When you buy a used car, you kick the tires, you look at the odometer, you open up the hood. If you do not feel yourself an expert in automobile engines, you bring a friend who is. And you do this with something as unimportant as an automobile. But on the issues of the transcendent, of ethics, of morals, of the origins of the world, of the nature of human beings, on those issues should we not insist upon at least equally skeptical scrutiny?
I have somehow something like "influence" ... In the Anti-Semitic Correspondence ... my name is mentioned in almost every issue. Zarathustra ... has charmed the anti-Semites; there is a special anti-Semitic interpretation of it that made me laugh very much.
I think we really need a movement to drive how popular culture understands the issues that feminists care about. When I think about the LGBT movement for example, they have had a really intentional strategy to try to change images and representation of LGBT people in the media and the culture. It really moved the dial politically. That's what is needed in the women's movement - a strategy that can drive awareness and culture change.
I think we're at a place wherea woman's health is danger because of whether this family planning or contraception or any issues that relate to women's health, there's an assault on that in the Congress.
Any politician who respects China's government should tell it openly what is in his heart. It is disrespectful to keep quiet about such issues - both vis-a-vis the government and the people concerned.
It's the reason why I am always interested in engaging in people who are pushing us and pushing against the status quo. But having been an activist, the only thing that I'm always encouraging activists to do is, once you have raised the issue, and even through controversial means, you have to come behind it with an agenda and the possibility of reconciliation if power meets your demands.
I was a huge fan of 'Mad' magazine when I was 11, 12, 13 years old. I'd scour used bookstores trying to find back issues, and I'd wait at the newsstand for a new issue to come out. My life revolved around it.
Unfortunately, public debates do not have much room for subtlety. The audience wants a quick thrust at your opponent, not a slow and convoluted series of moves. Whenever Obama uses subtleties in discussing a complex issue, he gets creamed.