A woman in the audience asked [Barack] Obama about her mother. Her mother was 101 years old and was in need of a certain kind of procedure. Her doctor didn't want to do it because of her age. However, another doctor did and told this woman there is a joy of life in this person. The woman asked President Obama how he would deal with this sort of thing, and Obama said we cannot consider the joy of life in this situation. He said I would advise her to take a pain killer. That is the essence of the President of the United States.

The media has been very bad about informing us about what is going on. They focus on surface things. They do not focus enough on the fact that the Fourth Amendment is on life support and that we need a return to transparency in government.

There wasn't much said, but I was thinking, perhaps unkindly - not unkindly,but on - inaccurately of Theodore Dreiser's "Carrie," when the main character in "Carrie" has been brought down by Carrie and his - he - dress is disheveled and all that sort of thing. And that's the last I ever saw of [Will Shawn].

This is a dishonest administration, because it is becoming clear that the unemployment statistics of the [Barack] Obama administration are not believable.

Counting the ones I've co-edited, I guess about 28 or 29 [books I've written].

The main jobs would be The New Yorker, The Village Voice, The Washington Post and - I'm thinking of The Reporter when Max Askeli was there, but I got fired from The Reporter.

What's wrong with it is, it lowers, to say the least, the credibility of the magazine. And if I were writing for [The New Republic ], I would feel diminished because the owner had done such a thing [fire a journalist].