I love my cross-sectioned, cross-cultural audience. Some of them are doing better than the average guy, but my audience has always been people who are struggling to stay in the middle class.

This whole notion of a post racial America was nonsense from the very beginning. It was a bad idea, a bad notion, a bad formulation when it was first raised.

It's hard these days to have a conversation, at least it is for me, about [Truman]Capote without "Good Night, and Good Luck" coming up in the same conversation.

The storm came. Lives were washed away. Ancient pains resurfaced. Now it is time for a sea of change.

I still think in this country, and this might surprise you, the one thing that George Bush said as president that I do agree with, I love that phrase, "the soft bigotry of low expectations."

Even in the era of the first black president, racism is still the most intractable issue in USA. Regarding poverty, half of all Americans are either in or near poverty. Poverty is certainly worse for African-Americans now than it was during King's lifetime.

When it comes to the president, we have to respect him, we have to protect him, and we have to correct him. And in my career, since he'd been on the national stage at least, I've had - I've always respected the president.