Politics. It's like porn sometimes; it's addictive--literally. I access so many news sites, I'm embarrassed when Melissa comes in to the office and sees me, say, reading some Atlantic Monthly link on the Daily Beast. My urge is to click off quickly, as if she just caught me with my pants down, looking at Japanese twins on nothingbuttasians.com. 

To me, good political writing is like leaf blowing--all of a sudden, without the grass clippings and dried manure, I can see what's below me, what I'm standing on, what politicians tried to obfuscate. I read people like Charles Pierce of ESQUIRE and see writing so prescient, so lithe, so brilliantly succinct, it makes me want to do it. Thing is, Pierce stands on the high board and does a Forward 4 1/2 Somersault in the Tuck Position; I stand on the 3-foot board and do Cannonballs ... and then I want to give up the craft entirely and take up ceramics.