The role of television is the illusion of company, noise. I call it the fifth wall and the second window: the window of illusion.

I have learned not to do predictions. It's not helpful, psychologically. I don't sit and fret about things.

Elie Wiesel says that the greatest evil in the world is not anger or hatred, but indifference. If that is true, then the opposite is also true: that the greatest love we can show our children is the attention we pay them, the time we take for them. Maybe we serve children the best simply by noticing them.

If they survive, today's children will inherit a world that our fathers and grandfathers have ravaged, where the seas are acidic cesspools that the whales have fled, where rain forests are Indian memories never to return, and where human greed has plundered Mother Earth's innards and turned human genes into factories for profit. They will inherit a diminished planet where fresh water is increasingly rare, and where fresh air is a commodity... We live in a world that fears and hates its young. How else can one explain the bequest of such a foul, polluted, and hollow inheritance?

At the risk of quoting Mephistopheles I repeat: Welcome to hell. A hell erected and maintained by human-governments, and blessed by black robed judges. A hell that allows you to see your loved ones, but not to touch them. A hell situated in America's boondocks, hundreds of miles away from most families. A white, rural hell, where most of the captives are black and urban. It is an American way of death.

Today's empire is tomorrow's ashes...

The role of television is the illusion of company, noise. I call it the fifth wall and the second window: the window of illusion.