"Commit great poems to heart, starting with those by Gerard Manley Hopkins and Edna St. Vincent Millay. Recite them aloud on solitary walks."

"Recite them aloud on solitary walks. Compose dirty limericks in your head. Read more for pleasure, less for purpose. Read, immediately, Marguerite Yourcenar’s 'Memoirs of Hadrian.' Imitate the writers or artists you most admire; you’ll find your own voice and style in all the ways your imitation falls short. Don’t post self-indulgent glam shots of yourself on Instagram, and please stop photographing your damn meals... Make only enough money so that you don’t have to think about it much.... Never join a cause if you aren’t fully familiar with the argument against it. Heed the words of Rabbi Hillel: 'Where there are no men, be thou a man.' Or woman...."

Says Bret Stephens, recounting what he said in a commencement address, in a conversation with Gail Collins, in the NYT.

Collins reacts: "That’s pretty damn good.... But I’m not going to go so far as to suggest student protesting is a bad or silly idea." Yeah, I guess students are never fully familiar with the argument against their cause.

"Politically Incorrect was an American late-night, half-hour political talk show hosted by Bill Maher that ran from 1993 to 2002..."

"... first on Comedy Central and then on ABC. Four guests (usually including at least one comedian) would debate topics across the political spectrum in what Maher once described as 'The McLaughlin Group on acid.' Of the 1300+ episodes produced, 190 can be viewed on YouTube."

At the link (to Metafilter) there are links to those 190 videos, with the date of the show and the names of the guests. What a great resource! What did Bryan Cranston and Little Richard talk about on June 14, 2002? Don't you want to know what Phil Hartman brought to the table on March 14, 1997? Ray Davies (with Suzanne Somers!) on April 29, 1998. Way too many crazy match-ups to mention them all in this little post, so I'll leave you with this:

Politically Incorrect was cancelled by ABC in 2002, thanks to an incident that happened six days after 9/11. Maher and political conservative Dinesh D'Souza had this conversation on the show: