Word for my day: mephitic

Gore Vidal wrote in tribute of the recently deceased Barbara Epstein (The New York Review of Books: Barbara Epstein (1928-2006)):

    Ultimately, in fact, she could accept almost
    anything in the way of a point of view if she was convinced that it was
    expressed in good faith: needless to say, she had a difficult time
    dealing with the baroque lies of the neocons which have made mephitic
    the swamps of bookchat.

I had to look up the word "mephitic," which was Dictionary.com/Word of the Day on June 23, 2001 in dictionary.com. One definition is "offensive to the smell; as, mephitic odors."