Let's take a measured step back and check out the off-the-charts Insanity Quotient in just one recent episode of the nightly news.

• A morbidly obese white entertainer with a palpable terror of black men seeks partial ownership of thirty-five virile, ultra-powerful black men who loathe him.
• Amid epic battles over...

I woke up this morning enchanted by the first rain in Los Angeles in more than three months, and lay awake for a while to savor the sound of it.

Then I went to the computer and found out my old friend, the truly larger-than-life producer Danny Melnick, had died...

I called Senator Al Franken last night to discuss a matter of crucial national importance: his beloved Minnesota Twins had just defeated the Detroit Tigers in an epic one-game playoff. Senator Franken (D-Minn)'s position was clear, eloquent, and unequivocal: second-baseman Nick Punto's game-saving throw to home plate to nip...

Seeking beauty, he disfigured himself.

Seeking omnipotence he became weak.

Seeking riches he went broke.

"The pure products of America go crazy." -- William Carlos Williams.

Now that the television rituals are over -- the theatrically somber voices of the network anchormen; the poetically-framed, stock-footage shots of Arlington Cemetary, and the cracked-bugle versions of "Taps;" maybe a cutesy interview with the Oldest Surviving Veteran of some forgotten battle -- the American media, having done its faux-patriotic...

Though Mickey Rourke's work in The Wrestler was nearly as deep and rich as vintage Brando, and Sean Penn was extraordinary in Milk, the most amazing "performance" of 2008 was that of Benicio del Toro as Che -- which, for my dough, was also the movie of the year.

I...

So, OK, John McCain did a credible job of reading some nifty one-liners ghost-written for him on Thursday night. But for true aficionados of his Komedy Kapers, there's nothing like watching the Senator's satirical genius set loose in a smoky back-room Republican club -- "McCain being McCain," as they say,...

Question: What's the difference between a demagogue like Joe McCarthy and one particular Hockey Mom?

Answer: Lipstick.

Senator Joe (Tailgunner Joe) McCarthy was, in many ways, a pioneer of modern Republicanism--i.e. a hateful, small-minded gay-bashing legislator who was also a closet homosexual. But, sadly...

First of all, John, you weren't in New Orleans.

You were in Kenner, Louisiana. I have spent a fair amount of time in both Kenner and New Orleans, and believe me, the people who live there are acutely aware of the difference. (And, should they forget, they can always check...

In a medium full of revolting displays of hypocrisy and self-importance, Tom Brokaw gave a performance last night that was so hypocritical and so self-important that I wanted to make like Elvis watching Robert Goulet and shoot out the screen with a .38. Fortunately, I was unarmed, and the TV...

The Fat Lady has not only sung; she has showered, changed from her sequined gown into jeans, air-kissed the conductor, and already gone back to the hotel, where she's lying in a bathtub, drinking wine and daydreaming about her next gig. Back at the opera-house, one lone janitor is sweeping...

"Words matter," as Hillary Clinton so often reminded us; and like all campaigns, hers lived and died by the spoken word. Of the millions of dollars she poured into her own campaign, much of it no doubt went into paying speechwriters.

She has grounds to sue them for incompetence, and...

I've been thinking a lot about George Bush lately. About those strange tics and contortions he makes with his face, like a Neanderthal Man playing Grand Theft Auto. About the fact that you and I still pay his salary. And about what, exactly, his real job is. He's not "president"...

Somewhere today George Bush and John McCain are wandering around like two punch-drunk fighters, trying to explain to their dwindling entourages how they got KOed in this week's big fight. "I t'ought I had 'im on the ropes wit' my big 'Appeasement' Punch!" "He shoulda been a sucka for the...

I think I speak for a sizable portion of the American public, of all political stripes, on this one: I wish James Carville hadn't forced me to consider the issue of Hillary Clinton's balls.

It's a ticklish subject, of course, but Hillary's supporters won't leave it alone....

George Bush, Dick Cheney, and John McCain are sending a razor-sharp message to the fighting men and women of America.

It's underlined again in bright, fresh, blood-red every time a tank in Bahgdad is blown up by an IED and shrapnel rips into another soldier's flesh.

It's written in script-letters...

After all the pontificating on TV, in the end it didn't come down to sideshow jive like the Reverend Wright Imbroglio or the Great Sniper Fire Lie. It didn't come down to micro-demographics, or gas prices, or the war in Iraq. Incredibly enough, it didn't even come down to the...

"Liberty is connected with prose, and bureaucrats who want to destroy liberty tend to write and speak badly." -George Orwell

George Orwell: meet Tim Russert.

And all his blowhard kin.

Tuesday's biggest winner was not Barack Obama -- though it's impossible to overstate just how stunning his victory was, scoring...

Reeling from Tuesday evening's results, a desperate Hillary Clinton today promised voters an extraordinary new platform that, while making no mention of pressing political issues, includes "zero-calorie" Hershey Bars, a month's-worth of free Marlboro Reds, and--somewhat controversially, in certain quarters--a mysterious new kind of crystal methedrine, which while having all...

As we stagger out into the middle of the ring for Round 1,293 of this heavyweight title-fight between two battered contenders for the Democratic Party crown, the cumulative effect of all the punches, head-butts and knockdowns has been to make us all feel soul-weary and half-concussed. As one who's become...