There is no such thing as conversation. It is an illusion. There are intersecting monologues, that is all.
Broadcasting is really too important to be left to the broadcasters and somehow we must find some new way of using radio and television to allow us to talk to each other.
formerly 2nd Viscount Stansgate
The best shows succeed because they tap into a national conversation.
Through my work and ways of expression, I strive to engage in dialogue with the society that I am living in.
I hope we can use television somehow to begin to reengage people in this conversation of democracy.
I allowed Rick Santorum to express views and ideas that the American people never would have had expressed.
We need to be constantly reminded that this is a representative democracy, and we need to be in tune to what people are talking about.
I think [there's] the opportunity for - I almost said President Clinton, and soon I will - but for Hillary Clinton to address that, and for the public sphere to address that in a way that they haven't. We started a conversation in the last few years on race that we desperately needed to have.
Deliberation and debate is the way you stir the soul of our democracy.
If anything is naive and lightweight, it's the traditional political conversation.
Obama has already demonstrated an extraordinary ability to change the limits of what one can say publicly. His greatest achievement up to now is that, in his refined non-provocative way, he has introduced into public speech topics which had hitherto been de facto unsayable: the continuing importance of race in politics, the positive role of atheists in public life, the necessity to talk with "enemies" like Iran or Hamas, and so on. This is just what US politics needs today more than anything, if it is to break out of its gridlock: new words which will change the way we think and act.
When you start a conversation about something that is under-discussed and you use art to convey it, I think that is incredibly powerful but is always going to create waves.
I think when I was a young person, there was just kind of - there was very little dialogue about it. And there was just kind of one way to be gay, right? You saw very effeminate guys. You saw very butch women. And there was no kind of in-between. And there was no - you know, there wasn't anything in the media. There wasn't anything on television.
In this political climate, people are so shut down to other ideas - I call it a hardening of the categories - that if you can get them to open up and laugh, there is a possibility of improvement, and a possibility of change. I think humor sneaks up on people, and before you know it, you're laughing at something you might not agree with.
El Salvador is a democracy so it's not surprising that there are many voices to be heard here. Yet in my conversations with Salvadorans... I have heard a single voice.
I know [people talk about sex now all the time] But do they really talk about it personally?
The more internal criticism and dissatisfaction publicly communicable within a society, the better and freer the society.
The privilege I've had as a curator is not just the discovery of new works... but what I've discovered about myself and what I can offer in the space of an exhibition - to talk about beauty, to talk about power, to talk about ourselves, and to talk and speak to each other.
There's just a proliferation of blogs and the chattering classes and people talking. More avenues for people to make their feelings known, which is good.
Though race-related issues continue to occupy a significant portion of our political discussion, and though there remain many unresolved racial issues in this nation, we, average Americans, simply do not talk enough with each other about things racial.
My conversations with Trump supporters have left me with more questions than answers.
The conversation about race is inevitable. It's one that people know that we have to have and continue to have.
I do think that people have a desire to talk about issues they may have wanted to avoid before. I've never had so many random conversations with people where they're so ready to talk about race, gender, sexual identity, or things that are happening in politics.
I believe that one of the most damning things about our culture is the adage to never talk religion and politics. Because we don't model this discourse at the dinner table and at Thanksgiving, we don't know how to do it well and we're not teaching our children about the world and about how to discuss it.
There's a big mistake the left has made with talking to religious people, which is attempting to talk them out of their interpretations of the Bible, attempting to have theological debate with them. When I'm on right-wing whackjob radio, when people call up to inform me that I'm going to hell, I concede the point. "I'm going to hell. Yes. Can you leave me alone now?"
