A Quote by George Saunders

One of the things I noticed about the Trump supporters was a lot of projected fear. I can't tell you how many times a conversation went like this: "We've got to stop these immigrants, because it's terrible." I'd say, "Okay, what personally have you observed about this?" And there would be basically nothing in that box. And I'd say, "Where'd you get your information?" thinking they were going to say Fox. But they would always say, "Well, I get my information from all kinds of sources." Fox is kind of center-left to a lot of people now.
It is hard to tell where Fox ends and Trump begins. But if I had to choose one side of this, I would say Fox drives Trump more than Trump drives Fox.
I used to work in an office in New York for this terrible company, and we used to have staff meetings, and I would just count how many times the boss would use the phrase "in terms of." And he would say it like 30 or 40 times. And sometimes he would just say it. He'd be like, "Uhh, in terms of, how are we doing with that?" I realized nobody knows what they're talking about. Everyone's bullshitting. Maybe not everybody, but certainly a lot of people.
I get recognized by some people in my community, but not a lot. In fact, they would say, 'What do you do?' And I would say, 'Well, I did 'The Bernie Mac Show.'' And they would say, 'Oh, really? Well, do you know so-and-so?' And I'd say, 'Yeah, I hired them. I was the boss!' They don't believe it.
I think people were a little bit too concerned about what I would or would not be allowed to say. So let me just get that out of the way and get on to the business of telling, you know, a story, or two, or three, or 15. And also to say, "Okay, look. Here it is, don't worry about it. The restrictions and the watered-down and all the stuff that you thought was gonna happen really isn't the case." So we done got that out the way, and now we can just kind of move on.
I'm friends with a lot of writers and so many of them say how much they hate signings and how they leave after a certain period of time. But what is so hard about sitting there while people tell you how much they love you? And if you don't like it, well, learn to like it. I try to take one person at a time. I never look down the line to see how many more people are left. And I always try to make people talk about something besides whatever they planned to say.
I chose the name "Padded Room," because, when I'm in the booth, it would be the padded room. When I'm in the booth, I can say a lot of things and speak about a lot of things that normally I wouldn't be able to speak about to a friend or to family or to a crowd. A lot of times, the things that I say, if you had to categorize it, they would probably call me nuts or crazy. So, you add that aspect of "The Padded Room," which would be almost like an insane asylum.
A lot of people would say "well that's not a bad reputation. you sound like a pussy" and I would say yea. but I am passionate about music and being taken seriously about my music, so if you're going to mess with that, we have a problem.
The people who whine about Fox News are hypocrites - they say they're totally tolerant, but when they run into someone who doesn't share their assumptions, they say, 'Fox News is evil, and it must be stopped.'
The people who whine about Fox News are hypocrites - they say they're totally tolerant, but when they run into someone who doesn't share their assumptions, they say, 'Fox News is evil, and it must be stopped.
The actual communicative value of what we say is usually quite small. I've lived for times in small, isolated fishing villages, where everyone knows everyone each other and everyone knows what's going on and everyone's watched the same TV programs and, really, there's not a whole lot of new information to convey. But there's still a lot of talking. What's said doesn't seem to matter; that you say it, and who you say it to, and how you say it is what matters.
People feel better because Donald Trump says all kinds of things no one else would say and we get certain tendencies out of our system. So if attacking immigrants, say, is a substitute for doing something worse, there's at least a scenario under which that's a better alternative than something else that might have happened.
[Grandfather] would manufacture funnies with Grandmother before she died about how he was in love with other women who were not her. She knew it was only funnies because she would laugh in volumes. 'Anna,' he would say, 'I am going to marry that one with the pink hat.' And she would say, 'To whom are you going to marry her?' And he would say, 'To me.' I would laugh very much in the back seat, and she would say to him, 'But you are no priest.' And he would say, 'I am today.' And she would say, 'Today you believe in God?' And he would say, 'Today I believe in love.
Trump's Fox News fixation was a major theme of his presidency. He hired people from Fox, fired people because of Fox, and gave most of his national TV interviews to Fox. Sometimes it was hard to tell where Trump ended and Fox began.
How about something more interesting? How about you come forward and say, [Donald] Trump supporters, I absolutely know what you think about the Republican Party and the Republican establishment and how disappointed you are. Guess what, I'm going to tell you what you're right about. What they've disappointed about. The Republican Party is always eager to tell you the flaws of the Democratic Party. Take Trump supporters seriously by conceding what is true about their critique of the GOP.
Even if everything its detractors say about Fox were true, the most liberal of liberal attitudes would be that one would get credit for being in the lion's den.
I've said jokes where I thought people might get up and hit me for this. A couple of people have thought about it. But they didn't. It gives you a lot of power, because if you're on shows where people are worried about getting sacked and you're not, then you're transcendent because you say what other people would like to say.
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