... Don [Hewitt, 60 Minutes exec producer] told me, "You have set broadcast journalism back 20 years." Naturally, I was both proud and elated although too modest to say so, but broadcast journalism recovered with alacrity, my contract wasn't renewed, and the incident was forgotten.
Nicholas von HoffmanWe preach free enterprise capitalism. We believe in it, we give our lives in war for it, but the closest most of us come to profiting from it are a few miserable shares of stock in a company that doesn't pay large enough dividends to keep a small mouse in cheese. The truth is, most of us are job serfs. At a time when invested capital returns 20 to 30 percent, we have no capital. We only have our wages and salaries, and a debt so high that something like 20c on every dollar we earn is spent to pay off what we owe.
Nicholas von HoffmanSome flag waving is good, a lot of flag waving is tolerable, incessant flag waving is crazy and dangerous and easily manipulated by the war party to get people bubbling at the mouth in fear and rage.
Nicholas von HoffmanWhat the computer can do in art and design has turned aesthetics on its head... with the computer, things are not so much created as they are produced, with the producer-director becoming the star and the controlling force of much that was in other hands at other times.
Nicholas von HoffmanThe blame for the maddening complications of the federal tax system goes to the people with the most money
Nicholas von HoffmanTaken as a whole the mass media seldom rises to the level of deplorable trash, but it is also true that there is no mass audience in America for anything better.
Nicholas von HoffmanIn one of his puckish moods Saul talked the president of a university into letting him anonymously take an examination being administered to candidates for a doctorate in community organization. "Three of the questions were on the philosophy of and motivations of Saul Alinsky," writes Saul. "I answered two of them incorrectly."
Nicholas von Hoffman