THE TYGRRRR EXPRESS

1)    What television shows are you most proud of working on, and if any, which were you most ashamed to be associated with?

 

“MASH was a good credit, but I wasn’t a big fan of the show.  I’m prouder of my TV movies than I am of the shows I wrote for.  I wasn’t ashamed of any of them.  If I had been, I wouldn’t have written for them.  Well, I would have during the 1990s when ageism kicked in, but by then jobs were very hard to come by.”

 

2)   Do you think the state of television today is better, worse or the same as in years past, and why? What are the best and worst of television today, and what is needed to improve the state of television today?

 

“TV is a lot worse than it ever was.  That’s mainly because so-called reality TV has taken over so much air time.  Also, the audience keeps getting dumber and dumber.”

 

3)        What led you to Townhall, and what is your mission with regards to your contribution to Townhall?

 

“My mission in life is to ridicule liberals and to give comfort to conservatives, to remind them that, in spite of what the MSM says, they remain the last great hope of America and therefore the hope of the world.”

 

4)        Who are your top 3 American political heroes? Who are your top 3 Worldwide political heroes?

 

“I liked Jefferson, Lincoln and Reagan.  On a personal level, I liked Truman, but, after reading Coulter’s ‘Treason,’ I think I may have been easy on him.  Among the non-Americans, I liked Churchill, Thatcher and, so far at least, Sarkozy.” 

 

5)    What entertainment industry people over time have you admired most?

 “There are plenty of people in the entertainment industry I’ve admired.  There are or have been hundreds of very talented people who have given us great movies and great TV.  Among the folks in show business that I’ve most admired have been Billy Wilder, Preston Sturges and Elmer Bernstein.  Those that I’ve personally known and liked have included Oscar Levant, Groucho Marx, Jamie Farr, Pat Sajak and George Kennedy.”

 

6) What separates you from the many conservative authors in general? Do you have a special niche or theme? 

 

“I write better and usually more humorously than the others do.”

 

7) In general the media are seen very unfavorably. Do you believe this reputation is justified, overblown or even understated? If not overblown, what can the media do to improve itself?

 

“The media is as bad as it can be.  It serves as a Fifth Column.  If Stalin were still alive, he’d be favorably impressed.  The media could be improved if wealthy conservatives would buy up newspapers and TV stations.”

 

8.) Do you belong to any religious faith, and does that faith play any role in either your career or the stories you cover?

 

“I am not religious.  But I have a soft spot for Christianity because the majority of Americans are Christians, and they serve as a wonderful example when it comes to religious tolerance.”

 

9) Given the liberal bias in education, how do you or anybody get through to the “South Park Conservatives” before they get indoctrinated? What is the key?

 

“School vouchers would be a step in the right direction.  Also, conservatives should steer their children to colleges and universities which aren’t little red schoolhouses.  But they won’t because they’re snobbish enough to be impressed if the kid gets accepted by Harvard, Yale or Berkeley.”

 

10) Do you believe that “infotainment” should be banned from the nightly news? Should the news only be “hard news,” with celebrity stories relegated to shows such as Access Hollywood? Is the news harmed by infotainment stories, or is that overblown?

 

“I wouldn’t ban it.  But, then, I don’t watch the nightly news. The news isn’t harmed by dealing with Hollywood celebrities.  It’s usually a lot more interesting than news dealing with Washington celebrities.”

 

11) What are your thoughts on the 2008 elections? What makes 2008 important to you?

 

“It’s a chance for someone to defeat Hillary Clinton.  I am pulling for Giuliani to get the nomination because I believe in a general election he has the best shot; partly because he might be able to take New York and New Jersey.  Of course the problem is that a lot of lemming-like Republicans might sit it out because Rudy isn’t their dream boat candidate and one mustn’t overlook the Ron Paul nuts who may drag off enough GOP votes to cost the Republicans the election the way Ross Perot did in the past.”

 

12) Are you backing any candidate in particular, and if so, why? 

 

(See #11.)

 

13) What are your views on the Bush Doctrine of preemptive military force?  If given five minutes to interview President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and General David Petraeus, what would you ask them?

 

“I am in favor of preemptive military force, although I don’t accept that we employed it in Iraq.  Hussein had lost a war and then, in order to retain power, agreed to abide by the terms of surrender.  This he failed to do, as all the leading Democrats pointed out during the 1990s, but they did nothing about it.  If I had five minutes, I wouldn’t waste it on Cheney or the good general.  Instead, I would ask Bush why he hogtied the military in Iraq, forcing them to fight house-to-house instead of laying waste to the place.  I would also like him to explain why he’s spent six years playing the role of Mexico’s punk.”

 

14) Given that there are many liberals in America, why are they failing in some segments of the media from a ratings, and more importantly, a financial standpoint? Are Air America and the Jayson Blair Times anomolies, or typical of a larger problem? 

 

“The media has become a propaganda machine for the far left.  One almost has to admire the way they have put their agenda ahead of their bottom line.  Every day I pick up the L.A. Times and marvel at the fact that they insist on insulting the beliefs of, say, 40% of their potential readership, even though it’s cost them well over 300,000 subscriptions in the past half dozen years.  The NY Times is a wonderful example of self-promotion.  They’ve been a rag at least since the early 30s, when their Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, won a Pulitzer for his Stalinist propaganda.”

 

15) What was the last straw that caused you to switch your political affiliation?

 

“Hating myself for having voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976.”

 

16) What advice would you give somebody trying to make it in television today? What about the overall entertainment industry?

 

“I’d advise against it.  The people who would ignore my sage advice just might have a chance to succeed.  But 99.99% of them will eventually wind up selling houses or cars.”

 

17) What do you think have been the most positive achievements of the Bush Presidency, and what has left you most disappointed?

 

“The best thing he did was invade Iraq.  It showed that he accepted that we are at war with Islam.  I was disappointed at the way he insisted it be fought, with an eye on how it would play in the MSM.  Just as LBJ allowed Walter Cronkite to cost us a victory in Vietnam, Bush has allowed Cronkite’s kids to cost us a quick win in Iraq.  I also wish he had a backbone when it came to Mexico.” 

 

18) You are President on January 20th, 2009. What are the first three things you do? What is your hundred day plan?

 

“I get the wall built across our southern border and I create a national ID card.  I’d find a way to crack down on any municipality that announced it was a sanctuary city, even if it meant having federal marshals arrest the mayors.  At the same time, I cut off all social services to illegal aliens. They had a very difficult time sneaking into our country.  They would have a far easier time getting out.  I contact the underground in Iran and, together with them, I take out Ahmadinejad, the Mullahs and the nuclear facility. And I alert every other Islamic country that either they crack down on Hamas, Al Qaeda, etc., etc., or the U.S. cracks down on them.  And that definitely includes Syria and Saudi Arabia. And perhaps before I did any of those other things, I would make sexual crimes against children a federal matter, and see to it that the punishment was, at the very least, life in a very nasty prison.”

 

19) If you have five minutes on O’Reilly or Hannity right now, what do you talk about?

 

“I would talk about what gas bags O’Reilly and Hannity are.  Or I could just make fun of Alan Colmes.”

 

20) What do you want people to know most about you? What do you want most out of this world?

 

“That I’m a terrific writer and they would all do well to not only buy my book–seeing as how they buy really dumb books allegedly written by people named Clinton–but that they read it.Most?  Several more years of life, so long as I don’t have to spend them in the offices of doctors and surgeons, to be followed by a quick and painless death.  I would also like to see more conservatives in elective office, and I would like to see liberals go the way of the Whigs.”

 

I again thank Burt for his time, and anyone suggesting he should mend fences should be prepared for him to reply that it cannot be mended if it is never built to begin with.

eric