...to come live with me and bear my children.

I'm glad to see someone over 30 is talking some sense. Since I'm over 30 now too, I wonder what we can do? Sure, all the other 20 and 30 somethings pretty much hate the way things are working out. The ones who didn't have to enlist. Well most of those too I'd imagine. But how to reach the heartland? Are you saying this stuff to The People on your radio show and not just the The Choir on Salon?

I have enjoyed Garrison's humor since the 1970s, when I was a college student in the Twin Cities. I listen to the show, I buy the books, I read this column -- hell, I I buy the audiobooks and CDs. And I will continue to do so.

But every now and then Garrison writes something that is so wrong that I have to hope that it's humor, and yet stated so unusually flatly that I hear him meaning what he says. Such is the case in this column, where he expresses disdain for the work of new Nobel literature laureate Harold Pinter.

Maybe Garrison is just goofing off, and, if so, that might be an appropriate tribute to the elusive Pinter. Pinter's plays evoke the uncertainties and anxieties of 20th century life better than any other playwright on the globe. They are anything but tedious if read imaginatively, or, if well staged. And, while they may be dismal at times, that's the nature of what the writer is depicting, not the way it is depicted. It's about time that the best British playwright of the late 20th century got the Nobel.

So, while I still enjoy and admire Garrison's writing, and even respect the short scripts that he's written for the stage, he is NO drama critic.

I expected more back-of-the-bisquit-box, homespun hokum, but Mr. Keillor delivered a deft, punchy political essay. I guess I'd better go back and read the rest of his Salon contributions.

The best jolt I got was after I read the Harrold Pinter/Harriet Miers juxtapostition (Harrold Miers). Perfect.

It is always great to read Garrison, but especially when he (lightly) touches the political vermin of the day. HIs "Mr. Blue" columns just after the 2000 election remain priceless; so too this sendup of Quasi-Christian self-righteousness. He is a national treasure!