MI: As I think people are starting to notice, he's a lot funnier than you might think when you look at him. I've noticed that with children of politicians (you know Gore's daddy was a senator), they're just so long in the public eye and started so young that they tend to have a real public face. And Gore has, of course, the public face of an utterly humorless young Baptist minister.
As much as you can with that job, he seems to be making a good reputation for himself. If he can straighten out the glass ashtray procurement problem, we'll probably declare him a national hero. But I must say in terms of fun, he's no Dan Quayle.
LES: You write in your book about going back to Smith for your 25th reunion. What, if anything, did you learn by coming east to college that you would not have learned had you stayed in Texas?
MI: I do think that part of one's education should be going to school somewhere other than where you were raised. Just because I think it helps broaden your mind.
It was not a happy time to be a Texan. John Kennedy was assasinated in Dallas in November of 1963. I was in college and I assure you, going to school in Massachusetts with a Texas accent was not a lot of fun. One of the first things I learned to do was speak without a Texas accent.
And it's true I still love to laugh at my Smithie classmates who are still called Mudge, Midge, Buffy, Muffy and Tooters. But actually I think I got a pretty good education at Smith. They were, when I think about it now, amazingly patient with me. I fancied myself a great intellectual rebel.
LES: Whose bylines do you always read?
MI: One of my great heroes in journalism is Bob Sherrill. I always read Sherrill pieces. They're usually to be found in obscure publications like the Nation. I like both the Brits who write for the Nation. I frequently don't agree with them, but I think they're both wonderful writers, Cockburn and Hitchens.
I think some of the best journalism today is being done in books, which does not speak well for the periodical industry in this country. Jonathon Kozol, Neil Sheehan, Susan Sheehan for that matter. Oh gosh, the trouble with starting a list like this is that you're always are so afraid you're going to leave someone out.
LES: Well, for example, who do you read on the New York Times editorial page, if anyone?
MI: I read Safire. I like to read him. I have a lot of respect for him because he does his own reporting. A lot of columnists just suck their thumbs. Baker and Safire I think are the only ones I read regularly. I read Kinsley in the New Republic.
LES: You, Ellen Goodman and Anna Quindlen are probably the three female columnists who are read the most. I'm wondering if you think there are any other similarities.
MI: I really like Goodman's stuff. But there's an extent to which--and of course I like Anna's stuff too--I'm more of a reporter. I cover politics. And it seems to me I'm still frequently in the gritty maw of it all. I guess at this point I'm a certified thumb sucker--I still think of myself as a reporter.
LES: In Woman of the Year, the Katherine Hepburn character is supposedly loosely based on Dorothy Thompson. So if you envision someone making a movie of your life sometime in the future, who can you imagine playing yourself?
MI: I'm trying to think. Lily Tomlin. There's no one big enough. I was a great fan of a wonderful actress who died recently. She did Moon for the Misbegotten; she did quite a lot of Eugene O'Neill on Broadway. Colleen Dewhurst.
LES: You talked a bit both at the book reading and in your book about populism being a term that's misused greatly. ("Calling David Duke a populist is like calling Pat Buchanan a global visionary: message--Zulus are coming.") Can you ever see--
MI:--real populism starting again? Yes. I think it grew out of the soil last time and it'll grow out again.
Maybe it sounds fatalistic or predestinarian or something to say that politics responds to the times but I think it does.
LES: When you say "grew out of the soil" is that a reference to farmers, or do you just mean in an organic sense?
MI: Organic sense. It's so needed. Larry Goodwill's book on populism (well, he's written two) is still the best. It is one of the great tragedies of American history that populism was essentially destroyed by racism.