much better, especially if republicans work with the president. this country is already much much better than it was when president obama took office. wendy response we don't want the republicans to work with obama. we want obama stopped. that is why we voted for them. let us know what you think at facebook.com/c-span. >> the 114th congress gavels in this tuesday on c-span. watch live and track the gop led congress. have your say on c-span networks, c-span radio, and c-span.org. new congress, best access on c-span. >> now two columnists talked about media and culture. you will hear from alessandra stanley as well as frank bruni. this took place in fairfield

university in connecticut to read it is about an hour and 20 minutes. >> soon we will be meeting two distant wished journalists "the new york times," ms. alessandra stanley and mr. frank bruni. we understand the very long ripple effects and reverberations of "the new york times," which extends so deeply into our nation's history, 1851. it is red on five continents, as we say all the news that is fit to print, in the digital world all the news that is fit to click. to be honest, rush limbaugh

explains, i can only read a few paragraphs in a "new york times" story before i puke. well, last summer i was watching a rerun of a charlie rose special and the editor of "the new yorker" was speaking about the media in america, and remnick talked about his career. he had spent 10 years at the "washington post." for the past 22 years he has been the editor of "the new yorker." he said, "new york times" has been the greatest competitor of my entire professional career. he said to charlie rose, i think "new york times" is the nation's most important privately held institution. i thought about that. think about what you would lift

as a treasurer, what is privately owned in the united states, and that is what is his assessment of the power of "new york times." fairfield university wants to thank our video -- are very generous sponsors who make these programs possible, to our friends at [indiscernible] to the delmar hotel, to harry's wines and liquors. "fairfield living magazine," and the entire set of magazines throughout fairfield county. we are going to be joined by the chairman of the communication department. to set the stage, let's bring out another professor of communications, the deputy director, my assistant in helping to develop this series for our introduction to our guests. michael?

[applause] >> in the late 1960's, one of the rallying cries for that era's feminist movement went something like this. the personal is political. four decades later, and equally fitting slogan might now apply. the popular is political. it is increasingly impossible to extricate entertainment from electoral effects. we are not just talking here about jon stewart and stephen colbert rallying to restore sanity and/or fear. tina fey channeling and potentially undoing sarah palin, or californians electing conan the barbarian as their governor. on just about every major issue nowadays, popular culture offers the rosetta stone for deciphering american politics. we can't understand the dramatic shift in public opinion on gay rights without appreciating

cam and mitchell on "modern family." we can't understand the detaining guantanamo detainees without "homeland 24." the popular has never been more political, which makes our guests so timely. they are thought leaders and award winners at the world's most indispensable news organization, the "new york times." frank bruni was the preeminent test maker, as the chief restaurant critic almonds sandwiched in between -- critic,

sandwiched in between. alessandra stanley has been the paper's chief television critic for more than a decade, after managing overseas posts herself across europe. they work -- their work is eloquent and perceptive, teasing out the way we live now from the media we consume now, and making up the big picture as it comes to us more and more on the small screen. please join me in welcoming, from the "new york times," ms. alessandra stanley and mr. frank bruni. [applause] >> let's hear what mr. bruni and ms. stanley had to say. i think frank bruni will go to the podium now. all yours. >> good evening. good night. i brought my pillow with me. it's a pleasure to be here. i want to thank rush for that comp lament. -- compliment. sometimes when i feel the need for a purgative, i listen to his radio show. i was asked to say a little bit

about my career at the "times ticket which is not so different from alessandra's. we have both bounced around a lot. in my 20 years there, i have been a religion reporter on the metropolitan, i have covered a campaign, president bush's residential campaign. i have reported from san francisco. i have been the chief restaurant critic for five years. i have written for the magazine. this follows years earlier when i was a movie critic. my little brother likes to say i don't have a career, i have attention deficit order. and that is true. but i believe strongly in going through life and gathering as

many diverse experiences as possible, and when i first got into journalism, my whole notion was it would give me a ticket or a passport to all sorts of experiences and privileged quinces of the world i could not getting in any other way. it's done precisely that. i met john paul ii during the end of his papacy. when i was covering him, i got to know george w. bush quite well. i have met other presidents. it is been a real privilege that i still can't believe came i way. -- my way. my belief in that diverse experience and the value i place on versatility and all of that leads me into what i want to say about the media today, which is our topic. i think we're are living in a very interesting moment. decades ago, as we made technological advances and tv came along, a supposedly wise man said we were becoming a global village. we have had further advances

beyond that. what happened over the last decade is we have become a gazillion global villages, or villages in a globe that is fractured as never before. the great irony of our time is we have this thing called the internet and we have all these cable channels. the way people use them is an to sample the world in the most diverse -- isn't to sample the world in the most diverse way. they do that to choose and to marinate in it and lesley. there is a whole vocabulary that has developed. people talk of modern americans living in information silos. they talk about the way in which we sort ourselves. we have all of these connecting mechanisms, twitter, facebook. instead of using them to reach out to a broad spectrum of our fellow human beings, we use them to connect incessantly over and over again with people who think just like us. think about people who like "real housewives." you can see them in six different cities, six different accents, 24 hours a day. people who like ". dynasty" can find some episode of it playing on cable at any moment, and then they can go to the bookstore and

find books written by the duck commander. i believe i'm using the correct phrase. that's happening over and over again and it has changed our political landscape in particular. this has been scientifically measured. americans are becoming more partisan. people who feel the most strongly are the most partisan. they set up their social media feeds as they set up their twitter feeds. they do it not so they can be exposed to all kinds of information and perspectives. they do it so they can constantly hear what they already believe. they live in these echo chambers. it's kind of depriving us of the common ground that we need if we are going to have a congress that functions and if we are all going to participate in civic life and civic debate in the correct way.

i hope we get to talk more about that tonight. one of my most heartfelt appeals, students or anyone else here tonight is in your own news consumption, in your own information consumption, i think you can do nothing better for yourself or the country than making sure you are following a few people on twitter who don't believe as you do, that you are bookmarking a couple of publications or blogs that represent the opposite of your viewpoint in life. if we all began doing that, we would be in much better shape as a country. alessandra will talk more about how this manifests itself on tv. i'm near the limit of my time. we will talk more as a group. to i get to introduce alessandra? alessandra stanley, my dear friend and colleague. [applause] >> thank you for having us. it's an honor to be here. for me, it's a big outing. i watch tv all day, and so i don't leave the house much or get out of my pajamas ever. my daughter makes fun of me

because of my work and says -- she watches a show called "arrested development" and says i'm her stay in bed mother. it's great to be here. people often ask me how i got interested in television. i have to explain that i'm the cautionary tale for parents. mine did not let us watch television when we were growing up. naturally, it's all i ever thought about. it took me a while to get there, but look at me now. i loved tv because i never got to watch it. there was a man who was a sophisticated gallery owner in new york. i asked him how he became a gallery owner in new york. he said, it was tv.

he explained he had grown up in arizona. both his parents worked for the airlines and he was left alone at home all the time and watched "i dream of jeannie" constantly. he remembered a particular episode where judy was at her bottle and her bottle was decorated with what looked like a picasso and a ming vase. he thought, that's amazing. years went by. the school took him on a field trip to texas. he went to a museum where he actually saw a picasso with a vase. he said, it's real. he quit high school poem moved to new york, enrolled in art school -- high school, moved to new york, enrolled in art school and never watch tv again. when i started, there was a lot of good television.

the difference for me was that people like myself were not watching the way i watch now. when i started people said, why do you want to be a critic? people introduced me at parties and said, tv critic. she used to be pure chief. -- bureau chief. the shows have gotten more sophisticated. we are talking about a narrower audience. i think that is true, that balkanization of our popular culture. what i'm struck by is how the audience has grown to include

college professors and nobel laureates were all watching the same shows we are. what is interesting about that is simply that that is how good television has gotten. it is still terrible in some things, but you probably are cells will discuss a tv show before a movie before a novel. television is not like a novel. so much so that there was an adaptation of a novel i had loved, i thought. it was adapted by bbc. tom stoppard wrote the screenplay. the screenplay was so good that it made the novel look bad. that is how things have evolved. nobody is going to movies because all the movie directors are now doing television. spielberg has a television production company. pretty much anybody with the name "s" has a tv show. frank and i work great fans of nora efron. -- are great fans of nora efron.

when she was in the hospital dying, she was determined to keep working. she was working on a television treatment. it was about a woman who is a compliance officer and realizes her boss is a fraud. i wish he had stuck around to do that. -- she had stuck around to do that. people used to feel guilty about watching television. now people feel bad about not watching it enough because they feel, i can't even talk to my friends because i haven't seen "orange is the new black." the responsibility of a new critic at the "new york times" becomes not just being a fan but also finding things to say about these television shows good and bad, that tell us about ourselves. if we get a chance, i want to talk about the depiction of men, the demeaning depiction of men

on television. i write about the depiction of women. i thought we should talk about the depiction of men. thank you for being here. i look forward to your questions. [applause] >> who wants to jump in? david? mike? go ahead. >> sort of dovetailing of where you left us, alessandra, talking about the novelistic nature of television nowadays -- clearly the most critically acclaimed shows of the last two decades have these intricate, serial storylines with slow, elaborate character development. above all, they require a really long, deep investments of time. simultaneously, a lot of our

media culture has shrunk and accelerated, emphasizes twitter-length discourse. how is it that those two things can exist? why is it that we are willing to make time and put in the effort for this incredibly -- these incredibly novelistic shows while at the same time we have trouble getting past something that is 141 characters. >> the answer is in your question. i think it has to be that elaborate. no one is going to stop doing things they can do in 10 seconds to do it for an hour. there is that a leave of him going to draw down the curtains and i'm going to watch 10 episodes of "deadwood," and i'm not even going to stop for food. it is the antithesis that people

need after a wild. your head spins from the twitter. frank probably has an even better theory, but you probably cannot have one without the other. >> is there something bad about it, because it is hard to catch up to conversations if you have not caught up with the shows. you mentioned that in your talk. it would have been the case in decades past, you could drop in, season three, season four, and catch up with the public conversation. now it seems harder if you have not what in the 10, 20, 30 hours to catch up. >> people feel guilty, like they don't watch enough tv. >> your point about gender on television, if men are being portrayed in a demeaning way. recent review of "the good wife" and "madam secretary," you make the case that strong and powerful women are no longer shocking on television. we come to expect it. at the same time, we can't pass the equal pay act and we can't elect a female president and all these sorts of things. i'm curious if you think the

representation of gender on television is just completely off from the actual landscape out there. if so, why? >> i don't know if that's really true. hillary clinton was secretary of state. we now have a tv show about a female secretary of state. i'm not so sure that television is leading. it used to be leading. it was a fantasy on 24 that there would be a black president. five years later, there was one. the great thing about television is that there is so much of it you can make that argument -- it is an incorrect or fantasy version of reality, but then you can just watch a reality show or something. i noticed that it is more subliminal. on tv, women can be divorced. the heroine has to be single

but she can be divorced. a man is always a widower. that's because a man who is divorced is obviously a beast who left his wife. if he's a widower, he lost her fair and square and he can be a character. i would say, wait a minute, not all divorced men are beasts. just most of them. [laughter] >> let me go back to your discussion about this travel is -- tribalization. this is something you have addressed, what seems to be going on is we are losing that communal watercooler conversation. those of us a little bit older and the audience, we would all watch "in the family" or the "dick van dyke" show or mary

tyler moore, then we could come in and share it. how do you feel it's being reflected in the balkanization of our political life? >> the habits that people exercise when they are choosing curating their entertainment options and all of that, those habits carry over into other walks of life. you get accustomed to when you

are looking at a cable dial that has hundreds of channels -- using the word dial -- we haven't come up with a vocabulary. people are in the habit of curating their entertainment universe. once you get in the habit of curating, you curate every aspect of your universe to your specific specifications. binge watching was brought up. i'm sure a lot of you has traveled. one of the other kind of perverse effects of technology if you look around you on a plane, you can take a five-hour hour trip that takes you across the country and you are deposited in a completely new environment, and what people are doing is not looking around them at this new environment. they are staring down into their iphones, their ipads. they are spending that trip watching five hours of "game of thrones" to catch up. they are landing in the foreign country with the information cocoon still in tact and with them. they are staring down instead of up. all of that makes us less aware of anything but the narrow band of experience we have chosen for ourselves. >> let me follow up on what you spoke about with regard to information silos and echo chambers. as you pointed out from the podium, suggesting that folks bookmark and reach for publications and blogs and views

that disagree with their own. which publications, blogs, or people do you read besides rush limbaugh that disagree from your own? >> on the rare moments that i have time, apart from rush -- because he fills up a lot of air -- a publication/website that i recommend to a lot of people for this reason, because you get this experience in the one place, "the week." "the week" does something interesting. he goes to the major events of the week, in the way the news weeklies used to pretend to do or were supposed to do before they came -- became magazines. he goes into the stories of last week, gives you a paragraph or two. objective, straightforward summary of what happens. then he gives you various viewpoints, various takes on it

from different columnists. a bevy of people all coming from different directions. that is one-stop shopping. i know i should not urge any publication other than the "new york times." when i worked for the op-ed page, moderates or liberals for our number conservatives there. it's not an accurate mirror of the country and the political distributional people in the country. "the week" does that for you. >> another question on technology, i'm curious how technology has affected your job. in that, today, it strikes me in tv, twitter shows are reviewed in real-time. thousands of viewers all the time. every restaurant is reviewed constantly by everyone who dines at yelp or instagram. anyone who has a website can pine about whatever strikes his

or her fancy. >> i would like to think that because there is all this instant reviewing that the "times" -- we can be that beacon to make sense of it. you can read on yelp or whatever, but at the end of the day you want to come someplace you know they synthesize the information and a higher objective people, or at least people who aren't corrupt, and you can trust it, anyway. i hope that's the case. i rely on the paper for that.

i work there, but something is happening, at least i want to know what we say. i can't just rely on [indiscernible] they're all over the place. i don't know who's writing them. i don't know what their backgrounds are. are they paid by someone? people are getting more suspicious because of advertising, but you don't know who's writing it right -- writing it. >> i agree. if we, the "new york times" can continue to find an economic model that keeps us alive, sufficiently funded to do the journalism we do, i think there are a lot of people out there who find us more valuable than

ever before. in terms of raw numbers, the problem with a newspaper like the "times" isn't that we don't have enough people reading us. the economic model with advertising and how we make income to pay for that journalism has changed. i saw when i was restaurant reviewing and i talked a lot about this, people would say how has yelp affected it. for a sophisticated reader, yelp did nothing to diminish the "times" restaurant review. intelligent readers know or quickly learn as they grab information from the citysearch or yelp or whatever, you have no idea if the person telling you and how many stars they give the restaurant has eaten in more than three restaurants in the last year. you have no idea if you're getting something from the chef's mother or the chef's bitter enemy. what you get when you are reading a tv review, a restaurant review by our current critic, what you're getting is something that you know is not compromised by an economic interest. you're getting something from someone who has and just watch that one show or eaten in that one restaurant, but is using a yardstick of vast experience gained over years of watching tv or eating in restaurants. you can't trust that when you

are just reading twitter or people's comments on yelp citysearch, etc. >> you are critics yourselves. do you read criticism of your own work? >> not lately. i don't read other critics not because i think i'm better, but because i'm so afraid of being influenced. it is not just that you are going to copy an idea, but if they liked it too much you're going to overreact a other way -- the other way. you can read your own reviews. the internet is fierce. you can get preoccupied. you have to try to do what you do. we are the "new york times." we are an easy target. we have to take it. >> how much would you allow your own subjective taste and biases

are you feeling you need to either repress? frank, you might not like thai food. alessandra, you might not like shoot-em-up westerns. how do you then go into these, and you have to review it but you know this is not your thing? >> luckily, i'm not the only tv critic. there are certain things -- i knew i was never going to like it great -- it. i thought, i'll give it to [indiscernible] she hated it. [indiscernible] poor girl has never recovered. then i give it to mike hale. he did not like it either. three strikes. >> then you are already self-editing the outcome. your passing it off to people. >> i wanted to give the show a chance. just because they may not like a certain genre, i will still review it. you don't just want to slough it off or you want to give it the best shot you can.

a lot of shows wouldn't normally watch myself, but that's part of the job. lucky i like a lot of stuff. >> frank, you would look at the restaurant -- >> my thing -- i'm still waiting to meet a food i don't like. there's no country i can safely go to and hope to lose weight. i think it's a great question. i think you can't suppress or try to adjust for objectivity the you are one person is going to have. i know my relationship isn't that i'm trusting my opinion will always mirror theirs. if they are being true to their subjective nature, i can figure out where i overlap with him and where i don't.

that will only work if that critic is consistent to his or her sensibility. i felt it was my duty as a restaurant critic to offer an intelligent reason or explanation for why i felt the way i did, but not to say maybe i feel this way, sweetbreads aren't my thing. i love sweetbreads. a review is supposed to be a consumer guide. at a higher level, and the level the most critics at the time aspired to be at. a review is more a discussion and a springboard for discussion than it is meant to be the final word for everybody. i think it's ok to be true to your own subjective taste. >> staying with your experience as a food critic, it strikes me that some of the best writing in a newspaper often shows up in food criticism. that might be a subjective opinion, but having been a food critic for a number of years did you feel differently about

the craft of writing as you approach a restaurant review compare to other things where you can be more playful? was there a generic format you had to follow? >> if you're writing a restaurant review, there are certain things you have to accomplish over the course of the review. you have written a terrible review if you have not to a certain extent told people what it looks like, sounds like. there are a million ways to embed that information. i found it fun and challenging to always try to make sure the

review did not always have the same structure. is this a million a was a compelling person, i might start that way. i did an enormous amount of reporting so i could figure out if there was some interesting wrinkle at this restaurant that gave me a way to approach the review somewhat originally. i don't know if i succeeded. i remember a pair of chefs -- it was a very common scenario you find in the restaurant industry, which will find sexist, you find a lot of couples married where the husband is the chef and the wife is the pastry chef, which says a lot about society. there was a situation like that at a restaurant at the upper east side. i don't know how it came up, but they lived right over the restaurant. i realized, i have a fun read where i can write about the most enviable commute in manhattan. in that sense i thought it was a fun writing challenge. >> i want to add something to that. i can say this, frank can't. the best critics, especially food critics, or people -- you read it, regardless of whether you intend to go to the

restaurant -- i like food, i just love the lighting to be dim -- i always read frank's reviews because there is always something entertaining or interesting that has nothing to do with food. that's ideally what you would want in television or book reviewing. you don't have to be fascinated by the show or the book or the restaurant. the "new yorker" has wonderful writers as well who do this. it's an invitation to have a great experience while you are reading. >> you can read and anthony lane movie review about a movie that you have never seen, will never see, have no interest in seeing and you can have a great time with the use of language and voice and that sort of thing. >> is there a review or column either of you have written that you wish you could go back and completely retract, kick out of the archive? >> not necessarily. the most dangerous thing you can do is go back and read. we are both in jobs and have always been in jobs where we have had to be prolific. as soon as you put a time limit on something, you end up making

compromises or rushing in ways that when you go back and look you realize you did not say it the way you meant to say it, you did not say it as elegantly as you thought you are capable of. i think you learn early on not to look back and to keep going forward, like a shark. >> the things i regret are the articles i've written, although some of them are terrible. it is more things i did not write. there was a vatican story i wanted to do, but i chickened out. it was politically different difficult to do. i can think of a lot of stories i would love to go back and do rather than take away stuff i've done. a lot of times you can talk yourself out of something.

>> let me ask about "house of cards" for a second. one of the most interesting things for me about that show was its development. as i understand it, netflix ran through this enormous amount of audience streaming data it has 30 million plays per day, 4 million fewer ratings, spit out an algorithm that said david fincher plus kevin spacey equals a winner. my question is, will audiences be better off if creative development of shows becomes more data-driven? is there something that is potentially going to be lost? >> that's the big challenge of amazon. they think they can create an algorithm for literature, and they can get rid of the editors. so far, that hasn't worked for

them. it is true in television too. everybody has always done that -- that. nbc would see something on abc that was successful. now it is more data-driven. there is serendipity to all of this. someone will come up with something. "mad men" was amazing. hbo, they cap deleted it, we have already done a --

calculated it, we have already done a period piece. it change the way we look at television. there was an algorithm that led you there. not that worried about it right -- it. >> alessandra mentioned the vatican. i wanted to follow up on a question with frank. you have written extensively about issues related to sexuality and the catholic church and the catholic church is focused on this at the expense of other social issues or moral teachings of the church. i'm curious why you think that is. secondly, if you hold out as much hope as liberal catholics do that this pope is going to create change. >> i'll take the second question first. a misimpression has been created. i don't think you will see significant changes in church teaching from this pope. i don't think the church moves at that pace. i think a lot of the sorts of changes that progressive catholics or jesuits would like to see are not going to be on the menu. what is true of catholicism and

what i have written about is the religion. its leaders have always picked and chosen what they focus on, what they enforce, what they turn a blind eye to. what you are seeing with this pope, the signal he is sending over and over again is that he does not want the church anywhere in the world and certainly in america to get mired in the stuff it was mired in before. that's a pretty powerful thing. there have been many catholics who always lived by their own consciences, made their own sorts of truths. they have needed simply to not be ostracized. i think the pope is saying let's get out of that end of the judgment business. i think that will continue. >> what advice would you give to a gay or lesbian catholic contemplating their role? >> in a lot of countries you can find a catholic congregation catholic errors that is -- parish that is extremely accommodating to you.

in other areas of the country, that's harder. i don't know what to say to people in those areas. maybe go to an episcopal church. a person's relationship with god is his or her relationship with god. i don't think any cleric or any church can pervert or govern that utterly. i think you can always find ways, and in some cases, should, to worship your god and have a relationship with your god that is not mediated or compromised by rules you don't believe in. >> let me go back to your experience as a food critic for

a second. >> that's an interesting transition. >> i know. [laughter] >> from saints to soufflé. [indiscernible] >> when you got asked to serve as a food critic, having had your own complicated relationship with food and having written a book about it did you hesitate taking the job? there is probably equivalent challenges the reporters would have being assigned to a job like that. how did it strike you viscerally and intellectually when you got asked to do the job? >> what he's referring to is before -- i have written about this, so it's no big secret -- before i became the "times" food critic, over the course of my life i had huge food issues. i was a bulimic in college. i ultimately did write a book about all of that. when i was asked to be the food critic, i had come to what i thought was the far side of that. i filled it would be the kind of

final answers -- felt it would be the kind of final answer as to whether i had gained control. i also knew my problem and also been one of -- this is a common dieter's problem, making false extreme promises to myself. i'm not going to eat anything but salary for three days. i'm going to pit out today -- pig out today. i knew the enforced rhythm of eating up being a food critic might be good for me. in fact, i was in much better shape when i was a food critic than i am now. >> let's walk through the routine. this is the walter mitty fantasy of you are the food critic of the "new york times." what is the expense account like? how did you organize it? how did you find your companions? were you in disguise, wearing a beard and dark glasses?

walk us through what it was like to walk into any of the big, luminary restaurants. >> i can't do justice to but a fraction of that. restaurant critics are almost always recognized in new york city. at the "new york times" they have so much money that hinges on your opinion that they make it your business to know you are there. they almost always do. the best way to answer your question about what it is like is to tell you about my third visit to restaurant in midtown which was a new incarnation offshoot. on my third visit there we noticed as we went through this extremely long, multicourse meal that our server, the woman had

no other tables but ours, and she was hanging back eavesdropping, watching the table at all times. towards the end of the meal i went to the bathroom. i was washing my hands and i hit the soap dispenser very hard. a splash of soap landed on my tan shirt and made a dark mark. i came back to the table. i said to my table mates, i hit the soap dispenser really hard. just forgive me. a couple moments later we finished the meal. the waiter said, sir, i want you to know that your three glasses of wine have been taken off as an apology for the malfunction of the soap dispenser. i then explained to her that the soap dispenser had not malfunctioned, that i had malfunctioned. she said be that as it may, i'm sorry. i did not argue, because the bill was $900.

the manager rushes up to me and he says, sir, i want to apologize so much on behalf of the restaurant for the malfunction of our soap dispenser. i explained again it was not the soap dispenser's fault. he handed me his card and said be that as it may, if you need the shirt dry cleaned or you need to replace it, please get in touch with us and we will reimburse you. at that point i thought i should point out, it's soap. it will come out. then the restaurant showing its true colors. [indiscernible] that is what it's like, being a restaurant critic. they not only grab whatever pictures the can of you, but in my first month as restaurant critic, if i was in a restaurant, i would often notice as i ate people would come in,

stand inside the door, look at the table for five minutes and leave. this would happen over and over again. the restauranteur would be calling colleagues from around the neighborhood saying, if you want to see him in the flesh he is here right now. they would exchange notes on what music i was overheard to say i liked. i don't think there has ever been more bjork played in a restaurant during my tenure as restaurant critic. >> what about the great scene in

"the godfather" when they go to the italian restaurant in the bronx and michael has the gun -- is it true that you have gone into the men's room and dialed and called your own home phone messaging to write the review into your own telephone? >> the way i would take notes, it wasn't so much to disguise taking notes, but more to not interrupt the rhythms. i would walk outside to pretend i was having a cigarette or walk into the men's room. i thought rather than dictate into a tape recorder, i will call my own voicemail. that way if i had a couple glasses of wine, went home and wanted to go to bed, i could wake up the next morning and take dictation for myself. -- from myself. >> alessandra, i want to ask you a little bit about the long view, the art history of television today. you have written about "house of cards." you called it utterly joyless. is anyone here watching ray donovan?

the remorselessness, "mad men" is an extended psychotherapy session. what are people going to think about life in america in our times? this is what we were entertained by. there's a quality to these shows that is just so downtrodden in town -- in tone. >> one, you're watching premium cable television. a lot of americans are watching very cheerful television about people being killed for a good reason. we were talking about doing a piece about -- i like "the walking dead." to me, it is a dystopia that is a cheerful dystopia. the world is ruined and it has been taken over by zombies.

the survivors are all the same class and they're all in it together. frank is putting -- these dystopic movies -- not only has the world come to an end, but there's a big class difference and -- but there is a distinction between the elite and the hoi polloi. i realize, of course, movies are an industry that is threatened. there is nothing more -- you

want to blame someone. you can't display the end of the earth, you can blame it for ruining my existence. even the world is going to come to an end, it is great because there is more tv! >> but people have to come back. when you have a movie, people are depressed utterly and you have their money. with a television show, people have to come in next week. i did a review of "the walking dead," and one of my friend said one of the best things about the show is that it was good that zombies don't drive. >> it is true, they don't drive! [laughter] >> on one hand, we have a ton or a glut of reality television which we tend to think is the

lowest common denominator. and then there are dramas were even if you compare them with cereals from -- serials from 20 years ago, they tend to move a lot quicker. if you think television has gotten more dramatic, do think it has gotten smarter? >> that isn't using, i think it is dumber television and there is smarter television. so i suspect it is has not changed that much -- it has not changed that much. there is a good ratio. there was good tv back in the 1960's and the 1970's, and there was bad tv. and now we have so much of it. i don't know, the that would be a very interesting exercise to do a quantity versus quantity ratio. that would be interesting to find out. the great thing about netflix is

that you are not just watching american television, you're watching television from all over the world. i encourage my readers to watch "spiral," which is a french crime show that is great. it is a british-discovered show that has been put on netflix. you can watch a swedish tv and danish tv. our world is getting smaller but some people can narrow it down. >> what is a tv show that you have watched that you want to tell people you watch? [laughter] >> god, there are so many. >> give us the top 5. but i'm also ashamed to admit that i can watch a docto -- watch "dr. phil," and be glued to it. i can't turn that stuff off. so yeah, there is a lot to be

ashamed of, actually. [laughter] but i get paid for, so i watch bad tv for you. [laughter] >> let me ask you a question about talking about getting smart. if you could go back to college and be undergrads again, 18, 19, 20 years old. what would you study? >> wow. >> history. >> why? why would you choose history now? >> i was an english major, but you are always challenging yourself, and i wish i had challenge myself more and take in and history and social sciences. you know, i missed an opportunity there that helped other people. i did not take advantage of learning things that i did not already know. i have a lot to redo.

i should go back to school. >> i should have become an english major. i think my broader answer would be the farther you get away from college, the more you appreciate what a unique juncture of life it is. it is often your last it is often your last opportunity, free of some economic concerns or economic concerns that are not as pressing, to really rummage around ideas and really challenge yourself and stretch in directions that you normally wouldn't stretch. you have sort of a net under you to i think joan gideon said in one of her famous essays, you don't have that later on. i would have been or i would be much more adventurous about everything in college that i was.

in hindsight, it is a juncture the cannot replicated later on. >> you write a book about college. it is called "demanding more from college," where you talk about the need to be more in quizzes have and more expensive. the real concerned than is the withdrawal from activity in politics and getting involved in citizen campaigns. what was the impact be on our democracy than? >> i think the impact would be profound. if you are not using college to fill in the gaps in your information and to learn the history of your own country and the world, you are not going to be suited as well as you should be in the specific life that you are going to be and the decisions you are going to make. there was noise surrounding

college admissions and the most incredible race to get into schools. i think that is taking up so much oxygen and it is forming people partial psychology that we are in danger of raising a generation of kids who are focused entirely on getting things and crossing this threshold and not experiencing and making the most of what is on the other side of that line. that is my biggest concern about what we are doing to kids today in our conversation about college. [applause] it is a market for my book! yay! >> when is your book on to be published? >> soon. >> why with the 800 challenge of the 1000 cable outlets that there is so little success for anything educational beyond the obvious public television? why is there no market to

support it in this fragmented -- >> there is not much of any for the "mooc," right? >> "massive online courses" or something? >> yes, in fact one person tried to take it and said that the site crashed. they are so popular. can i tell a little story? i have a daughter in college but when she was little we were with my nephew and we were talking about the war and kristallnacht came up.

my nephew was in high school and i asked him, you know what that is, right? he said no. his crawford was smarter, and she knew about it. -- his role friend was smarter and she knew about it. -- his girlfriend was smarter, and she knew about it. and i asked my daughter am about it, and she made a quote, and i said, is that from "the princess diaries?" and she said yes. [laughter] it shows just how significant cartoons are and the cultural references that exist in kids'shows exposing them to things that they might otherwise not know.

>> when this part of your career is over, would you be a consultant to a restaurant group or would you be flown out to hollywood and would you take the other role and become the expert consultant? it seems like everyone who was in washington dc goes out of power and is already taking up a consulting group. is that a life in the times? >> well, it is, but it shouldn't be. there should not be a revolving door. i wish in politics there was a year or two were you would not have to be a lobbyist immediately. frankly, there is the polling kale -- pauline kale example. remember she was a famous film critic? and then she was convinced to come out to hollywood and work

in films and she was terrible, and she wasn't a film person, she was a film critic. i root for good television certainly, but i don't think that's it. >> ok. going to ask our guests a couple of quick questions and i'm going to see how we do on this. this is called our lightning round. >> celtic a pop quiz, is it? >> yes. you are flying on virgin or jetblue out to lax, and you know there is no real food on the flight, so what is your airport food drill? it is a seven hour flight to the kos, you are flying from jfk -- >> i usually have a couple of cliff bars on me. in terms of their protein and carbohydrate ratio, they are better than a lot of other stuff, and if you are hungry and you just want to state that hunger a little bit, you can have a cliff bar.

and a chocolate chip unit butter one, to be specific. [laughter] >> what you? -- what about you? >> on what have a drink at the airport first. [laughter] maybe a sandwich. a cliff bar sounds better. >> who controls or knows what you are doing next? frank? >> oddly enough, one of the wrinkles or privileges that is held to be an op-ed call missed is that nobody knows what i am doing next. it is one of the jobs in a paper where the editor does not know the jobs and tell they land right before they are supposed we online.

so in these particular jobs we are given and absolutely hellish amount of freedom. >> likewise, but less so. i have an editor and we have to discuss what is going to be reviewed, and she is very helpful. she usually says, we should do this, all should we really do that -- this, should we really do that? >> can you describe what is on the air that is impacting reality in america? >> i cannot think of a debtor example, so i am going to say "law and order: svu," i think when it started it was a. in new york were people had this idea of sex crimes and that kind of thing. out in the country it was not as well-known.

it is not necessarily that it did not have the most social impact, but off the top of my head, "law and order: svu," change the way that we looked at sex crimes in america. >> and i were to give an example which i do not think it is a bad one, but it is the "cosby show," is certainly represented something -- "the cosby show," and it certainly represented something that was more real.

>> if you were asked to take a six-month leave, what is your dream post that you would like to spend six months? in -- months in? >> paris. that is a great story. everyone is having a sex scandal. there is every story that you could possibly want, plus a sex handle -- sex scandal. [laughter] >> me? i have kind of fallen in love in recent years with portugal, so maybe there. >> we talked about television from the past, so what is your most memorable television show from your childhood that you just remember at 8:00 on whatever it was, sunday night -- what was your favorite childhood -- >> i was not allowed to watch television. my parents went out and we had a spanish babysitter, and we were little we were allowed to watch one thing, which was lovely jenna -- was la lucha, which was spanish wrestling, and i loved it!

[laughter] we were very small of the time. >> um- "all my children." i have not watched a soap in a gazillion years, and i was bonded with my mother by watching "all my children," and i was so addicted to it when i was in college, there were courses towards my major that i had to take at my senior year because they had been scheduled at 1:00 in p.m. when "all my children" was on. >> i know you fly around a lot what is the best restaurant city in the united states besides manhattan, besides new york city?

>> that is tough, i think l.a.. the truth is there are strength -- there is strength in numbers. the size of the city matters but it also think l.a. is an underrated restaurant city. i prefer eating nla compared to san fran. -- eating in l.a. compared to san fran. >> i did a cross-country road trip where i just tried to eat nothing but fast food from dawn until midnight and i try to hit all of the fast food chains that were regional. if i remember correctly, my friend carrie went from new york to atlanta with me. then i picked you up at the airport. sandra went from atlanta to dallas with me. and then my friend barbara met me in dallas and went from dallas to los angeles. i was the only one eating fast food for the entire week.

>> ok, sandra, you are first now. it was your past summer, your toes are in the sand, what would you read this summer? what is the book the you would read that you would keep turning the pages. >> i am not going to tell you because it's going to sound pretentious. >> but we have six other people who want to hear it. >> but it is in french and it was absolute amazing. it came out during world war i and it is an absolutely amazing book. >> ok, you had a mystery french book. >> what about you? >> there was a man who wrote a lot of "frasier," and a lot of other shows, and he wrote "my blue heaven," and other books that were.

time-based books. there are enormously funny i don't know why they're not more widely accepted. >> you were both in moscow and you were both in rome, what is your most inspirational moment in front of an artwork -- artistic expiration -- artistic inspiration? >> does vodka count? [laughter] >> vodka? [laughter] >> absolut! >> what work of art? >> if you have never been exposed to eastern churches, you have no idea what it looks like inside.

that was for me, just mind blowing. >> there is a bernini sculpture in a church in rome and it is the most crazily sexual thing that you ever seen in the catholic religion. it is in sentences on a -- it is in santa susanna or someplace? you can go and look at it and you're not standing behind 10 other people are looking at it. >> that is a great choice. my last question is, of all of the articles you have published, what was for you the greatest, most gratifying experience with the feedback and the letters and the letters of people were thanking you because you wrote that column? what was that? personal, professional gratifying work? >> there was no feedback and no one thanked me, but i was very

proud of a piece i wrote in russia right when the chechen war started, where you just realized how savage the russian army still is. there had hundreds of bodies laid out on the ground for days and families had to come out and just take out their family member and bury them themselves. and nothing had changed since 1930. not many people had read the story, but i was glad that i did that. >> frank? >> i wrote a column about a year and a half ago about my relationship with my sibling. it had a viral life and it was one of the five most viewed things on the times -- on "the times," during the entire year. it was one of those moments that you fell you are really blessed to make a connection.

>> both of you have schooled our audience so they want to ask you some questions. we are going to take some questions and get some house lights up really quick, how are going to ask them to go to these two microphones. you can come up and ask your questions and we are going to get this flowing as quickly as we can, and tried to make -- and try to make your question as short and as refills you can. anyone here? do we have a question? oh, here is a brave -- oh no. >> we have defectors. [laughter] >> i told you this would be the most curious audience and doing well. thank you, ma'am. >> i wrote this question because i thought i was supposed to hand this to someone. you say you have no editor at the op ed. what about those incredible columns that you write on sunday, do have editors for those?

>> i kind of miss spoke a little bit. we have editors. the presumption for the opinion column is the idea that you are writing up opinions and people want to respect that. someone has to get the column and make sure that you have not said something so clumsily that you'd did not -- you did not make sense of what you mean, what on my sunday column i tell them what i am going to say ahead of time so it can be illustrated. but no one has ever said, you should not write this, you cannot write this etc. >> missed and leigh, under broadcast television and the sunday section of "the times," nsic is invariably number one -- ncis is invariably number one. it was also named the most-watched series in the world at the 54th annual television conference.

why is it then that we never see "ncis" or its stars as emmy winners? >> because hollywood is a very mean and jealous place. i think "ncis" is extremely successful and they have a formula that works and it sucks me in and i hate myself. but i don't think it talks much about great artistic merit. i think that is what people aspire to. that is what is surprising. if you have a show that does that well and actors who have practice, it is hard to say what is a great moment.

i think that is what it is. it is pretty damn successful and is broadcast. >> we will hear from this young lady? >> i would love to hear your comments on the future of journalism? >> those will be brief! [laughter] >> you want to take that one? >> me? >> yeah you! the blonde! >> i think i may be a future of journalism, it may not be in print, but they will eventually figure out a way to pay for it. i am not that worried. i think it is going to be a very hard profession to get into and i would not recommend it for people who can't afford it, basically. you are basically subsidizing yourself a lot of times when you start out. if you are paying off college loans, you don't want to go work for huffington -- "huffington post."

some people always want to be journalists and no news -- know news and read stories online. i am not that word. are you worried -- that worried. are you worried? >> there is a trend towards journalism becoming opinion journalism because it is cheap. it doesn't cost them traveling time or reporting time to rip on even's of the day. they don't have to go out and find information, so i think there are elements of journalistic information gathering that are in serious jeopardy and that is worth worrying. >> ok, yes ma'am? >> from the very beginning, "the new york times," has been owned by one family, and "the washington post," has been owned by one family and has been sold to amazon.com. i wonder what you think about the new ownership of "the post?" >> it is pretty soon to guess about the ownership of "the post," so far, but it is way too

soon to tell what it is going to mean down the line. down the line, "the washington post," could be a good one because they might have much deeper pockets. it could turn out very well, we just don't know what that owner's priorities are yet. >> i would just add as a cautionary note that the new executive editor has no real background in journalism. he is essentially a fixer, and a very sophisticated one. he helped "politico" get -- he helped "politico" establish itself. you have to ask yourself, why that guy? ellis his real skills are what you are after in newspapers. -- on a less his real skills are what you're after in newspapers. -- unless his real skills are what you're after in newspapers. >> i am a local girl, and i'm not sure you are aware of this but you are in pine valley right now.

he is essentially a fixer, and a very sophisticated one. he helped "politico" get -- he helped "politico" establish itself. you have to ask yourself, why that guy? ellis his real skills are what you are after in newspapers. -- on a less his real skills are what you're after in newspapers. >> i am a local girl, and i'm not sure you are aware of this but you are in pine valley right now. >> is erica kane here? >> "all my children," the exterior shots were done right

here. when philip and i were talking today, we said that we should have a food question for frank or something very relevant for sandra, and then you mentioned "all my children," and i thought that was totally local. we live here in connecticut and not very many people come from new york to hear. so if you are -- to here. so if you are in manhattan and go here, where are we going to go within walking distance and have a place that is within easy distance from the train? where can i go in midtown where i can have a real city experience? >> i will give you one answer that is a very universal answer, there is a restaurant on 39th street between fifth and sixth and it serves such one food, it

is called szechuan cafe. you can grab ice cream at the terminal on your way back. >> actually, there is a wonderful bar in grand central. >> campbell's apartment. it is called campbell's apartment. >> since it is getting late in the evening, we are living through the golden age, in many ways, of comedians. wendy's we will see a female comedian take over a late-night -- a network late-night show? could you think will break that barrier?

>> well, i like chelsea handler. it may just be that women who are successful in comedy don't want that job. it is not just that -- the world is not that sexist. anymore. in a specific field. if you are a successful comedienne, you can write euro show and have your an hours, why would you want -- you can write your own shows and have your own hours, why would you want to do that? it has long hours and it is exhausting. all of the guys that do it, they are all the guys that grew up watching that guy. there are not a lot of girls that grew up wanting to be johnny carson. i would like to see someone do it, but i don't think it has to be. >> you mentioned lucille ball.

when lucy and desi moved to the country, they moved to westport. so let me just say to all of us and to everyone, we really appreciate you being here. we thank you all. thomas jefferson, we certainly talked about him a lot tonight. jefferson reminds us that where the press is free in every man and woman, and everyone is able to read, all is safe. i've have sublet we have critics like frank bruni and sandra here. we want to thank our audience and we want to thank c-span, and we want to say thank you from syracuse university. please remember in november on election day to please about. thank you. [laughter] [applause] ♪ >> you are so great.

[captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2015] >> the c-span city store takes book tv and american history tv on the road. this weekend, we have partnered with time warner cable for visit to austin, texas. >> we are in the private suite of linden and lady bird johnson. this was the private quarters for the president and first lady. this is not part of a tour that is offered to the public. this has never been opened to the public. you are seeing it because of c-span's a special access. the ip's come into the space just like they did in lyndon johnson stay but it is not open to our visitors on a daily basis. the remarkable thing is that it is really a living, breathing artifact. it hasn't changed at all since president johnson died in

january of 1973. there is a document in the court of this room signed by the then archivist of the united states and lady bird johnson telling my predecessors myself, and my successors that nothing can change. >> we are here at the 100 block of congress avenue. to my left, just down the block is the colorado river. this is an important historic site because this is where waterloo austin's and assessor was. it consisted of a cluster of cabins that were occupied by four or five families including the family j kerry -- j carroll. this is where l'amour was staying when he and the rest of the men got wind of the big buffalo herd. they jumped on that pot is happening, but in those days, it was just a muddy ravine.

the men galloped on the horses, they had stuff there full of this full and they rode into the midst of the buffalo firing and shouting. from there he went to the top of the hill where the capitol is and told everybody this should be the seat of the future empire. >> watch all our events from austin saturday at 9:00 eastern and sunday at 2:00 p.m. on c-span3. >> this week on "q&a," former ohio republican congressman bob ney discusses his newly released memoir titled "sideswiped: lessons learned courtesy of the hit men of capitol hill."