MIKE ROYKO

Whether one eats a cat or not is a personal choice, and I don't want to sway anyone one way or another. But if you do, there is one obvious cooking tip: Always remember to remove the bell from the cat's collar before cooking.

Forty years ago, we were on the tail of the Front Page era. There was a different point of view. Reporters and editors were more forgiving of public people. They didn't think they had to stick someone in jail to make a career.

Reagan's approach will achieve one of the basic goals of the conservative: Things remain basically the same. The rich stay rich and the poor stay poor, or even a little poorer.

It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an 'information highway', but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.

Hollywood has always been political. They consider it their right and duty to tell us what is politically good and right.

God tipped the country and all the fruits and nuts rolled west.

Hollywood likes to boast that it can elevate the national conscience.

The subject of criminal rehabilitation was debated recently in City Hall. It's an appropriate place for this kind of discussion because the city has always employed so many ex-cons and future cons.

Contrary to popular belief. It's much wiser to take money from the poor than the rich.

Hollywood is right. A good and strong movie can have a more powerful social impact than any and all political speeches or newspaper editorials and columns.

Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax.

When Michael Jordan quit, I suddenly found myself without a sports hero.

I never went to a John Wayne movie to find a philosophy to live by or to absorb a profound message. I went for the simple pleasure of spending a couple of hours seeing the bad guys lose.

There is only one way to solve the alleged crisis of the erosion of 'family values.' And that is to get right down to the root cause of the problem.

When I asked him how long he had been driving a taxi, he said, Dree mouse.

It's no coincidence that female interest in the sport of baseball has increased greatly since the ballplayers swapped those wonderful old-time baggy flannel uniforms for leotards.

In attacking the young, the liberal, and the black, Daley was in the mainstream of America's mass prejudices. The Democratic party may have suffered by his actions, but Daley came out...even more popular than before because bust their heads was the mood of the land and Daley had swung the biggest club.

When I conducted a beer-rating session last year, I wrote that most American beers taste as if they were brewed through a horse. That offended many people in the American beer industry, as well as patriots who thought I was being subversive in praising foreign beers. I have just read a little-known study of American beers. So I must apologize to the horse. At least with a horse, we'd know what we're getting.

Anyone who contributes to the defense fund of pornographers is a mental moonbeam.

For some people, being free means being free to keep their feet on someone else's chest.

Newspapers, magazines and other publications have the constitutional right to be offensive, even disgusting. As evidence of that, just watch this space regularly.

Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws...It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem.

Anyone who gives a surgeon six thousand dollars for breast augmentation should give some thought to investing a little more in brain augmentation.

Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn't the faintest idea what the heck is really going on.

Why do you think the lottery is so popular? Do you think anybody would play if the super payoff was a job on the night shift in a meat-packing plant? People play it so if they win they can be rich and idle. Like I told you years ago - if work is so good, how come they have to pay us to do it?