"Humor is reason gone mad."
-- Groucho Marx

Why the title "Reason Gone Mad" for a column of humor and commentary? Because Groucho's clever use of language combined fun, wisdom and absurdity, and that's a delicious combination.

"Reason Gone Mad" also has the added -- if unfortunate -- bonus of being an apt moniker for our times: It describes the incremental merging of politics, business, and public relations; the growing danger from our willingness to let Orwellian political speech go unchallenged; the inversion of populism to the point that "the people" now regularly cheer policies that favor the powerful; and the maddening transformation of our democracy and economy into a Potemkin-like shell of what it should -- and could -- be.

More than ever, today's writers and journalists must truly "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." And if we can do it with humor that reveals the "startling truth," all the better.