Paging Frank Rich

FRANK RICH: The reason I go on his show is very -- very simple. . . . It's the only show I know of in commercial broadcasting that I've been on where you can actually talk in an informed way -- not in sound bites -- about the issue of the day with someone with whom you can match wits and who really knows his stuff. For the space when he's talking to a journalist or, or a politician or, or an author, you know, it plays to me like Terry Gross, quite frankly. BROOKE GLADSTONE: If the serious parts are Terry Gross, then the satire, according to Rich, is closer to Alfred E. Neuman. FRANK RICH: It plays as-- sometimes juvenile speech at the level of say, Mad Magazine or Paul Krasner's [sp?] The Realist which is what it aspires to and hits and misses. I don't feel by appearing on the show that I'm endorsing the worst offenders, but also I feel in the context of entertainment to me it plays -- in context, in the show -- it doesn't play as hate speech.