James Wolcott Quotes
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Being raised Catholic in a pressure-cooker household besieged by alcohol and bill collectors enforced and heightened a sense of sentry duty in me, the oldest of five children and the one most responsible for keeping everything from capsizing. Wild indulgence was for other people, the non-worriers.
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At 'The Village Voice,' there were all these fevers inside the offices, that would break out into full-scale rumbles between writers.
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I understand that one of the purposes of bipartisanship is to cram something difficult and necessary down the American people's gullets for which neither party has the fortitude to assume full responsibility. It's a way of turning a possible gangplank into a teeter-totter.
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Telling writers to shut up is a sure way to keep them talking.
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Bad acting comes in many bags, various odors. It can be performed by cardboard refugees from an Ed Wood movie, reciting their dialogue off an eye chart, or by hopped-up pros looking to punch a hole through the fourth wall from pure ballistic force of personality, like Joe Pesci in a bad mood. I can respect bad acting that owns its own style.
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High expectations weren't nurtured in my neck of nowhere back then - children weren't fawned over from an early age as 'gifted' and groomed for a prizewinning future; self-esteem was considered something you had to pick from the garden yourself.
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I never accepted why there should be some invisible, wavy cutoff line separating Great Fiction from phosphorescent beauties and dollhouse miniatures, novels that contain a whole world in a snow globe.
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Whenever I catch a chunk of an Adam Sandler comedy on cable, it looks as badly shot and goofily tossed off as a Jerry Lewis gag reel once he hit the late downslide with 'Hardly Working' and 'Cracking Up.'
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Broadway purists may deplore the influx of movie-spinoff musicals in recent years, wishing someone would turn off the popcorn machine and let more imaginative brainstorms blow through.
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It was with 9/11 that I came to fully appreciate and embrace NPR's irreplaceability as a sanity preserver, its unique virtues as first responder on the burning scene.
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Popular culture no longer craves archangels and new dawns. Pop culture traffics in vampires and deads of night.
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There was a time when idealistic folksingers such as myself believed that Reality TV was a programming vogue that would peak and recede, leaving only its hardiest show-offs. Instead, it has metastasized like toxic mold, filling every nook and opening new crannies.
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Since I'm a fan of collections and anthologies, believe that the best writing often shines in shards and galloping stretches, I never find myself lobbying for a writer I enjoy reading regularly to hole up in Heidegger's hut for four or five years to bring forth a mountain.
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Like Andy Warhol and unlike God Almighty, Larry King does not presume to judge; all celebrities are equal in his eyes, saints and sinners alike sharing the same 'Love Boat' voyage into the dark beyond, a former sitcom star as deserving of pious send-off as Princess Diana.
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How can I impress strangers with the gem-like flame of my literary passion if it's a digital slate I'm carrying around, trying not to get it all thumbprinty?
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On August 28, 2010, Fox News messiah Glenn Beck hosted a 'Restoring Honor' revival meeting featuring sexy guest star Sarah Palin, much as Bob Hope would roll out Raquel Welch in white go-go boots on his U.S.O. tours to give our fighting men a morale lift in their khakis.
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People want to be special. I think ambition can take in a whole package of things, power or sexual excitement.
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Used to be, conservatives revered the Average American, that Norman Rockwell oil painting of diner food, humble faith, honest toil, and Capraesque virtue.
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I try to avoid Politico to spare myself psoriasis of the brain but so many journalists cite it that I'm forced to be aware of it no matter how big a moat I build.
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A typical 'Larry King Live' is a pastiche whose absurdism defies parody. Wearing his trademark suspenders and purple shirts, he looks as if he's strapped to the chair with vertical seat belts, unable to eject.
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It's one thing to fight for what you believe in, another thing to fight for what others believe in.
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Many questions torment America in its dark night of the soul, questions more urgently pressing, and yet it must be asked: How did we get stuck with Piers Morgan? Who is he, why is he here, is he returnable?
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And what could be a hotter ticket than the improbable triumph of 'The Book of Mormon,' the musical-comedy moon shot of the season? Its creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, of Comedy Central's 'South Park,' are the most unlikely Rodgers and Hammerstein team ever to bowl a thundering strike.
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What's happening to movie critics is no different from what has been meted out to book, dance, theater, and fine-arts reviewers and reporters in the cultural deforestation that has driven refugees into the diffuse clatter of the Internet and Twitter, where some adapt and thrive - such as Roger Ebert - while others disappear without a twinkle.