For members of a traditional society where many traditions have been discredited, an interest in modernity can result in a restless sophistication. Mehmet Ertegun seems not to have been a restless man.

The work of television is to establish false contexts and to chronicle the unraveling of existing contexts; finally, to establish the context of no-context and to chronicle it.

The Turkish Embassy in Washington is an ornate, eclectic building on the corner of Twenty-third Street and Massachusetts Avenue which was built originally for Edward Hamlin Everett, the man who put the crimp in bottle caps.

What is loved is a hit. What is a hit is loved.

Irony has seeped into the felt of any fedora hat I have ever owned - not out of any wish of mine, but out of necessity. A fedora hat worn by me without the necessary protective irony would eat through my head and kill me.

The idea of choice is easily debased if one forgets that the aim is to have chosen successfully, not to be endlessly choosing.

I have made sense of my life by developing an ability to analyze Mainstream American Cultural Artifacts.