This is a time when we must heed the lessons of the Holocaust, revere the memories of Japanese-Americans, and venerate the integrity of the Judiciary. We must understand patriotism as the relentless defense of civil liberties and as an unyielding resistance to the normalization of discrimination, numbness, cynicism, and detachment.

On May 6, Americans will understandably be more impatient to watch the 2012 Comedy Awards than to discover the winner of the second round of the French presidential elections. And this is not because now that Stephen Colbert has a Super-Pac, American politics have officially merged with comedy.