Dear Terrorists:

OK, you win. We surrender.

Never thought Id say that, but then, I never thought Id see gunmen burst into the offices of a satirical magazine as happened last Wednesday in Paris. Never thought Id see 12 people killed most were employees, two were police officers because a magazine published provocative cartoons mocking extremist Islam.

Here in the United States, as in France, as in pretty much every free place on the globe, weve cherished this crazy idea that people should be free to say whatever they darn well please. We have particularly believed in the power of humor, not simply as a means of expression, but as a way of puncturing the powerful and pricking the pretentious, of defying those who seek to make us fear.

But the bloodshed at Charlie Hebdo magazine forces us to realize the error of our ways. So I am here to announce that you have achieved your goal. From this moment on, no one on the planet the entire planet, do you hear? will ever, ever, ever again make fun of you. This is The End of Satire.

So youll hear no more cracks about Osama bin Gotten.

No one will ever again say youre full of Shiite.

And you wont have to hear anyone sing, Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran to the tune of an old Beach Boys song.

I even hear Jon Stewart is quitting The Daily Show to host a program on The Food Network, specializing in New Jersey cuisine. Mad magazine is going out of business and its famed mascot, the infidel Alfred E. Neuman, just became the latest journalist beheaded by the Islamic State. Bill Maher is teaching religious studies in Mississippi, Lewis Black is practicing Zen Buddhism and Stephen Colbert now claims Stephen Colbert was nothing more than a character he played.

You know, this isnt easy for us. In America, we have a tradition, stretching from Mark Twain to Will Rogers, to Dick Gregory to Norman Lear to the aforementioned Jon Stewart, of using humor to make trenchant political points. Probably, the French have a similar tradition.

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Terrorists usher in the end of satire