I'm somewhat diffident about cuffing television on its rabbit ears for not being something else.

Only a few reporters...discerned that Anderson really combined Carter's ineptness with Reagan's simplicities.

The New York Times will tell you what is going on in Afghanistan or the Horn of Africa. But it is no exaggeration that The New York Times has more people in India than they have in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is a borough of two million people. They're not a Bloomingdale's people, not trendy, sophisticated, the quiche and Volvo set. The New York Times does not serve those people.

Television has borrowed from the carnival midway the barker's tease: "Coming Up Next: a Perfect 10" (Sex? Bo Derek? No, the weatherman comes on to say that tomorrow will be nice).

I'm somewhat diffident about cuffing television on its rabbit ears for not being something else.

"You wanna deliver papers in a big city?" an expert with a bent nose told me, "then you gotta shake the trees to find the gorillas to do it..."

In Halberstram's fun house, television elected John F. Kennedy in 1960 (presumably Richard J. Daley and his precinct captains were at home on election night watching the Cook County ballots being counted on television).