He [Reagan] likes to tell jokes and that's why he told the ethnic joke that got him into some trouble. Perhaps if reporters didn't overreact to a politician's telling the very same joke they routinely hear and tell in the city room, we'd get more humor.

Richard Nixon even before becoming president, before meeting Henry Kissinger, he said, "This is ridiculous. Communism is nationalist. The Chinese and Russian and Yugoslav and Cuban and - none of these communists get along, and the Koreans and the Vietnamese, and we can do business with them." And then he opened up to China, and that's when the Cold War started.

He [Reagan] likes to tell jokes and that's why he told the ethnic joke that got him into some trouble. Perhaps if reporters didn't overreact to a politician's telling the very same joke they routinely hear and tell in the city room, we'd get more humor.

I was able to do something that people cant do these days, which is to have quality time with the guys who were trying to be president and a number of them who got the job.

I teach at USC, and it's obvious to anyone who teaches college students that they don't cover much modern history and certainly not the modern presidency.

It had run as a column - I had worked at the paper since 1976, but the column had been running for 13 years, and I think it was a strong column, criticizing the war when the paper was supporting it.

At least 3% of the signers of the Constitution must have been gay, since that's the low estimate for any population sample. It was probably higher, given that they were a pretty talented bunch and wore wigs.