It had never occurred to us that the Kremlin's new anti-booze campaign would apply to journalists. Now, that's a human-rights violation.

Human problems are complex. If something isn't complex it doesn't qualify as problematic. Very simple bad things are not worth troubling ourselves about.

Most of us had never seen a sober redneck before, and we have the Reagan Landslide to testify that none of us ever wants to see one again. It was a horrifying apparition. And ever since Jimmy Carter, all of us rednecks have had to be very careful to be drunk rednecks lest we turn into some kind of awful creature with big buck teeth and a State Department full of human-rights yahoos.

Off they go on this sort of camping trip to Iwo Jima, where they're taken around and shown where all the battles took place. It's very moving. Disgusting little island, though. Still an active volcano. Stinks of sulfur. There are dead Japanese everywhere under that island. It's icky. But I knew I would never have another chance to go, so I took the job.

I like Michael Moore, but I think of him more as a rabble-rouser.

Government conspiracy? They can't even deliver our mail and it's got our address on it and everything!

Michael O'Donoghue was a very close friend of mine - very encouraging with my stuff, and really a great guy - but he was a no-kidding difficult person.