Human Events, still Ronald Reagan's favorite publication, has interviewed Reason's Nick Gillespie as part of Lisa De Pasquale's ongoing feature, De Pasquale's Dozen (for an archive, go here). Snippets:
1. If there were a television channel that only showed one movie over and over, what movie should it be?
GILLESPIE…if there were a TV channel that showed the same movie over and over again, I'd wonder what the hell I was doing in Ceausecu's Romania.
3. In A Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell is strapped in with his eyes propped open and forced to watch images until he was "cured." If you could give President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Leader Harry Reid the "Clockwork Orange treatment," what movie would you make them watch? What movie would you make Republican leaders watch?
GILLESPIE: I'd make them watch themselves on C-SPAN. The great baseball pitcher Dennis Eckersley was a boozer and he tells a story of how his kids turned a video camera on him one Christmas morning and when he saw what a drunken jerk he was, he sobered up. Maybe it would work for pols.
9. Many have said that Washington D.C. is like Hollywood for ugly people. How do you think D.C. is like Hollywood? How is it different?
GILLESPIE: Having lived in LA and D.C., I'd have to say that differences are few and far between and constantly exaggerated. The two cities have nothing in common, other than they are packed with conniving bastards who are convinced of their own genius and want to finance everything with other people's money.
11. What books were on your summer reading list?
GILLESPIE: I spent a chunk of time reading Steig Larsson's trilogy—you know, Girl With Mike Tyson Tattoo, Girl With Urinary Tract Infection, and Girl Who Eats Breakfast at Anne Frank's International House of Pancakes. I enjoyed them immensely because they were about a political magazine editor who had enormous amounts of random sex while fighting off serial killers and eating like 5,000 sandwiches. Which apart from the sex and the serial killers, pretty much is totally right on when it comes to describing my experiences. Steig Larsson gets it, though I'm afraid that he's written himself out.
