Anyone will acknowledge that there's a lot of people other than those who are elected who run the government, and who are in permanent positions, and long-term positions, appointed positions - not voted in by anybody. That kind of gnaws away, I think, at the idea of democracy. The two-party system, again, is an issue. What we see is no desire on behalf of anyone to begin to address these problems.

It may sound weird, but I don't really look for culture, particularly in an American city.

Fame is not your friend. It ain't necessarily your enemy. It is what it is.

I think everyone's kind of just whistling and pretending everything's OK. At the heart of this is the cover-up, and the misleading the country to war in Iraq. And quite honestly, I don't think Republicans actually did a particularly good or sophisticated job, but I think everybody wanted to be fooled. I remember being on the Bill Maher show talking about how ridiculous this was before the invasion. And, you know, a lot of people, even Democrats, had been so easily thrown into this fear frenzy that they lost common sense.

If your intentions are already bad, and then you still make giant mistakes, it seems like things just get worse. I get little joy seeing this, because what I don't see is the public saying, "Wow, those guys are really bad, maybe we should re-evaluate everything." I don't see that response with the scandals, I don't see it with the indictments, I don't see it after Katrina, I don't see the public going, "Wow, let's really re-examine the entire direction this country is going."

It's difficult to overcome what you're getting beamed into your brain by the television every day. The worthlessness of journalism today is just making the country confused and bewildered and lost.

Cuba was fantastic, at least just in terms of... Not to romanticize or glorify it, but just seeing a place that had not really been touched by the hand of American capitalism. Because it's a genuinely different place. A lot of times when you travel, things start to feel the same from place to place to place, because the same people own everything all around the world.