#tate

Gore Vidal, for instance, once languidly told me that one should never miss a chance either to have sex or to appear on television. My efforts to live up to this maxim have mainly resulted in my passing many unglamorous hours on off-peak cable TV. It was actually Vidal's great foe William F. Buckley who launched my part-time television career, by inviting me on to Firing Line when I was still quite young, and giving me one of the American Right's less towering intellects as my foil. The response to the show made my day, and then my week. Yet almost every time I go to a TV studio, I feel faintly guilty. This is pre-eminently the 'soft' world of dream and illusion and 'perception': it has only a surrogate relationship to the 'hard' world of printed words and written-down concepts to which I've tried to dedicate my life, and that surrogate relationship, while it, too, may be 'verbal,' consists of being glib rather than fluent, fast rather than quick, sharp rather than pointed. It means reveling in the fact that I have a meretricious, want-it-both-ways side. My only excuse is to say that at least I do not pretend that this is not so. ↗

— Christopher Hitchens

#cable-television #cable-television-in-the-us #conservatism #conservatism-in-the-us #gore-vidal

Abortion on demand, throughout the full nine months of a pregnancy, for virtually any reason, became public policy in the United States of America. No other developed democracy had, or has, such a permissive abortion regime. ↗

— Robert Casey

#america #any #became #demand #democracy

I don't understand art-speak. My pictures are big doodles. I'm amazed what people come up with when they look at them. There's one of a figure with two heads that somebody thought must be a comment on the state of matrimony. None of it is a comment on anything. ↗

— Billy Connolly

#anything #big #come #comment #figure

Most of the time, I grill over high heat. I like things to move fast. I like the sound and smell of a very hot fire. I gravitate towards dishes that you can get on and off the grill as quickly as possible. After a while, you'll know without thinking about it how hot the fire is. ↗

— Bobby Flay

#after #dishes #fast #fire #get

Anybody who has stood on the prairie in North Dakota has felt the force of the wind and knows that our state has an inexhaustible supply of wind power. The potential here to create jobs and draw millions of dollars in new investment to North Dakota is enormous. ↗

— Kent Conrad

#create #dakota #dollars #draw #enormous

Christmas is not a time nor a season, but a state of mind. To cherish peace and goodwill, to be plenteous in mercy, is to have the real spirit of Christmas. ↗

— Calvin Coolidge

#cherish #goodwill #mercy #mind #nor

They criticize me for harping on the obvious; if all the folks in the United States would do the few simple things they know they ought to do, most of our big problems would take care of themselves. ↗

— Calvin Coolidge

#big problems #care #criticize #few #folks

The government of the United States is a device for maintaining in perpetuity the rights of the people, with the ultimate extinction of all privileged classes. ↗

— Calvin Coolidge

#device #extinction #government #maintaining #people

It's a big flash of all these things and whatever you take out of that statement's one statement, one mind, one statement, one act, one show, and all the songs are one. ↗

— Alice Cooper

#big #flash #mind #one act #out

It was determined, as shown in the report of the Commission, which I can read to you, but I know you are familiar with the report. It states there was disagreement on this issue, particularly as the subject was debated, that there were different opinions about it. ↗

— John Sherman Cooper

#commission #debated #determined #different #different opinions