What are the rules of war for a humorist?
There are certain things about war that simply aren’t funny. Civilian deaths aren’t funny, any death isn’t funny. Military deaths, on either side, aren’t funny. But invariably because of the nature of humanity, people do things in wartime that are funny. Case in point, Geraldo Rivera. I had done a column [on March 25] saying that he had been the first journalist to be un-embedded. Sure enough, a week later he was un-embedded, and the Wall Street Journal actually reported this, they quoted me, that life imitates satire. My version of reality, my timeline, is sometimes a few weeks ahead of events. How often do you dismiss an idea because it’s in bad taste? Sometimes I have to reject an idea because I’m not sure how I feel about the issue. I got an e-mail from a reader the other day saying “I don’t feel you’re coming out strongly about how you feel about the war. Your strongest fans are against this war. Stop waffling and tell us how you feel.” I had to respond and say, “I’m not sure how
