From J. Edgar Hoover to Christopher Reeve

...continue reading.

Norman Mailer
Dec. 10, 1979
The press was in its heyday when the writer and iconoclast Norman Mailer gave this interview. Post-Watergate, newspapers were devoting more resources to investigative journalism and embracing a more literary style of writing. Mailer was one of the founders of the genre known as the New Journalism, in which elements of fiction mixed with fact. He practiced the craft in bestselling books and in the pages of New York's Village Voice.

The press is like a doctor who gives you too many injections. It is a bad physician who won't let the patient arrive at anything by himself. I'm terribly cynical about the way the press works. I know enough about writing to be pretty certain that very often you can't find a story even after months of the hardest work. You can't be too certain about what happened. So I believe there is a fundamental irresponsibility in the very act of journalism. The idea that news can be reported on the same day it happened has something monstrous about it. There is an appetite in journalism for immediate satisfaction. When we find that appetite in an adult, we call it psychopathic; we say that anyone who can't wait for satisfaction is unbalanced. Yet when it comes to journalism, we insist that we get our news immediately. That has to destroy all sorts of careful social processes. It makes people who are engaged in these processes more secretive than ever; it institutionalizes paranoia in government behavior.

...continue reading.

Queen Nooral-Hussein
Oct. 10, 1983
American-born Lisa Halaby married King Hussein of Jordan in 1978 and as Queen Noor played an active role in expanding the accepted activities of women in Jordan. In this interview, she noted the influence conservative Muslim traditions have in a nation like Jordan.

More women are returning to traditional dress. This trend is not so much social or religious as political. The realities of the revolution in Iran, the continuing irresolution of the West Bank, and the worsening situation of Lebanon create enormous political tensions. People are looking for security and national preservation. The trend toward conservatism is an attempt to preserve our own identity and protect the right we see being eroded away. The future depends on peace in the area. We have the potential for an Arab renaissance; the alternative is destruction. Yes, I'm optimistic. That is why we named our daughter Faith—faith that we can develop our potential.

...continue reading.

Ronald Reagan
Nov. 18, 1985

On the eve of a key arms control summit with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Geneva, President Reagan was asked about his characterization of the Soviet Union as an "evil empire."

Well, it really wasn't my view. That began in the first press conference I ever held as President, when I was asked whether we could believe the Soviets. I cited statements by their own leaders over the years saying there is no immorality in anything that furthers the progress of the world's socialist revolution. So we seem to be the only ones that in our philosophy are bound by morality.