Michael Pollan Quotes

The media increase the political nastiness while distancing voters from those clashes. Citizens become spectators. ­Headline-­driven news emphasizes the extremes, the fights, the hysteria, the sensational. Political reporters, trying to appear objective by quoting two opposing sides to almost every story, mostly sharpen the differences, slighting any centrist position.

The people we elect aren't bipartisan. The American public is bipartisan.

American media has just become talk radio, incredibly partisan name-calling and op-eds.

This trend of reporting process over substance is unfortunate, if omnipresent. Even worse is the media's inability - or unwillingness - to fact-check Republicans who are angry about the Democrats trying to debate and vote on Iraq policy.

One of the great cliches of campaign journalism is the notion that American elections have long since ceased to be about issues and ideas.

The fact is that in a way, journalists become a kind of default in the system when you don't have substantive two-party back-and-forth inside of the government.

We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists

My view of my role is that together with like-minded men and women, I could help contribute to a bipartisan view of American engagement in the world for another period; I could do my part to overcome this really, in a way, awful period in which we are turning history into personal recriminations, depriving our political system of a serious debate.

Being respected by people on both sides of the aisle is really important to me - even in an age when giving a hearing to 'both sides' is considered a smear in some corners.

NPR editors and journalists found themselves caught in a game of trying to please a leadership team who did not want to hear stories on the air about conservatives, the poor, or anyone who didn't fit their profitable design of NPR as the official voice of college-educated, white, liberal-leaning, upper-income America.

Conservative talk radio works because there are lots of conservatives who are convinced that they are not getting the whole story from the regular media.

With the end of the nominating process, American politics leaves logic behind.

If someone agrees with you they're a statesman. If someone disagrees with you, they're a politician.

Liberalism is today charged in the mind of most Americans with nothing less than national, racial and spiritual treason.

Unfortunately when we get to the “debates” as we all know these are never debates. There are questions where there is never a follow up, where you ask a question and I the candidate give an answer that has nothing to do with your question, and then we go on and somebody else asks the other person and back and forth. It is not just the fault of the candidates. We tend to have to have a simple short answer to complex problems for the sound byte requirements of modern journalism and perhaps the education levels of the average citizen. Complex problems can’t be reduced to that.

There is a power in our land, irresponsible, corrupt and malicious—‘the press,’ which has created the intense feelings of hostility that has arrayed the two parts of the country against each other, which must be curbed and brought within the just limits of reason and law, before we can have peace in America. We can deal with armies who have a visible and tangible existence, but it will require tact and skill and courage to clip the wings of this public enemy.

In America you've got a one party state except that you've got two of them.

To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil.

Any legislation that is passed by one political party can be reversed by the other party. The only way to produce lasting legislation in America is bipartisanship. Without it, there is no sustainablity.

The job of media is the accountability of government.

I guess we'd better start getting used to the consequences and permit the American liberals to squeak and squeal us to ultimate defeat.

I wouldn't call it a Breitbart audience. I would call it America.

I am so focused on the fact that the conversation doesn't address any of the things I think are important. I think our political dialogue in America is distorted and completely off track.

I wasn't looking for a hobby. If I were looking for a hobby, it wouldn't be the United States Senate. That's one of the toughest jobs I'd probably ever do. I just felt there wasn't enough compromise going on: People were too far to the left, too far to the right, with no one trying to build a compromise.

I don't believe Rush Limbaugh has a racist bone in his body.