Andrew Ferguson on Journalism, Politics, and Culture

Conversations with Bill Kristol

Government, News, Politics, Society & Culture

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 16 January 2017

⏱️ 79 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A senior editor at The Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson is one of America’s leading writers and journalists. In this Conversation, Ferguson reflects on his career, including his work on American politics and culture, his time as a speechwriter for President George H.W. Bush, and his start in journalism at the American Spectator. Ferguson and Kristol also discuss higher education, the state of the conservative movement, and the changing norms of our politics and culture from the early 1990s to the present.

Transcript

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0:00.0	And the Hi, welcome to Conversations. I'm Bill Crystal and I'm very pleased to be joined
0:18.7	today by my colleague Andy Ferguson from the Weekly Standard,
0:22.6	author of many, many, many
0:24.7	brilliant articles over the years.
0:26.7	About three.
0:27.7	Yeah, three or four.
0:28.6	I was going to say four, but yeah.
0:29.9	And three books, right?
0:31.6	The Crazy Most Recently Crazy You,
0:33.9	which we'll talk about a little later
0:35.1	on current system of higher education,
0:38.2	Land of Lincoln, and then the book of essays
0:40.8	from 1996, I think yeah fool's names
0:43.8	fool's faces right the title come from well it was imposed on me by
0:49.4	my publisher through the agency of PJ O'Rourke who wrote the introduction and I've never quite
0:56.0	figured out what it means that the actual we shouldn't admit that I mean anyway
1:00.3	yes it was my idea yeah it was my idea, actually. It's deep. There are many levels to it.
1:05.2	Yes, I just don't know what they are. I'm sure there are many levels, but it's,
1:10.5	the phrase is from an aphorism that goes fool's names, fool's faces are often seen in public places.
1:18.6	The idea being that I think there are a lot of idiots in the world. And the conceit of the book was that it was a series of semi-profiles or discussions of individuals.
1:31.8	New Gingrich, Bill Bennett, Donald Trump, and a number of other people who are kind of known for their
1:39.5	Ridiculousness. I wouldn't say that about Bill Bennett I should take that back.
	...

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