HARRY SHEARER

Harry Shearer’s “High Desert Drifters” (Man Bites Town, April 8) is another example of why he occupies the way cool end of a spectrum that includes the late Andy Kaufman (the other end) and Garrison Keillor (center). The best satirists can undermine our vanity by slipping in references to forces in our lives that we mistakenly thought we had dismissed, outgrown, transcended or rejected. But even for someone gifted with impeccable social timing, this is an heroic task in an age when nobody gets to see the wizard, not nobody, not no how. I respectfully submit, however, that Shearer wears the ruby slippers. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a chakra of a different color.

JOHN SARLI

San Bernardino