Background Image

...

I Think Being Canadian Helps You As A Journalist In America, Because You're Sort Of On The Outside Watching This Big Party Going On, And You're Sort Of Taking Mental Notes As It Goes On. I Think If You're In The Party The Whole Time, You Don't Notice It As Much. And I Think Canadians Are Very Good Observers Of American Culture.

-Graydon Carter

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

I Think Being Canadian

Graydon Carter

...

I Think Being Canadian Helps You As A Journalist In America, Because You're Sort Of On The Outside Watching This Big Party Going On, And You're Sort Of Taking Mental Notes As It Goes On. I Think If You're In The Party The Whole Time, You Don't Notice It As Much. And I Think Canadians Are Very Good Observers Of American Culture.

Views: 7

Topic

More From Graydon Carter

It Could Safely Be Said That Iraqis Are Dying At A Faster Clip Since The American-led Invasion And Occupation Than They Did During The Last Decade Of Saddam Hussein's Rule.

Somewhere Along The Way, New York Became All About Money. Or Rather, It Was Always About Money, But It Wasn't All About Money, If You Know What I Mean. New York's Not Geneva Or Zurich Yet, But We're Certainly Heading In That Direction. London Is, Too.

Christopher Hitchens Was A Wit, A Charmer, And A Troublemaker, And To Those Who Knew Him Well, He Was A Gift From - Dare I Say It - God.

We Really Care About Photography At Vanity Fair.

We Admire Elephants In Part Because They Demonstrate What We Consider The Finest Human Traits: Empathy, Self-awareness, And Social Intelligence. But The Way We Treat Them Puts On Display The Very Worst Of Human Behavior.

People Think They Have To Be Ambitious. But At A Certain Age, All You Want Is To Be Around Nice, Decent People.

Life Is All About Seating And Lighting.

My Suggestion To Newspapers Everywhere Is To Give The Public A Reason To Read Them Again. So Here's An Idea: Get On A Big Story With Widespread Public Appeal, Devote Your Best Resources To It, Say A Quiet Prayer, And Swing For The Fences.

Every Minute You Invest In Kids You Get Back Four Times Over.

Everything I Love About America Is Fragile.

To A Young Kid Growing Up In Canada, America Seemed To Be Crazy About The Future; Dazzled By It.

Many Men Think They're Playboys But They Invariably Land Wide Of The Mark. Surrounding Yourself With Champagne, Fast Friends And Paid Escorts Is The Very Definition Of The Word 'loser'.

You Know, I Used To Warm The Thermometer On The Light Bulb... I Was Really Good At Being Sick. I Could Forge My Mother's Signature On A Sick Note So Well I Was Hardly Ever At School.

After The Collapse Of Wall Street In The 1920s, The Culture Stopped Being All About Money, And The Country Survived And Ultimately Flourished.

Moping Is An Unattractive Attribute In A Man.

I Don't Think You Can Be A Credible, Modern Candidate For President Without Making The Environment A Major Part Of Your Platform.

Stationery Is Addictive. I Get Mine Made In Paris At Benetton, And Writing On It Gives Me A Strange Thrill.

Issues Such As Transparency Often Boil Down To Which Side Of -pick A Number- 40 You're On. Under 40, And Transparency Is Generally Considered A Good Thing For Society. Over 40, And One Generally Chooses Privacy Over Transparency. On Every Side Of This Issue, Hypocrisy Abounds.

In 2004, I Wrote 'what We've Lost,' A Book About The Bush Administration. It Sold Only Reasonably Well, In Part, I Think, Because The Book Was A Horrific Downer, An Unrelenting Account Of The Administration's Actions, Bungles, Deceptions, Half-truths, Untruths, And Downright Corruptions.

Conservatives Define Themselves More By Their Hatred Of Liberals Than Anything Else, And, Conversely, Liberals By Their Distaste For Conservatives.

Former Vice President Al Gore Has Devoted His Post-administration Years To A Mission To Tell The World About Global Warming. It's Funny, But In His Civilian Life Gore Has Discovered The Voice That Voters Had Trouble Hearing When He Ran For President In 2000. The Voice He Has Found Is Clear, Impassioned, And Moving.

I Might Wear A Dinner Jacket Once A Year To Our Oscar Party - That's A Big Thing - But I Don't Go To Parties. I'm Social But I'm Not A Socialite Person.

Take A Random Selection Of Photographs Of America In 2012 And 2002 And 1992 And, Except For The Skinny Jeans And The Porkpie Hats, You'll Be Hard-pressed To Tell The Years In Which The Pictures Were Taken.

Magazine Stories, The Best Ones Anyway, Are Generally A Combination Of Three Elements: Access, Narrative, And Disclosure.

I Don't Do Any Research. It's All About Gut. Editing - It's Always About Gut.

It's Estimated That Across Africa 100 Elephants Are Killed For Their Tusks Every Day. It Takes Nothing More Than Simple Math To Get To What That Adds Up To In A Year, And It's A Distressing Figure.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi Looks In The Mirror And Sees A Playboy Of The Old School. And Men Such As Dominique Strauss-kahn, Arnold Schwarzenegger, And Charlie Sheen No Doubt Look At Berlusconi And Think, 'role Model!' Women, Of Course, Know Otherwise. They See Him As An Aging, Pathetic Buffoon.

As You Get Older And Fatter, Good Clothes Can Hide A Lot.

Television Has The Obvious Benefits Of Regularity And Intimacy.

I Think The Absence Of Socks On Men Wearing Suits And Brogues Is A Problem. They'll Live To Regret That.

Branding Experts Believe That Just Because They Have Rethought A Company's Image Or Name, The Rest Of Us Will Automatically Fall In Line.

The Greatest Thing That Prepared Me For Editing Vanity Fair Was Having Four Kids Because You Just Learn To Subjugate Your Ego With The Greater Interest In Mind.

In An Age When All That Was Old Seems New Again, Bernard Devoto's The Hour Couldn't Have Made A More Timely Reappearance. This Book Reminds Me Of One Of The Joys Of Being An Adult-cocktail Hour!

The Shelf Life Of A Movie Actor Or Actress Is So Short, It's Like Milk.

It Could Fairly Be Said That America, During The Bush Years, Has Entered An Age Of Denial - Arguably The First Stage Of A Nation's Decline.

The Fact Is That Movie Stars Are As Insecure As The Rest Of Us - If Not More So. Many Live In A Luxurious Bubble In Which Their Best Friends Are Their Trainer, Their Hairdresser, Their Publicist, And Their Kabbalah Instructor.

Most Of Us Have Learned The Hard Way That There Are Very Few Things You Can Absolutely Count On In Life.

Water-boarding Can Result In Damage To The Lungs And The Brain, As Well As Long-term Psychological Trauma.

Every Man In The Back Of Their Minds Would Like To Own A Bar Or A Racehorse.

There Are Similarities Between Being An Editor And A Tailor. Tailors Have A Vast Supply Of Fabrics, Buttons And Thread At Their Disposal And Put It Together To Make A Whole. That's What An Editor Does - Looks At Society At A Given Time And Pulls Together The Interesting Aspects Into A Single Issue Each Month.

Arrogance, Ignorance, And Incompetence. Not A Pretty Cocktail Of Personality Traits In The Best Of Situations. No Sirree. Not A Pretty Cocktail In An Office-mate And Not A Pretty Cocktail In A Head Of State. In Fact, In A Leader, It's A Lethal Cocktail.

Whatever Age We Are Is The Age We’ve Always Been.

Only Institutions That Go About The Old-fashioned Business Of Taking In Deposits From Customer A And Lending Them Out To Customer B Should Be Called Banks. The Rest Should Call Themselves What They Are. 'parlors' Would Be Appropriate, Or 'dens' - Words More Suitable To Venerable Betting Pursuits.

History Is Nothing If Not An Epic Tale Of Missed Opportunities.

Where Past Generations Had Film Cameras, Scrapbooks, Notebooks, And That Part Of The Brain Which Stores Memories, We Now Have A Smartphone App For Every Conceivable Recording Need. The Thing Is, All That Time You Spend Logging And Then Curating The Quotidian Aspects Of Your Daily Life Is Time Taken Away From Actually Doing Things.

I Try To Look After The Really Small Things And The Really Big Things, And Delegate The Stuff In Between.

It's No Surprise That The Bush Administration's Bullying Swagger And Blithe Ignorance Have Caused Much Of The Muslim World To Hold The U.s. In Rock-bottom Regard.

Memory Is Often - Perhaps Usually - A Distorting Lens: What We Think We Remember Isn't The Way It Was At All. It's What We'd Like To Remember.

Fashion Is A Dangerous Road To Go Down. Anybody Who Is Going To Have Children Later In Life Had Best Not Be Too Fashionable Because The Photos Will Come Back To Haunt Them.

You Lose Manufacturing Jobs, You Rarely Ever Get Them Back Again.

As Any Editor Will Tell You, Startling Newsroom Revelations Are Generally Met With Queries About Where The Information Came From And How The Reporter Got It. Seriously Startling Revelations Are Followed By The Vetting Of Libel Lawyers.

I Think Being Canadian Helps You As A Journalist In America, Because You're Sort Of On The Outside Watching This Big Party Going On, And You're Sort Of Taking Mental Notes As It Goes On. I Think If You're In The Party The Whole Time, You Don't Notice It As Much. And I Think Canadians Are Very Good Observers Of American Culture.

There Aren't Any Looks Or Customs I Wish Would Come Back. Today Almost Anything Goes. Culture Constantly Devours The Past So There's Not Much That's Missing.

As A Father Of Five, I Sometimes Feel I've Spent A Lifetime Watching Disney Musicals.

The Fact Is, Unlike A Lot Of Writers, I Credit The People Who Help Me. A Lot Of Writers Out There Have A Ton Of Researchers And They Don't Get Credited In The Book.

Cod Is More Responsible For The Discovery Of The New World Than Almost Anything Else. Drove The Vikings Across The North Atlantic, And John Cabot Discovered America By Looking For Cod.

The Danger Of Leaving Overwhelming Wealth And Power In The Grasp Of A Small Minority Is A Lesson That Leaders Such As Ousted Tunisian President Zine El-abidine Ben Ali And Deposed Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak Have Learned A Little Too Late, As The Demonstrations Across The Arab World Indicate.

I Think The Movie Business Is In Trouble. It's All Movies That You've Seen Before. Everything's A Remake; They Want Things That Are Familiar Rather Than Things That Surprise You.

I Walk Down The Street And People Don't Go, 'my God, There He Is.' I Lead As Normal A Life As You Can Lead In New York City.

In Less Than A Year, The Bush Administration Will Strut Out Of Office, Leaving The Country In Roughly The Same Condition A Toddler Leaves A Diaper.

In This Age Of 24-7 Headlines, The Term 'newsweekly' Seems Almost Quaint.

Those Who Remember New York In The 1970s, As I Do, Look Back On A City That Had Hit A Very Rough Patch - Decaying, Bankrupt, And Crime-ridden. But Fun.

Many Of The Architects Of The Vietnam War Became Near Pariahs As They Spent The Remainder Of Their Lives In The Futile Quest To Explain Away Their Decisions At The Time.

I Have Always Thought You Could Take The Measure Of A Man By His Sports Manners - That Is To Say, The Way In Which He Conducts Himself On The Playing Field, Or Even Over A Game Of Chess Or Cards.

Financial Institutions Like To Call What They Do Trading. Let's Be Honest. It's Not Trading; It's Betting.

My Hunch Is That Pop Culture Began To Stagnate The Moment Americans Started To Love The Past More Than They Did The Future.

Trending Author

William Bennett

Category