jews" trying to silence Christmas carols. "The large number of foot soldiers waging the war on Christmas is in fact made up mostly of liberal white Christians, some of whom may have Jewish-sounding names (Cohen, Horoschak) that could mislead readers to a dangerous and very unfair conclusion. So let's re-state for the record: The wagers of this war on Christmas are a cabal of secularists, so-called humanists, trial lawyers, cultural relativists [those bastards], and liberal, guilt-wracked Christians—not just Jewish people." If I were Jewish, I might be forgiven for feeling less than reassured. Especially since one of the sources Gibson cites in The War on Christinas is William Donohue, president of the conservative Catholic League, who once spouted on MSNBC, "Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It's not a secret, O.K.? And I'm not afraid to say it."

Eric Burns has flouted the rules by producing a book that can proudly be placed in the non-loon section of any library.

Few Foxies hawk their books with more naked zeal than Neil Cavuto, whose second book, Your Money or Your Life, jazzily starred him on the cover in a James Bond pose, complete with tux and Beretta. He's 007 1/4, licensed to shill. This book needed a splashy movie poster because it was mostly a hodgepodge of stale editorials that didn't exactly fill a crying void in the historical record. ("Would you let Bill Clinton watch your kids?" he asked on January 19, 1998, a question that no longer seems pertinent, if it ever did.) As a compendium of wit and wisdom, the book was low on both. As a wit, Cavuto falls perilously short of the standard set at the Algonquin table by George S. Kaufman and Dorothy Parker. French president Jacques Chirac drew this sally: "Jacques, you say you're full of hope for peace. I say, you're full of crepe" To Euroweenies at large, he complained, "[We] give you a hand—and all we get in return is a finger." He addressed the peace creeps opposed to the war in Iraq: "What will it take for you to put the burning flag down and your head up? I suspect quite a bit, since first you have to get your head out of another place that seems very dark right now ... too dark to see anything at all." He also told New York Times columnist Paul Krugman where he could file his copy: "I suggest you take your column... and shove it."

What is there to say about Sean Hannity that Hannity hasn't already said about himself many times over with a smug self-esteem that would be the envy of Donald Trump had Trump not already beaten him to the beautician's mirror? No matter what title is tacked on a Hannity proclamation—Let Freedom Ring, Deliver Us from Evil—the contents are as predictable as trail mix. His pair of flagwavers have the pandering bombast of campaign biographies for an undeclared candidacy. He's aspiring to an honorary presidency, one that allows him to take strong positions and bask in popular approval without being responsible when the coffins come home and the amputees are wheelchaired out of the infirmary. A suitable Madam President would be Michelle Malkin, a frequent guest (and occasional guest host) on Hannity & Colmes, and the Imelda Marcos of Fox News Nation.

Of all the books produced by Fox News anchors and contributors, none was more baffling or anomalous than Infamous Scribblers: The Founding Fathers and the Rowdy Beginnings of American Journalism, by Emmy Award winner Eric Burns, host and moderator of Fox News Watch, a weekly media-critic panel-discussion program. I don't know what got into Burns, what could have possessed him. Infamous Scribblers is a work of genuine historical research, colorful personality, intellectual sophistication, heft, and durable interest—in short, a real book. It's a text from which the reader can actually learn something. This simply won't do. There's just no excuse for Burns's showing up his colleagues this way. By producing a book that can proudly be placed in the non-loon section of any library, he has flouted the seven sacred rules of the Fox News literary fight club:

• Organize your book around a Specious Thesis, such as the bizarre premise of Fred Barnes's Rebel-in-Chief that George W. Bush, the son of a former president, is an insurgent force and "an alien in the realm of the governing class."

• Pose with an American flag on the cover-red, white, and blue also being the color scheme of Fox News.

• Memorialize 9/11, the day Everything Changed, early and often, sometimes in anger, sometimes in sorrow, wielding it as the all-purpose answer to America's pygmy critics. (John Gibson, Hating America: "The rest of the world can go to hell. It wasn't attacked. We were.")

• Establish what a regular guy (or gal) you are, not like those liberal elitists weaned on Woody Allen movies and incapable of opening a pickle jar without asking some big strong lesbian for help.

• Negatively name-drop. Exploit the conservative audience's ingrained antipathy by padding your paragraphs with reflexive sneers at Michael Moore, Paul Krugman, Howard Dean, Al Franken, Cindy Sheehan, Ward Churchill, Oliver Stone, and the evil, conniving Katie Couric. And never hesitate to take a hack at Hollywood idols, no matter how petite. (In Unhinged, Malkin's list of the Top 10 unhinged celebrities includes such enemies of reason as Cher, Julia Stiles, and Cameron Diaz.)

• Even if you never attend religious services, because they conflict with your golf game, make sure to get in humble nods to the big guy in the sky and distinguish yourself from the heathens at The New York Times and CNN.

• Be sure to thank Judith Regan at ReganBooks in the acknowledgments, even if she didn't edit your book, because she'll probably edit the next one (ReganBooks being practically the print arm of Fox News), and you want to get on her good side. You certainly don't want to get on her bad side—ever.

There is one saving grace for Bums, which may prevent him from getting blackballed. The lead five-star review on Amazon for Infamous Scribblers was written by none other than Cal Thomas, a Fox colleague and a regular on the Fox News Watch panel. Before ladling out the praise, he issues a disclaimer that reads, "Nevertheless, I am writing about his book without his encouragement, without remuneration and without even the promise of more airtime." Call me Goober, but I believe of Cal, because whatever else might be said about the Fox News fight club, these guys stick together like the Cartwright family on Bonanza, with O'Reilly as Hoss, Hannity as Little Joe, and Roger Ailes as Pa. The role of Hop Sing the cook is played by an illegal immigrant, whom Michelle Malkin keeps trying to get deported.