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“Running Wild With Mike Gravel” Radar Online (5/07):

Beaming after the Columbia event, [Mike] Gravel walks with [Jonathan] Alter to a nearby Cuban restaurant for a late lunch. On the way they encounter a gray-haired gentleman in owlish glasses. Alter greets him very respectfully. “This is Tom Edsall,” he says. Edsall was a senior political writer for the Washington Post for 25 years. He retired from the paper in 2006 and now writes for the New Republic and teaches at Columbia Graduate School of Journalism.

Gravel smiles broadly and says, “Hey, can you straighten out David Broder?” Broder, an influential columnist at the Post and the unofficial godfather of the D.C. press corps, has been a target of much criticism from liberal blogs for seeming to provide political cover for Bush on Iraq, even with a majority of Americans now opposing the war. “He doesn’t believe in the power of the people!” Gravel says. Edsall blinks and looks perplexed. “David Broder is the voice of the people,” he replies matter-of-factly. Gravel starts to smile, assuming Edsall is making an absurdist joke. But Edsall is not joking. The two men look at each other in awkward silence over a great gulf of unshared beliefs, then Gravel chuckles and walks ahead into the restaurant.

The Manchurian Candidate (1962):

PSYCHIATRIST: Major Marco. Major, as the consulting psychiatrist present, I’d be interested in hearing your personal feelings about Shaw.

MARCO: Raymond Shaw is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
[...]
MARCO: I tell you, there something phony going on. There’s something phony about me, about Raymond Shaw, about the whole Medal of Honor business. For instance. When the psychiatrist asked me how I felt about Raymond Shaw, how I personally felt about him and how the whole patrol felt about him, did you hear what I said? Did you really hear what I said? I said, Raymond Shaw is the kindest, warmest, bravest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life. And even now I feel that way, this minute. And yet, somewhere in the back of my mind, something tells me it’s not true. It’s just not true. It isn’t as if Raymond’s hard to like. He’s impossible to like! In fact, he’s probably one of the most repulsive human beings I’ve ever known in my whole– all of my life.