“To ask whether the mainstream media has a conservative or liberal bias is like asking whether al-Qaida uses too much oil in their hummus. It’s – I think they might use too much oil in their hummus – but it’s the wrong question.”

For 35 years I was a writer. I wrote a lot of jokes. Some of them weren’t funny. Some of them weren’t appropriate. Some of them were downright offensive. I understand that.

Most of us here in the media are what I call infotainers…

Anyone with an Internet connection and a few dollars can obtain personal information they should never have access to, including a user’s date of birth, e-mail address, or estimated income.

My dad never graduated high school. He was a printing salesman.

I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone it, people like me.

I am a Minnesotan, and not just because I root for the Vikings and the Twins. I like the Minnesota-nice sensibility.

We need to be pro-science; we have to go back to science.

I think there are all kinds of different hells. It’s not a place you go to after you die.

I don’t think I’m an angry person. I think I’m a person who’s angry. I’m angry at the Bush administration;

I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. And I was. I was growing up middle-class in a time when growing up middle-class in America meant there would be jobs for my parents.

My dad loved comedians, especially George Jessel, and he loved Henny Youngman and Buddy Hackett.

Why don’t we focus on what Afghan women can do? They can cook, bear children, and pray. As I recall, that was fine for our grandmothers.

And terror is indiscriminate murder of civilians to make a political point.

Most people would rather be uncertain some of the time than 100% positive all the time – even when they’re wrong.

Demagoguery sells. And therefore, radio stations will put it on. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t do something else and also make it sell.

One thing I’ve noticed about politics is that these guys have pretty thick hides.

The idea of a liberal media bias is simply a myth. If only it were true, we might have a more humane, open-minded, and ultimately effective public debate on the issues facing the country.

A writer’s style reveals something of his spirit, his habits, his capacites, his bias…it is the Self escaping into the open.

But in the right-wing media, they do have a right-wing bias. And they also have an agenda. So their agenda is: we’re an adjunct of the Republican Party, and we’re going push that agenda every day, and, as you say, brand these stories that help further the right-wing cause.

Does the mainstream media have a liberal bias? On a couple of things, maybe.

if we are unaware that women even have a history–we live our lives similarly unanchored, drifting in response to a veering wind of myth and bias.

I think unconscious bias is one of the hardest things to get at.