GREENROOM With a View

I come from a family of TV talking heads. Who am I to break with tradition?

- Molly Jong-Fast

I HAD ONE of those childhoods that seems cool to other writers, and surely some librarians and academics. One of the literary luminaries I grew up around was Gore Vidal, the famed cultural critic and political pundit. He was brilliant and acerbic and famous for many things, like running for Congress or debating William F. Buckley on television. Vidal understood the power of the medium better than most, and one quote of his still rings in my ears: “There are two things you never turn down: sex and appearing on television.”

While I do, in fact, turn down the chance to have sex, perhaps because I’m married and boring, television is another story. Oh, CNN needs me to talk about Elon Musk on Christmas Day? No problem. MSNBC wants me to break down Donald Trump’s legal problems on Yom Kippur? Sure thing! Swing by 30 Rock before dawn? On my way. (Seriously: I write these words still bleary-eyed from a 4:30 a.m. wake-up call for MSNBC’s fittingly titled Way Too Early.)

I’ve written for years—mostly novels, essays—but the requests from cable news bookers ratcheted up during the Trump presidency, the era of peak resistance television. I was tweeting my way through it as well as writing political columns and podcasting, so punditry just fit into the mix. One TV hit begets another, and I’m suddenly a full-fledged member of the cable news commentariat. Even as the Trump news cycle slowed, the requests kept up, and I dutifully hopped on Zoom or raced to the studio to weigh in on the latest political mess, yet another mass shooting, or even a twisted true-crime case or two. Maybe I should be playing harder to get. Though it’s hard to escape my upbringing. The notion that appearing on television is a measure of success may be deeply embedded in my brain.