Fifteen minutes after the closing credits, I was still laughing. Driving home from the movies while blinking back tears ain't easy, especially when navigating construction barriers on the Homestead Grays bridge.

After laughing non-stop for 85 minutes, it occurred to me that I was finally experiencing the effects of the endorphin high I'd read about in science magazines once upon a time.

With tears running down my cheeks and involuntary spasms triggering guffaws and coughing fits every few minutes, a cheap euphoria and the better angels of my conscience wrestled for control. I was a happy, slightly guilt-ridden mess all the way home.

The fake documentary responsible for my good time and bad conscience has the rather unwieldy title "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan."

Once again, the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen is up to his old tricks as the Kazakh TV correspondent Borat Sagdiyev, an anti-Semitic vulgarian so backward he packs live chickens in his suitcase for international flights and washes his face in hotel toilet bowls.

Just as he does on the Borat segment of "Da Ali G Show" on HBO, Cohen "accidentally" ambushes unsuspecting civilians for what they believe are interviews for a documentary no one outside of Central Asia will ever see.

Somehow, Cohen as Borat persuades "real Americans" to open up about the collective heart of darkness bubbling just beneath the surface of our politically correct manners.

To get a sense of the movie, one need only think back to the last season of "Ali G," when Borat cajoled an entire country-western bar full of revellers in Arizona to sing along with a fake Kazakh folk song that has as its chorus: "Throw the Jew down the well / so my country can be free."

If such jovial and unself-conscious anti-Semitism hadn't been caught by the camera, it would have been hard to believe, much less describe to those in denial about the resilience of American bigotry.

Still, it would be disingenuous to ignore the morally problematic nature of Cohen's "pranks" and its probable legal fallout as the film becomes an international sensation.

The lawyers for the pigeons who appear as themselves will doubtlessly argue that they had no idea that they were being made to look like racist fools and ignoramuses and that whatever release they signed doesn't cover the prospect of worldwide humiliation.

Victoria Alexander, a critic at FilmsInReview.com., wrote an effusive review of "Borat" that sums up my thoughts exactly: "Evil comedy, a new genre, has arrived. The bar has been raised and is flying over everyone's head. A fearless comedy."

Evil is the operative word here. "Borat" is, without a doubt, the most incendiary and culturally insensitive film to come out of the Hollywood machinery in a decade. It's also possibly the funniest in a generation because of the elan with which it savagely skewers our pretensions to cultural open-mindedness.

Only three other films have reduced me to a state of quivering jelly so quickly -- "Some Like it Hot," "Animal House" and "There's Something About Mary," roughly in that order and only on the first viewing. "Annie Hall" and the Chris Tucker installment of the "Friday" franchise are up there too, but no film caused my ribs to crack as consistently as "Borat."

My colleague Barry Paris has an erudite review of "Borat" in today's Magazine section, so I'm spared the duty of recapping the plot here. The fact that it planted doubts in my mind, if only briefly, about my capacity for empathy is the sign of a great film.

Speaking of empathy, two months ago I wrote a column criticizing Rick Santorum's use of his children in a political ad.

In criticizing the senator for dragging his kids into one of the most acrimonious Senate races in the country, I may have stepped over the line by giving nicknames to his six kids. The nickname "Big Lisp" seems to have outraged people the most.

I also denigrated the good work of Children Youth and Families (CYF), an Allegheny County agency that has dramatically turned itself around in the last decade.

Had I that column to do over again, I'd make the same points minus the gratuitous insults. Those were unnecessary. Sometimes, I'm just evil. Ask my wife.

See what laughing at a good movie and residual guilt can do to a person? Nope, I refuse to apologize for smacking Bush around. Do I look like John Kerry to you?