Maestro

Not long before he died, Kurt Vonnegut appeared on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart and rattled off a list of helpful advice to new democracies like Iraq, gleaned from American history:

After the first 100 years, you have to let your slaves free.
After the first 130 years, you have to let your women vote.
In the beginning, if there is a whole lot of unrest and killing, well, that's pretty much okay.

To which, the never-at-a-loss Steward replied, "It's sad to see how you've lost your edge."

Which got even Vonnegut to laugh. Even in his eighties, Vonnegut could still bring it.
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Well, I've always been a fan of Tom Lehrer - partly for his clever wordplay ("then the guy who's got religion'll/ tell you if your sin's original"), but mainly for his go-for-the-throat social commentary ("Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.").

Lehrer released few songs, and stopped performing and recording before I was born, so I'd pretty much written him out of the modern world. I still listen to him and get a laugh now and then, but I was pretty sure he was gone.

But, of course - the internet exists to satisfy the curiosity of people like me, so when I think "I wonder if..."
-I find out that Mr. Lehrer performed in England as recently as 1998, and he's even kept his edge, as evidenced by this modern gem:

'I'm not tempted to write a song about George W.Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them."

Ah, Maestro. How I've missed you.