Gene weingarten quotes

Life entails risk, and you have to draw some lines.

The intelligent Trump supporter will be someone who is so cynical about politics that he wants the world blown up, and doesn't care if the person doing the blowing up is an obnoxious, infantile vulgarian. I don't know where to find these people. Do you?

I need an irony punctuation mark for the clueless.

The verb "Garland" should be created. It would mean to unfairly put a stinking albatross around someone's neck, to make him unemployable.

Editorials are editorials. They a supposed to have an opinion, even a very strong one.

Donald Trump is showing the intellectual rigor, and emotional maturity, of a second grader. That's hardly being age-ist. This is a man who, when accused by Hillary Clinton of being a Putin puppet, actually responded: "No puppet! No puppet! YOU'RE the puppet."

Well, let’s start with the maxim that the best writing is understated, meaning it’s not full of flourishes and semaphores and tap dancing and vocabulary dumps that get in the way of the story you are telling. Once you accept that, what are you left with? You are left with the story you are telling. The story you are telling is only as good as the information in it: things you elicit, or things you observe, that make a narrative come alive; things that support your point not just through assertion, but through example; quotes that don’t just convey information, but also personality.

The horrifying thing is that nearly half of America seems in synch with xenophobia and race-baiting.

Being both stupid and ignorant is an accomplishment.

I think we too often go soft in trying to spare people the agony of confronting reality.

It doesn't entirely make sense that if 51 senators are from one party, and they can stick together, they can do whatever they want. Especially in this age of blatant, shameless gerrymandering.

I think we are all exhausted by, and sick of, Donald Trump.

It is a cliche, and it is also true, that humor springs from existential pain - from a need to blunt the awareness that life is essentially a fatal disease of unpredictable symptoms and unknown duration.

I would you say 25-50 percent is the likelihood that my cause of death will be suicide. Not because I am depressive but because I don't attach any moral baggage to suicide, and I have no religion to hold me back. I think suicide is our right, though I think we need to exercise it with knowledge that it can hurt others. So my assumption is that if I got a fatal disease, I'd end things before I got really sick.

I do not believe in public shaming. I do believe that young adults go to college to learn things, and that this process will almost inevitably result in their making mistakes and misjudgments and otherwise acting badly.

Hillary Clinton rubs people the wrong way, for valid reasons.

I once found myself driving, smoking a cigar, taking notes, and talking on the phone at the same time. I only became completely aware of this when I had to shift, and realized something had to give.

I think Donald Trump's going to quickly disappear from radar.

We separated like oil and water. In the cafeteria, you'd see a table of black jocks, table of white jocks, table of rich white kids, table of Hispanic kids, table of Chinese kids, table of druggies, table of chatterboxes, and so on. Wait! There's a diverse table over there! With a few kids of different tenacities and economic status! Oh, that's the nerds. That's where I sat. We weren't cool enough for the other tables, so we didn't discriminate against anybody.

Reporters are not merely recording devices that take down what people say and repeat it in print; we are expected to use our knowledge and experience both for triage - deciding what's important to cover and what isn't - and for contextualizing, analyzing and such.

Most men I know adore women, and I am including gay men. I think studies on jury selection show that the biggest critics of women - people less likely to trust their character or judgment - are women.

Is it really the right of the media to dictate to the president whom he will allow in his press conferences? That's tetchier. And then there is the added issue of whether it would be a service to their readers, and the country at large, for, say, the Washington Post to take itself out of the room -- meaning they don't have the ability to ask important questions the president is obliged to answer? I think that would be a mistake.

The one thing an aspiring writer must understand is that it's hard. If you think it's not hard, you're not doing it right.

I feel like no matter what happens in my career endeavors after today, going to grad school is one of the best decisions I've ever made.

America is an incredibly polarized country politically. I think ANY Republican would start out with 42 percent of the vote.

An editorial writer might consult a reporter to see what she thinks, if it is what she covers. But they are entirely independent.

I don't see a point in advertising my marital status when men don't. Completely ridiculous.

I think Hillary Clinton will make a fine president, and (most important) I am comfortable with her making gigantic, momentous decisions.

I am perhaps being charitable but I think there are a bunch of people out there who feel stupid. Some will be feeling stupid for stupid and evil reasons - HEY, TRUMP HASN'T DEPORTED ALL THE BROWN PEOPLE YET - and some will feel stupid for good reasons, such as that he lied about everything. But I think being made to feel stupid is damage.

Being "Jewish" is way stronger culturally than it is religiously.

One thing I am learning from the kitten is that everything he is doing seems to be in preparation for murder.

I was possessing heroin in fairly large quantities in New York City during the years of the draconian Rockefeller Drug Laws. Had I been busted, I would have faced mandatory life in prison. I don't think many white kids walked, either. I knew one who got 15 years for pot.

It is not a coincidence that Donald Trump has attracted white supremacists.

I am not saying Rubin Carter was guilty. I am saying he was very likely guilty.

Donald Trump is an awful loser.

I like to eat alone in restaurants, with a book, particularly if I am out of town, alone, on business. It's relaxing. I feel not even a twinge of embarrassment. Is this gender-related? Is there a lingering feeling among women that if they are alone in public, they will be judged to be spinsters or spinsters-to-be?

My neighborhood is fairly white, yet the local middle school is all black. It is bad. It is very bad.

Ask creative people where they get their ideas, and they will roll their eyes. It's the most common question, but it's also a bad one because the answer is inevitably disappointing. From the inside, creativity seems like an arduous task, often involving plebeian, imperfect choices, driven less by inspiration than by deadline.

I always love it when a small paper wins. When I was growing up in the Bronx, the editor of the Riverdale Press - a neighborhood rag - kept submitting his columns for a Pulitzer. We laughed and laughed at his ego. He finally won.

Peggy Noonan is not as good a columnist as my colleague Kathleen Parker, in my opinion, but they share something related to their Pulitzers. Kathleen won in in 2010. They won it for a similar reason. They broke from their crowd, and sprinted away. They delivered the politically unexpected take, at some peril to their readership.

I read a lot of conservatives. They are thoughtful and intelligent and annoying, and I always read them because they have viewpoints that challenge my own, even thought they are wrong. But this does me no good because, being intelligent and sophisticated human beings, they are all contemptuous of Trump. They hate him. They find him...vulgar.

Mostly, you become a writer not because you want to get rich or famous, but because you have to write; because there is something inside that must come out.

You know, I am not a particular Kennedy apologist or an awed fan - I was 12 when he was murdered - but I have discussed Kennedy with historians. For his incredibly short tenure, he was a very important president. Many put him in the second tier, below the big three and surrounded by Truman and Eisenhower. Kennedy moved our soul. Changed our thinking about service and governance. And won big in the greatest nuclear crisis of the Cold War.

The odd thing is that Trump's hand movements don't seem to coordinate with the topic at hand. Most pols manage to make their hand movements correspond with the message, so a slash will accompany emphasis, etc. Trump's got about three moves, the most notable of which is his "okay" gesture, making a circle with his thumb and forefinger. Anyway, Trump has only a few gestures, including that one, and to my eye he uses them seemingly indiscriminately. I've seen him use the "okay/f.u." sign to be pedantic.

I have been called the antichrist, though, by Nazis.

I believe the publisher is a member of the editorial board, and I think his vote would matter.

I think there are a good many Donald Trump voters who are sick of government as it is practiced in America and genuinely want to blow up the system and see what happens. They are stupid - or at least unwise - but not necessarily racist.

I believe that the fragile-flower, idea-intolerant society of victimhood that is being cultivated in many colleges today is really bad.

I think Trump wants to be dictator. I don't think the courts will allow him to be, and I think that after months of revolting sycophancy, neither will Congress. He will sink to such a popularity trough that even those spineless, craven gophers will cave.

I think Trump is simply inept, incapable of rescuing himself.

Donald Trump would never belong to a church that required a ten percent hit. He's too smart.

It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots.

I don't hold doors for women. I'm not sure I really differentiate between men and women, in my door-related activities. Do women really care about this issue?

I don't think I could ever love someone with whom I fundamentally disagreed, politically.

I think politics is everything.

I believe that sensitivity to issues of race and ethnicity is important, and nuanced, even more so when it intersects with the issue of free speech.

I'll smoke anything. I won't spend a lot of money on cigars, because I consider that too self indulgent. $3, max, except for special occasions. And yes, I do know the difference.

I believe men's faces come in two kinds: Faces that need a blade, and faces that need an electric. I never was happy with an electric. I became pizzaneck.

Trump cannot change because in his mind, he has ALWAYS been rewarded for his boorish, stupid, arrogant behavior.

Johnny Hart became much less funny after he found sobriety, and religion, around the same time.

One of my favorite footnotes in the hypochondria book [The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death.] was about the death of one of the King Charleses. He was essentially bled and vomited to death by his doctors. They also drilled holes in his head.

Hillary Clinton was a cute, smart chick in the 1960s.

That is my theory to explain the I don't knows. It's human.

Donald Trump is a boor, and cannot stop being a boor.

I don't think the people of Chicago should be robbed of their birthright to be perennial losers.

Politics is how you think about life itself.

Allowing a non-lawyer to be on the Supreme Court strikes me as a very American thing, in a good way. Another is that the speaker of the house doesn't have to be a member of congress. He or she can be anyone. I'm not sure if James Madison really intended that, or if the wording was accidentally imprecise, but the Constitution, as a recall, simply says that the House shall chuse a speaker.

On Twitter, people like me regularly get called "sore losers" by Trumpeters. It just makes me roll my eyes. This is not about winning and losing. We all lost, even them, they just don't know it yet.

I think Marco Rubio could never have recovered from revealing himself to be pathetic.

Ever since roughly 1890, when snot poets first decided that rhyme was confining and unnecessary, every idiot with a pen fancied hisself a poet. The mere act of rhyming was suddenly regarded as a quaint, mannered, and uncool atavism, consigning doggerelists like me to the trash bin of literary history.

When my daughter was a senior in high school, I remember noticing, almost in passing, that her friends were very cute. Which made me realize her friends' fathers probably found Molly very cute.

Making stuff up is the worst thing a journalist can do. Plagiarizing is the second worst.

I don't think there is prejudice against atheists the same way there is prejudice against fat people. I don't think people hate or contemn atheists; I think people feel sorry for atheists.

Donald Trump's humor is hostile to a fault.

I disagree with those who suggest that we permanently close down the U.S. mail on the grounds that it can kill you. That is sheer hysteria. I think we should permanently close down the U.S. mail on the grounds that it has been making us sick for quite a while.

The Jewish women like Bethany Mandel fare the worst, because they are getting both antisemitic stuff and anti-woman stuff.

I have some advice: Unless she is pregnant or handicapped, don't give up a seat to a woman unless you KNOW she is well over 60. Trust me on this, even if I am a liberal.

I don't consider Hillary Clinton to be the lesser of two evils.

I personally favor old mechanical watches, but my snobbery does not extend to demanding that all people wear them. My snobbery demands that no one wear a digital.

Shakespeare was such a splendid vulgarian.

I think I might prefer women without makeup. Though I don't really know, because I am not good at identifying makeup. I once wrote in the chat, a long time ago, that my wife wore no mascara. She later informed me dryly that she has worn mascara every day that I ever knew her. Or maybe eye liner. I forget. Which is the one you always wear, girls.

The people who are voting for Trump are not voting rationally.

I am deebly self-conscious, and bad.

It is hard to quantify the value of name recognition, but Donald Trump has gone from fame to international mega-fame. That has to be gargantuan when your business is your name.

Knowing the identity of the leaker helps you analyze the likelihood that the material is real.

Every single fat comic uses his weight as a punchline. There is something sad about that.

The total wall is between editorial and newsroom. And unbreachable barrier. For good reason. It doesn't mean the two sides don't talk.

Nationalism and patriotism are two sides of the same coin, and the most nationalistic / patriotic country in the last 300 years was Germany during the Third Reich.

International politics is not my strong suit. The older I get the less certain I am that I even HAVE a strong suit.

I always thought there was some cleverness to the joke diet in which you could eat as much as you want and as often as you want, but everything must be consumed naked in front of a full-length mirror. That would deter me!

Rhyme is cool again. It's because of hip-hop. Bless you, hip-hop.

If I lived where I live right now, and my kids were in middle school, they would be the only white kids in the school. That is not a burden I wanted to place on them. My preference would have been a school that was totally diverse - half and half, or close. I wouldn't have hesitated at all if they would have been in the racial minority. But to be the only white kids: I don't think that would have been fair to them.

When Trump says fake news, he means journalism that makes points with which he disagrees, usually about him.

I very much believe in the Intentional Fallacy. If Donald Trump lies and dopes and bumbles and staggers his way into peace in the middle east, he gets credit for it. He owns it.

We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we'll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don't want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.

First, in a love song, or any song for that matter, using a plastic word like "inhibitions" is just completely without feel or texture. It demonstrates a tin ear for communication.

Donald Trump is way worse than George W. Bush. George W. Bush is a fundamentally decent man of limited intelligence who surrounded himself with awful people who dragged him in terrible directions. He was a bad president. But he was not actively malign, in the sense that he did what he thought was right. I don't think this guy cares what's right. I think he's in it for self-aggrandizement, for profit, and for power.

I really value unforgettable moments. Things you can tell people about. We have too few of them in our lives, and it is all too seldom that we can create one such moment for a stranger.

The advent of DNA testing, and the number of convictions thrown out, has confirmed that we've put LOTS of innocent people to death. There need not be any other argument against death penalty.

You should support Israel not because it is Jewish but because it is a sane, secular democracy. You want Lebanon to be at peace. You don't care much about Kuwait.