but don't blame me.

And I don't wanna talk

about the H.R.S.

Yo, enough already!

I know it's a mess.

Don't know what's dirty?

Say, leave it to me,

For the final definition

Of obscenity.

Don't need no Constitution

To tell me what to do.

Gonna confiscate some albums,

Maybe videos, too.

Be a music censor,

Just to see how it looks.

If the polls jump up,

Then I'm goin' after books!

At his funniest and most playful, Hiaasen still remains dedicated to what he considers his responsibility to the public—being straightforward and up-front. "A columnist is paid to take a stand. If a reader can't figure out how I feel about something, then I don't deserve to take my paycheck home that week, because I copped out," Hiaasen says. "I feel strongly about the advocacy role of the columnist."

Certainly, he has never shied away from directly tackling issues in the public interest, even when doing so cost the Herald money, as in 1994 when the Lennar Corporation, implicated in the construction scandals following Hurricane Andrew, withdrew advertising because Hiaasen lambasted his own newspaper for promoting Lennar's new home giveaway contest. "According to an exciting full-page advertisement," he wrote, "a lucky reader will win Lennar's 'Home of the Future.' This is not to be confused with Lennar's 'homes of the past,' many of which splintered like Popsicle sticks during Hurricane Andrew." Particularly scathing, this column suggests that, as a "marvel of modern engineering," the home of the future might be made of shingles "actually nailed to the roofs," gables "actually anchored to the walls," real plywood in place of "pressed fiber-board," and might therefore remain "vertical, even in 100-mile per hour winds." (Interestingly, two years later, Hiaasen again had occasion to write about Lennar Homes, when sinkholes full of trash opened up behind houses in a Miramar subdivision the company had built.