Here is my secret: While the absurdities of life are always the fundamental subject of this column, I wish politics, the ultimate absurdity, did not so often demand attention.

I wish instead that the reading public was clamoring for whimsical subjects to read. Take it from me, they aren't. I can write a light, allegedly humorous piece about squirrels, for example, and the next day a great ominous silence envelops my work area, punctuated only by the sound of crickets rubbing their wings together.

Yet if I make the mildest criticism of Sarah Palin, a huge volcano of name calling erupts and passing sailors find themselves blushing involuntarily without understanding why.

Now, it's not that I mind being abused by people who don't agree with me -- as a professional husband, I am used to that. It's that politics so rarely bears any relation to real life and yet people care about it passionately as if it weren't a farce. That is depressing.

Even the terms of politics are absurd. Consider the political groupings "left" and "right." These tags can be traced to the seating arrangements of delegates in the national assembly convened in late 18th century pre-revolutionary France. I am not making this up.

It seems that where the delegates sat indicated their political position on the great issues of French life at the time -- for example, the price of cheese or whether to surrender now or later (OK, I made that up).

It doesn't get much better by substituting words like conservative, liberal or moderate. About what? Plenty of examples exist of conservatives who are unconservative, liberals who are illiberal and moderates who are immoderate. Why, some days I will be conservative in the morning, liberal in the afternoon and then mellow enough to be moderate by dinner time.

When these imprecise terms get applied to foreign countries, it really gets crazy. We hear sometimes about "moderate" elements of the Taliban. Presumably they allow you a blindfold before they cut your head off.

Still, as a person who trades in political caricatures, I am not about to swear off the current political terms. They are essential to the satirist's trade and I will continue to use them to pull the legs of my favorite targets, the conservatives, to see if it is true that they have little silver bells attached to their loafers.

That does not set aside the truth that the only real political names that count are crazy or sane, stupid or intelligent. As I see it, the only party that matters is the party of the sensible, which takes its members from liberals, conservatives or moderates, Democrats, Republicans or Independents (sorry, no Naderites, I have my standards).

Of course, real differences exist in political philosophies and I am not here to minimize them as I proceed to show that leg pulling is not restricted to chiropractors anymore. But sane and smart people who disagree can still compromise for the good of the nation, a quaint notion now largely forgotten.

You may have noticed that the political discussion in this country has become totally nuts. I am perhaps biased (definition: I hold a different opinion than yourself) but I think those on the right side of the assembly on the question of French cheeses or anything else are currently more nuts than the other side, who have had their own problems in the past.

Some on the right really do believe that a health-care reform that keeps the robber-baron insurance companies in business is socialism. They really do believe that President Barack Obama is a dangerous radical -- and never mind that if this were remotely true, he would be the most cautious and compromising radical in the history of the world.

Here is the part where I blame George W. Bush. Just kidding! I blame Ayn Rand, the fountainhead of crazy ideas for several generations of the politically impressionable. The old greed-is-good gal is the subject of a couple of new biographies and her joyless face is everywhere -- including The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review and Reason magazine.

Although greed is actually not good, and not all conservatives fall prey to her literary charms, her credo has empowered the insecure greedy and inspired a cult following. I cannot think of her equivalent on the opposite side of the political spectrum, where people are forced to become crazy entirely on their own initiative.

Yes, woe is us, thanks to Ayn Rand's unreal fiction and its terrible influence on young and old alike. You show me a politically crazy person and I'll show you a library card holder. If only readers would be satisfied with funny little stories about squirrels.

Jack Kelly and Reg Henry spar on the topics of the day exclusively at PG+, a members-only web site of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Our introduction to PG+ gives you all the details.