You can begin quoting Russell Baker in this collection [So This Is Depravity], as you can begin reading him, almost anywhere. Open at random to "The Humble Dollar" (you will have to track it down; his latest book has no table of contents), and you come up with a small gem:

"The papers keep saying that the dollar is very weak. This is nonsense. The truth is that the dollar is absolutely powerless. I sent one for a pound of cheese the other day and it was thrown out of the store for giving itself airs."

It's all there in that quote: the timeliness, the air of crisis, the sweeping generalization and the quick, absurd illustration that puts everything in context and makes you want to laugh. The Baker technique is easy to reduce to a formula when you have read enough samples. Fortunately for Baker, the formula...