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From Al Franken's brilliant new book, Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them -

Later, at the after-party given by Bloomberg News, I went up to Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of Defense and the architect of the Bush preemption doctrine. "Hi, Dr. Wolfowitz. Hey, the Clinton military did a great job in Iraq, didn't it?"

He looked at me for a couple seconds, then said, "Fuck you."

Which I thought was funny. I think he was "kidding on the square," a phrase I hope will catch on. It means kidding, but also really meaning it. People do it all the time. "Kidding on the square." If this book does two things, I want it to get "kidding on the squre" into the lexicon, and I want it to get Bush out of the White House.

I had a bunch of things I wanted to say about kidding on the square, and trying to find a balance between seriousness and comedy in my own writing, but I seem to be having some problems forming coherent sentences these days. (I mean, normally they had some grammatical issues, and I long ago decided that run-on sentences are now an acceptable choice of style, but, at least they used to kind of make some sense. I think.)

— September 5, 2003

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