616) [When] high definition television becomes the norm [...] [a]ll of the politicians currently in power will be voted out of office and we will have a new power structure. Because high-definition television has a flat gamma curve and higher resolution and people who look good on today's television will look bad on HDTV and voters will respond accordingly. Their oversized pores will be visible, the red veins in their noses from drinking too much, the artificiality of their TV-friendly hairdos will make them all look, on HDTV, like country-and-western singers. A new generation of politicians will tale over and they will all look like movie stars, because HDTV will be a great deal like film, and movie stars know how to look good on film.

Stephen Bury
(Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
[George Jewsbury])
Interface (1994)
spoken by the character "Cy Ogle",
a political media consultant

617) A human being cannot withstand the scrutiny given to a presidential candidate, any more than a human being could survive the medieval trial by fire, in which he was forced to walk barefoot across hot coals. [...] Anyone can walk barefoot across hot coals. But you have to do it right. There's a trick to it. If you know the trick, you can survive. Now, back in medieval times, some people got lucky and happened to stumble across this trick, and they made it. The rest failed. It was therefore essentially a random process, hence irrational. But if they had fire-walking seminars in the Dark Ages, anyone could have done it.

The same thing used to apply to the modern trial by ordeal. Abe Lincoln would never have been elected to anything, because random genetic chance gave him a user-unfriendly face. But as a rational person I can learn all of the little tricks and teach them to my friends, eliminating the random, hence irrational elements from the modern trail by ordeal. I have the knowledge to guide a presidential candidate through his trial in this, the Age of Scrutiny.

Stephen Bury
(Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
[George Jewsbury])
Interface (1994)
spoken by the character "Cy Ogle",
a political media consultant

618) All that Democrat/Republican stuff is bullshit [...] And as far as liberal versus conservative, well, people are very promiscuous in the way they use those words. They don't really mean anything. Within those two camps there are a lot of wide divisions. And between those two camps, there is a lot more overlap than you think. None of that bullshit really matters. The only thing that matters is values.

Stephen Bury
(Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
[George Jewsbury])
Interface (1994)
spoken by the character
"Caleb Roosevelt Marshall",
a U.S. Senator

619) This that I am saying to you is not abuse. It's the truth. It's just that sometimes the truth is so harsh that when people hear it spoken, it sounds like abuse. And one of the problems we got in this country [...] is that everyone is so easy to offend nowadays that no one is willing to say things that are true.

Stephen Bury
(Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
[George Jewsbury])
Interface (1994)
spoken by the character "Eleanor Richmond",
a banker turned bag lady turned U.S. Senator's aide

620) Americans may be undereducated, lazy, and disorganized, but they do one thing better than any people on the face of the earth, and this is watch television. The average eight-year-old American has absorbed more about media technology than a goddamn film student in most other countries. You can tell lies to them and they'll never know. But if you try to lie to them with the camera, they'll crucify you.

Stephen Bury
(Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George
[George Jewsbury])
Interface (1994)
spoken by the character "Myron Morris",
a political filmmaker

Note: "3089/898" is the designation I've given to the project of posting all my collected quotes, excerpts and ideas (3089 of them) in the remaining days of the Bush administration (of which there were 898 left when I began).

As of today, there are 701 days remaining in the administration of the worst American President ever.