Boston College professor Paul Lewis is an able writer and possessed of sharp wit; for instance, he coined the term "Frankenfood." His academic field of expertise is humor, but when Lewis wrote a caustic op-ed piece for the Toronto Globe and Mail last month, not everyone got the joke. Titled "Can We Democrats Be Your Next Province?" Lewis playfully suggested that the states that voted Democratic in the 2000 election might secede and join Canada. But his tone was bitter and corrosive -- e.g., "We new Canadians will (shortly) acquire a national leader capable of producing coherent sentences in at...