Many a time freedom has been rolled back - and always for the same sorry reason: fear.

Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce.

I know: "Guns Don't Kill People." But I suspect that they have something to do with it. If you point your finger at someone and say, "Bang, bang, you're dead," not much actually happens.

Margaret Atwood, the Canadian novelist, once asked a group of women at a university why they felt threatened by men. The women said they were afraid of being beaten, raped, or killed by men. She then asked a group of men why they felt threatened by women. They said they were afraid women would laugh at them.

How the American right managed to convince itself that the programs to alleviate poverty are responsible for the consequences of poverty will someday be studied as a notorious mass illusion.

Manners are just a formal expression of how you treat people.

There are two kinds of humor. One kind that makes us chuckle about our foibles and our shared humanity -- like what Garrison Keillor does. The other kind holds people up to public contempt and ridicule -- that's what I do. Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel -- it's vulgar.