Everything is in the moment, and it doesn t matter how trivial the notion is or what the background of the speaker happens to be. What matters is that it s national television, that it s celebrity and that it s done for laughs. There s something very sad about it when you think about that. I try not to be on television very much anymore. It s a whole different thing from writing a column.
TV is a case of image taking precedence over the word.
People see me on TV and say, Oh you re really somebody. Never mind that I ve slaved over all those words in my columns. Never mind that few people ever remember what you say on television a mercy or that it just floats out there into the air for a moment and is gone. I try to bring to an op-ed page a sense of where politics and the culture intersect. I like to write, for example, about the ways our movies are a reflection of our culture and how they illustrate what s going on today.