It is kind of tedious after a while, to parse politicians doing the same thing over and over again. The facts change from week to week, but the sort of masquerade doesn't.

After 9/11, we realized that all these silly culture wars, and arguing about rock lyrics... who cares? You know, we, for some reason, remembered what our real problems are.

To me, the fun part of both jobs is to always try to push the discussion and debate forward in some way. The most fun part of being a theater critic for the Times was always to try and champion something that maybe other people didn't like, or that was produced under obscure circumstances or had to fight for its life. And I would say in the column what I try to do is in some ways related in that I'm trying to fight for a point of view. I'm not trying to be a kingmaker in either job, and don't want to be, and shouldn't be.

Hollywood no longer depicts reporters in ruthless pursuit of criminals, high and low. Now they are the criminals.

The truth is that a lot of plays aren't political at all. In American theater history, political theater has tended to crop up when there's a crisis, a national crisis.

The principal House sponsor (of the Defense of Marriage Act), Bob Barr of Georgia has been married three times--which raises the question of why the act doesn't contain a three-strikes-and-you're-out provision.

There’s nothing entertaining about watching goons hurl venomous slurs at congressmen like the civil rights hero John Lewis and the openly gay Barney Frank. How curious that a mob fond of likening President Obama to Hitler knows so little about history that it doesn’t recognize its own small-scale mimicry of Kristallnacht.