I'm sorry to announce that "W" will resume publishing next Wednesday.

I know, I know, with all that's been happening you had consoled yourself with the thought "Well, at least he's gone!". But sadly, no.

Before we venture once more upon the giddy thing that is "W," I wanted to take a moment to discuss why, when it returns, it won't be a casualty of the new political correctness -- what I am pleased to call "Operation Infinite Sheep."

You may have heard: the world is no longer as safe as it used to be, and it never was.

I am often asked -- rather more often than is comfortable -- "What makes you satirists so paranoid?" The answer is that, try as we might, we can never top life. As absurd as we try to be, life is always absurd-er.

On the day I will always think of as "911", I was putting the finishing touches on a piece that had the President assuring a class of second-graders that America was fully prepared to repel the annual terrorist incursions on our soil by the minions of Santa Claus.

Sure seemed funny at the time.

Then I turned on the radio.

Then I turned the radio off, and the TV on.

Then I experienced every human emotion.

A little while later, I sat down and wrote a short note to all of you, saying that "W" would come back when it was "appropriate", a period of time I privately thought might be somewhere between two weeks and never.

I was no longer sure there was a place for my flagrantly flippant brand of humor. I wanted to avoid even the merest possibility of trivializing so much incongruous death and unhesitating heroism. There were people who seriously wanted us dead. Unity seemed preferable to ideology.

But, you see, I had totally forgotten about George and Company. I had forgotten about those tight-eyed, mean-spirited homunculoids who believe that unity is conformity, and who will have it no other way -- for the very good reason that it is easier to herd sheep than lions.

What I failed to see, amidst all the steel and smoke and tears and fear, was the still form of Liberty, lying bleeding and black-tagged in the rubble. I was so intent on the enemy without that I momentarily forgot about the one within. Momentarily.

We are dubiously privileged to bear witness to the birth of a new type of war profiteer: a flag-draped hoodlum who intends to use this tragedy to transform America into an homunculoid paradise. These star-spangled thugs plan to take away even the few fading remnants of freedom that that we now enjoy. They have at last found a quiet alley in which to mug the Constitution.

And they are not subtle about it. We are warned "watch what you say." Dissent has become treason. We are asked to surrender our rights to shadows empowered to denounce, investigate, and imprison us. Due process is now called national suicide.

With straight face our leaders tell us that these are only emergency measures, that they will be discarded as soon as the "war" is over -- while simultaneously telling us that it will never end. At last, peace through eternal war! Where are the "Big Brother" posters? How long before we can enjoy the freedom of slavery?

Even worse, we are asked to ignore the evidence of our own eyes. We watched as the President learned that the collisions were deliberate. We witnessed the spectacle of the world's most powerful man, staring in impotent horror, naked and alone on the world stage, at the crossroads of history, without script or handler -- or clue.

We listened in amazement as the President's instant and prolonged disappearance was characterized as a response to the threat posed by a hijacked airliner -- a surreal argument, but one at least better than claiming he was menaced by a runaway Amtrak. Or an angry Holstein.

Later, we watched the President's yeoman performance in his brutally rehearsed speech before Congress. For once he didn't come off as our drunken Uncle Marvin offering the wedding toast. And in our relief we didn't even question some of the doubtful and dangerous things he said, or mind particularly the artlessly fabricated flummery of the "donated" policeman's badge -- a bit of stagecraft that obfuscated and cheapened that sacrifice.

And now he is called "statesman" and compared to Churchill. He is for the first time in his life respected and admired by more than five people at once. He may even be our Greatest President.

We have lost our tiny little minds.

At a time when we desperately need the Chief Executive from "West Wing" or "Fail Safe," we have instead the one from "Dr. Strangelove."

Here is my dilemma: how should I feel now that the President is revealed to be so like my portrayal of him -- a self-absorbed bundt cake of a man, certain to take to his heels at the first sign of danger. Should I be proud of my perception, or ashamed of my cynicism?

Perhaps I should simply be sorry that I wasn't wrong, because we have a serious problem here. There are a lot of people out there who hate us -- really hate us. They have what seem to them excellent reasons for doing so. They are not mad, they are mad. There is a difference. Whether we intend to kill them or befriend them, we had better come to understand them. We had better come to understand ourselves.

We have few tools for that task. We have been living on lies for so long that we may no longer be capable of recognizing the truth. We have been told lies about the origins of this tragedy, about our responses to it, and about the kind of America we are in danger of becoming as a result. We are about to learn some very unpleasant truths about ourselves and about the things that have been done in our name.

The bad news is that George Bush is not the person to lead us in this task. The good news is that he's not the one being asked to do so. We are lucky in that the man is temporary and the nation enduring. There is a difference between the President and the presidency. We are blessed with an abundance of rational and perceptive minds -- some of them to be found even in the current administration. We are a powerful, resourceful nation, and those that forgot that are in for a rude shock. We are even capable of overcoming our own ignorance.

But we accomplish nothing by kidding ourselves. It can serve no useful purpose to pretend that we see New Clothes where the rest of the world sees a naked man.

And even if the President were the silk purse his handlers desperately want us to see, If we have truly come to a time when the Commander-In-Chief of the world's most powerful nation can't function in the face of criticism, then we are some very sorry bunnies.

The President repeatedly has urged us to go back to the jobs we were doing before the attack. I take him at his word. My job was best described by the comic Lewis Black, who called himself, me, and all other American professional smartasses "Patriots in clown suits." As I see it, my job is to do my best to shine a light on the clowns dressed as patriots.

And I'm allowed to do that. I have a guarantee that says I can. It was signed by 39 men who at the time weren't entirely sure whether they were patriots or traitors. My guarantee says that America was founded in dissent. It says that dissent is our life's blood. It says that it is our moral duty to question the motives and actions of our government, to call a lie a lie, and a fool a fool.

Well, hell, I can do that.

See you next Wednesday.