Russell Baker's sustaining grace as a columnist is his remarkable repertory of styles and voices. One outing he will be just plain funny, calling up chuckles out of the absurd. The next time he will be an essayist, meditating on some social turn, usually for the worst. He can be wickedly satirical, his prose a dangerously lulling parody of the sort of nonsense that passes for sober commentary in too much of the press. And finally he can be a nostalgic, almost lyrical stylist. Examples of Baker in four moods and modes:
AS HUMORIST
The papers keep saying the dollar is very weak....
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