Human sacrifice is much in vogue right now. The Republican right thinks that people who get on its nerves, especially women, should be sent to the stake. . .

My friend Phil has a theory that the Lord, having made teenagers, felt constrained to make amends and so created the golden retriever.

Baseball is what we were, football is what we have become.

Appliances have idiosyncracies, just like us. Unfortunately they have picked up our less attractive traits - they are proud, spiteful, and unforgiving.

[On George H.W. Bush vs. Michael Dukakis:] Americans now know they can vote for a man who can't express his thoughts or a man who can't express his feelings.

And the propensity of weak and empty people to follow a leader into the darkness from which there is no return is still flourishing, as ever.

Anyone who has undergone home repair lately knows that your everyday artisan uses language so loosely and makes false promises so glibly as to make your politicians, even the presidential candidate, seem like a model of accuracy and rectitude. 'Be there Wednesday at nine,' the workman will tell you. It is a lie. He is humoring you. He says it to silence you, the way you tell a child you will take it to Disneyland if it will stop crying.