Voices of Reason

Thirty Years of Interviews

From the December 1998 issue

(Page 11 of 13)

"The '50s were a wonderful time if you happened to be a blonde WASP cheerleader. Great! But if you were Jewish or gay or a tomboy, like me, or any kind of dissident, it was a very repressive and conformist period....For my generation, the baby boomers, born just after World War II, the '50s were a horror."

March 1996

From "Changing Channels," an interview with

C-SPAN's Brian Lamb

"I worked under the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, Arthur Sylvester, who you might remember was quoted early in the Kennedy administration as saying the government had a right to lie....It was my first education into how news was made, and what motivated correspondents and what motivated the government, how government attempted to shade and cover up and lie, and how the media in some cases would be a willing accomplice."

"The biggest change [in media] is the multiplicity of choice. ...85 percent of the American people have a VCR, 15 percent [subscribe to] an on-line service, and radio's been deregulated. So you have this tremendous choice out there of radio stations to listen to. You've got video games. People no longer get up in the morning and say, "What is the Today show doing for me today?" They get up and they really, literally have choice....If you're controlled by the media world, well, then it's your fault and you can't blame the media."

October 1996

From "On the Frontier," an interview with cyberguru Esther Dyson

"Having seen a non-market economy [in Russia], I suddenly understood much better what I liked about a market economy. ...People who produce things and work get rewarded, statistically. You don't get rewarded precisely for your effort, but in Russia you got rewarded for being alive, but not very well rewarded. A worker's paradise is a consumer's hell. People were beaten down. Everybody drank too much. Everything was hostile and dysfunctional. It was a good education about why the U.S. was a better place."

"Change means that what was before wasn't perfect. People want things to be better. They certainly complain all the time about their problems, but at the same time [it's hard] to be told that rules by which they lived, the assumptions on which they based their lives, that these things were wrong--and that's what change implicitly means. When you get a haircut and people say, `Gee, you look really great,' you always wonder, `What did I look like before?'"

November 1996

From "Contemplating Evil," an interview with author Dean Koontz

"Every time a poll comes out that shows the public has so little faith in this politician or that party, there's a hue and cry. But I actually find that hugely healthy. If 70 percent of the public believes nothing the president says--and an even higher number for Congress and the press--that's actually pretty healthy. It means people will think for themselves, and that's the way it should be."

January 1997

From "Looking for Results," an interview with Nobel laureate economist Ronald Coase

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