Philip Galanes Lies Like a Rug

York Times advice column in two thousand eight. Dear Abbey had been his guiding force as a boy, growing up with a distant father and mother who refused to accept that her son was gay. Dear Abbey left him with nothing but answers. Some people might have given up, but Gallanis, who had already sailed through Yale, undergrad and law school, isn't one of them. He kept writing the column, kept answering questions about bullying, ex boyfriends, and sibling rivalry, and

nine years later, he still is. It's one of many endearing qualities. The warm and witty lawyer turned writer possesses quiet refusal to be anything but himself. In his weekly column Social Cues, he pushes readers to do the same, even if that means temporarily suspending the truth. I lie like a rug and generally, um, I mean, I would never lie, you know, I would never become a fraud. I'd never lie and steal to steal from someone, but to smooth over something I'd like every single day of

the week and twice on Sunday, definitely. But when you're in a conflict with your significant other, I find I lie. Some of the time. I'm lying to just cast a spray of ether over the whole room so we can all rest. Well, I'm very defensive, so it doesn't really even occurred to me. Not occurred doesn't sink in that I am wrong sometimes for days or weeks later. But you can't have a fight going on with your partner for weeks until it actually occurs to you. So I do.

I get down immediately, and I lie, and then and I said, I'm sorry, it's all my fault. And then most of the time when he says to me, know, that was really shitty what you did, I'll three days later, four days later, it well, it will hit me and I'll go, you know, yeah, that's right. But growing up I think the way that I did. The first impulse had to be I was not to blame. You weren't I was in my house, it was who was to blame?

Everybody is running to the to the blameless corner. And I don't think my mother ever apologized one single time in her life for anything so funny. Never. And when I was in therapy, when I started to really you know, become an adult in my twenties and thirties, thanks to a guy who lives, you know, right around the corner from us, and I would go to see him twice or three times a week, and he would say, before we get anywhere, you've got to get angry with your mother.

You've got to go tell her, or tell me, or tell someone all the things that you've got pent up inside of you. And so I did it with him, and he said, I think you need to go do this one thing with her. And I went to her and it was about an episode that happened when I was you know, maybe seven or eight or something like that.

It was when it first started to occur to her that she had a gay kid on her hands, and she was really, you know, in the what would have in the seven early seventies, you wouldn't be thrilled about it. But she was gonna always be in my corner. But she wasn't happy. So I was like, that clear, how did she make by shipping into a shrink? By she made that clear to you by saying you need to

go talk to somebody, right, and by also encouraging. I mean, it starts in very subtle ways, like, you know, have you ever thought about maybe being the principal when you play school as opposed to you know, the home act teacher, something like, yeah, pouring tea for everyone exactly. Um, So she starts that way, and then it gets to like all of a sudden coaching. Yeah that the Teddy Bear collection disappears one day because and in its place is a bunch of baseball cards and you've never picked up

a mint in your life. And but so I go and say to her, I say to her, I said to her this thing. I remember that. I remember really clearly, this ugly episode we had on the drive to this train. Isn't Vermond the wilds of Vermond? And she, to her credit, she's found the one shrink who deals with kids in the woods of Vermont. And she says something to me about, you know, you could make more of an effort with your father, you know, And I said, well, Mom, he

doesn't really you know. He comes home for dinner and then he retreats to his study and that's the end of him for the night. I said, he doesn't really talk to me either. And I had siblings, two brothers, two brothers, both younger. They were one is and with both of them he could do more boy type stuff. I mean, he was always doing the right thing. So he'd come home from his day at work, he'd offered

to play catch. I didn't really want to play your brother, Your brother who was gay, at least he was bodybuilding in the gym. At least he was he was trying to be. He was trying to be what everybody wanted him to be. I was the first one. I was definitely trying to be people pleaser. But I invented myself before them, they before they came along. So I just actually thought that I was supposed to do things I

like doing. But that's really not true. Willful, right, So she so on the way to the strength this day, she says to me, the situation with your father is totally your fault. I mean, you're the one who's not if you're the problem. If you actually engaged this wonderful stand up guy, he'd be locked in that study because of you. Exactly so years later, I said to her, I said to her, I really thought I needed to, like, I wanted to talk to her about that, because not

because I wanted to blame her. She didn't know what was coming down the pike anymore than anyone else did. But I I said to her, you know, I just I wanted to tell you this story, and I wanted to tell you how much this story lives with me all the time. And she looked at me and she said, you know, what is so wonderful about you, Philip, And I knew something really shitty was going to come down play. She said, what's wonderful about you is their active imagination.

I just love it. And so she just denied it, shut it down. She couldn't even say I mean, as any right thinking adult would say, like, you know, it's a one car drive. It was just to say wow, I don't obviously she wouldn't remember it, but just to say, wow, it's so great that you remember that. I'm so sorry if that if I made you feel that way. I mean, she didn't put the idea that you were asked to do, the understanding, the idea that you were asked to do,

the reaching. I think the only way to survive in my family was to triangulate stuff. There's no way that my mother or my father was there We're going to look at me and go good boy. So the best I could do was sort of create a triangle out of the two of them and try to play from each other, all play them off against each other enough to get a little tiny bit of attention that way, like, you might be a horrible kid, but at least you're not as horrible as this. Or did you feel you

were a horrible kid? Ahmed? Because in general it worked its way to in general, but we had two big secrets in the family. One was my mother was clearly saying, there's something very wrong with you. I didn't even have no the word. I didn't know that the problem with me was that it would end up with me being attracted to other boys that didn't even I'm seven or eight. I didn't even get that, but I knew that was

a problem. Number one, your sexuality and the problem Number two was that we had a father who was going through the motions but would then disappear. But we were never allowed to let anyone know that our family only

in private, was any different from anybody else. Yeah, so there were two big secrets and they were both really I mean, now I know we've all got what's so great is when you get to a point and you realize you had two secrets, and Emily had two secrets, and Tom had two secrets, and we all had two secrets and or three and we had somehow, Yeah, march through the world and diffuse and diffused. Your mother wanted you to attempt to reach your father in a way

that she could not. One Christmas and this was one of the things that I once later tried to talk to her about too. She said to me, I'm Christmas Eve. I knew I was old enough to know that. You know, we were pretty pretty well off. So they everything was there, was never in We were never wanting for anything, and they almost overdid it to overcompensate for all the stuff they knew they weren't doing. So I don't know where the hell My dad would ask where I'm Christmas Eve.

At seven o'clock or eight o'clock. My dad is at large, and my brothers are getting into bed. And I said to my mother, I can help you bring the presents, because there were so many presents, lots of presents. And she said to me, oh, I didn't. I haven't gotten any of the presents yet, and I would have been like ten, and she said, I said, well, but mom, everything is going to be closed, and tomorrow's Chris and

tomorrow's Christmas. And I was thinking, actually, and I feel like maybe I wasn't always so shitty, because I actually think I was thinking of my brothers and I thought, well, what what are we going to do? And she said I don't know, because I don't have any money either. And I ran upstairs and through you know, being a shitty kid, through stealing from my father's pants every night, you know, and putting things together, maybe had like forty

dollars or fifty dollars hidden away. And I came down and brought it to her, and she thought that that was funny and wonderful that I had been generous. But she didn't see any of this money I stole from dad. Let's use that she didn't see the trauma of how scary it was for me to think there wasn't going to be any Christmas family there there were tons. When did they come in? She she had just lied. She

thought it was like a funny thing. I mean, my mother would treated me like very much like I should have been an adult and understood of course they were testing, but she wasn't going to involve me in bringing them down. It would all happen later when I was in bed too.

But I had a nervous breakdown and because I thought that this would be the year there wasn't going to be Christmas and in the Galana's household, and she thought, she's I can sort of remember her laughing and and and at the time I think I was just profoundly relieved. But it's the kind of thing where you can spend, you know, months on a story like that. At the shrink, you know who was wearing what? Where did I say that I'm gonna write a movie. I'm gonna steal that

from movie? Now? You went to boarding school where I went to boarding school at this place called Deerfield Academy. But at the time when I went in the in the seventies and eighties, it was still all boys, so it was kind of that for you. No, no, it was really they were dumb boys. It's so it's so funny,

because why would you not make a school coach. I mean, it's like, if you do make something co ed, the first thing you do is you get rid of the really bad ones on the bottom, and all the boats rise up because all the girls are bright, and then you keep the bright boys. But this was a place. It was like a nesting pen for like lesser semi retarded Rockefellers, and so it was people that they wanted out of the house. They were shelving them. Yeah, it was.

It was a weird little school. And also what you picked this up kind of a weird impulse. If you're sending a boy two a school to butch him up a little bit and see if there's like a last ditch effort to make him straight, why in God's name would you choose an all boys school to do it. It's a very straights training man is playing. All the teachers are claud or not all, but you know a good percentage of them in my day where they were all you you've read about choked in the Yeah, well

it was like that. They were, but of course the teachers, the closet Kate's teachers, they're never coming after. I mean, I would, you know, had elaborate fantasies at fifteen about you know, the man who taught English and he was like my dream boat. But they would of course be after the lacrosse players who didn't have you know, and it's a terrible I don't mean to do with years. I was about there for four years, and there were

good things that happened. No, it's to me. It was a wonderful place because it took me out of a household where I felt ashamed every time I turned around. But I what I learned to do there was to create a public persona. When I first got there, I thought, oh my god, I am going to be toast. These guys are gonna beat me up. They're gonna tease the hell out of me. It's going to be really tough.

But very quickly I saw that if I could be eccentric, and if I could be funny, and if I could be a little funny, and unfortunately the funny that they crave in an environment like that is mean funny. So I developed not the goodhearted sense of humor. But I took a page out of your mother's humor book and my mother's humor book, which was a kind of Betty Davis meanness. But it I learned how to survive. I learned how to It's what I call it's what I

call my Grandville Thorndyke theory. And I always say that you could be amongst the most filthy flea bitten, you know, just moronic rattle, and if you can entertain them, you buy yourself that they take the noose off your neck. Absolutely, And I met a couple of kids there who really became good friends. I mean they were It was the

first time I really made good friends. And there were a couple of teachers there who were really in uraging and so yeah, on balance, it was a very positive experience for me, mostly because I think my dad's situation at home, even though nobody would talk about it, he was sort of slowly getting more depressed, and I was not forced to worry about that. So you go off to go to college from So I go off to go to college. I go to Yale. Was that a fed company or did you want to go to Yale?

Other places? You want to. My parents were really really interesting that way. My parents didn't care at all. I want you to understand the kind of well off they were. My parents were well off because my dad's father, who was a Greek immigrant who came to this country and no, no, no, his job was to go around and take the pennies and nickels out of you know, gumball machines and and and collect money and collect money and deliver it to somebody. And he got where he got by working twenty hours

a day. And my dad was, you know, largely employed by him, and my dad's brother was They built into a big company. They built it, they bought real estate and then and they were and they were really really hard working. The idea that they had a kid who wanted to study Emily Dickinson, Yes, I was literature. They didn't think that was good. Education was very very highly regarded, but they certainly didn't They thought that I was maybe taking it a bit far. So when you go to Yale,

what was Yale? Yale was heaven. If I could send everyone, if if I could give everyone the four years go to Yale, Yeah, I had the best. I mean, it really worked for me. People didn't want me to be anything different than I was. I got to stop lying. People were like, well, yeah, well of course you're gay. It's obvious you're gay. Who cares? Um, it was the gay scene like at the Yale then Jodie Foster and me. It was like it was around So it was no,

it was the wonderful It was sort of. It was all yeah, it was a great time and the student and four years were you there? Um, from nineteen eighty one to your five years? Okay, so that period comes to an end. And as it comes to an end, who are you well at that? What happened that you're going to become an attorney? Well, no, no, no, I'm so not going to become an attorney. I go and take my first job, which is working at the New York Times as a copy boy. They have these old

this is like six or so eight seven. They have these fat old men who sit behind desks and they rip a piece of paper off and they go international and they hand it to me. And my job is I walk it to the international desk, and then I walk back to the old man and he rips another piece off and he goes culture and Hearthur, I'm there for like two weeks and I'm going get get me

out of here. This isn't working. So it did. And and I'm also not a journalist really, because they would encourage us to go right stories after hours, and lots of people would want to go to you know, there'd be a shooting and they'd want to figure out who did it, or where how it happened, or why I came alive at Christmas? Remember in the Metropolitan section there used to be this these this little feature called Remember

the Neediest, and we go. I'd go up to Harm, I'd go up to Harlem and I'd sit in the room and I think, I want to understand how these people got to this place? How do they feel about this? And so I was always interested in the personality, the dynamics, and like the woman is sitting there, she angry that she's you know, she's got this terrible school system for her disabled daughter. Is she does she does? She just does? She want help? Is is the husband helping? Where is

the husband? How did all this happen? Those were the kind of stories that I liked, And so like within a few weeks they sent me up to work for Carrie Donovan in the magazine, and I thought that that was going to be what I would do, and then my dad killed himself. Coming up, Philip Galanis looks back on an interview with former President Barack Obama and Emmy Award winning actor Brian Cranston. In the literary world, a few names hold more weight than The New Yorker's longtime

editor David Remnick. As a writer, I take too much time clearing my throat in the beginning of the piece, and I hope I've learned myself to get rid of a lot of the crap. But very often my editor, Henry Finder, will just very quietly take a pen. He's your editor. Oh yeah, that's who edits you. Oh yeah, and he's great. He's unbelievable. To hear more about David Remnick's story, go to Here's the Thing dot org. This is Alec Baldwin, and you were listening to Here's the Thing.

Philip Galanus's mom once blamed him for his father's depression, but he didn't let that stifle him. After receiving a phone call from his uncle that his father had ended his life, Philip sprang into action immediately. I came home, went back to Vermont. And I'll tell you something that I've never said out loud before. I found out the morning after I'd had my first one night stand. So all through the night, my not my mother, because she

was so zonked out. My mom was um. Any any resentment I have for my mom disappears in a second if I think of her walking out that back door and having to find her husband having in the yard, in the yard, having shot his head off with a rifle, and which you all thought was inevitable. You thought you thought that was coming anyway, well, or you weren't sure. I don't think anyone thought it was coming. I think everyone thought he's you know, he was the guy who

did the right thing all that. He went to work every day, he came home, he'd throw catch and then he should go and he'd sit and he'd watch television. He was never treated for his depression formally. He I think my mother tried to intervene a few times. But this is before no shrinks, No there. He He was not a talk therapy person. You have to be a you have to be a verbal person. Yeh. And medicine back then was rough, and it would you know, it

would totally wipe you out. So I'm off having my first one night stand and my uncle, my mother's brother, is trying to reach me, trying to reach me, and I four cell phones. This is a way before cell phones. This is yeah, so he is everyone's trying to reach me. Where is he? Where is he? Where is he? Where is he? And I come in to work and I'm on the Upper West Side with a person I've just met, and it was I thought, Wow, this is so great.

I mean because the other thing I should say is at Yale people we were all we talked about being gay a lot, but there wasn't a lot of what nobody was doing a lot. So um, I was very sexually and experienced. I thought, oh god, this is the most miraculous this thing. I'm having sex. It's great. And then the next morning I walk into work and I see every eye is on me, and I'm thinking, wow,

can they tell that I've just had sex? And I thought, because they're really this, I'm working on and walking on air. And what really has happened is my uncle has been trying to has been calling every fifteen minutes for the last hour looking for me, and So I get to my little copyboy station and I am pulled aside by a woman called Marie, who is the copyboy dead mother, dead mother. She takes me into a room and says, I need you to call your uncle and I'm going

to give you some space. I'm gonna give you my office. And I'm thinking, doesn't this doesn't feel right? But my but my impulse went to my mother's dad, and um, because because that would have been the end of I mean, because she was my jailer. She's my jailer, but she's

also my savior and everything. And when I reached my uncle and he says, your father is dead, and this is something I feel terribly guilty about for you know, the next ten years, I think, few it wasn't my mother, She's okay, And then it sinks in that my father's dead. And there he when a present when such a big part of your life is really is it is really more of an absence than a presence. It was really complicated to know what to feel. I mean, he was

a wonderful man, never did a mean thing. He's a decent guy. But I just didn't have any I didn't have, you know, I didn't. It was like in the chorus line, I had to Yeah, It's like nothing. It's like, I'm I feel the air, I feel the CRISTI and I go to Grand Central. I get on a train. I get on a train that's going the wrong way. I get on a train that's not going I mean, I'm I've taken this train ride a thousand times. My uncle lives in Westport. All I had to do it was

to get from Grand Central to Westport. And for some reason, I get on there. I'm so I'm so shaken by it that I get online. I don't know I'm going to Westchester or something like that. Finally I get there and we get to my my uncle picks me up. He's my uncle is still alive, and he's in He is the loveliest man, my mother's brother. He's an ophthalmology. He wasn't homologist and a great, great guy, the first

sort of gay person. I didn't know because he had a tenant, and I was thinking, and now you think, like, well, he's a surgeon, why does he need a tenant in his house? But that's how it was told to us, and so for a very long time he has a tenant in his house. Um, and so he drives me to Vermont and everyone is administered a valium. I don't know what I mean. I guess they thought we all needed it. They were like we were just they gave us value. For several days, people just kept giving us

more valum, like that was the thing we needed. But and it was then. It was then that I thought I need to grow up. I need to become the man now. So that's what made me go to Yale Law school. I did, I had. I would never have gone to law school except for this, because what was the feeling to find that boo? Because you're so smart, you go, I'm gonna man up here, whether you want

to do? Why did you be quite going to Yale because you were going to have a career that was a serious Because I was going to have a career that was going to be serious. Did well, Yeah, getting into law school was not a problem. Not in Bang. You're in Yale Law School and I go, and I made a life changing decision based on I'm gonna be an actor and I wouldn't bang, and I think him

an actress. Some were stupid, sort of emotional. I had some like little some little thing in the back of my head said this was important and this was not important, and this would be what a man would do, and this would be what a This is responsible, This is responsibility, This is what my my dad doing, Doing the right thing, doing the right in honor of my dad maybe became going to laws. So when you go to law school and you're there, are you choking it down that it's tough?

Or do you fall in love with Can I tell you again? I would say I sound like an advertisement for Yale, but it was. I've never been in a room with so many smart, engaged people and they're only talking about things that are interesting, the constitution matter. You're

talking about things that really matter. It was the first time, and this is in the early nineties, and we're talking about what we are now dealing with issues that we're now dealing with, the warehousing of men of color in the prisons instead of I mean, and we're really seriously grappling, grappling with this stuff. And I loved it, and then I graduated and it is the worst most mind numbing work you can being the law. You're practicing law. It's a fete company. You're gonna go to some top firm

they recruited. You can I tell you a smarter person, a person who would have considered more, would have been less horrorsh than I was. I looked at the firms and I said, what, what firm was paying what? So? I was interested in the top ten firms who were paying the most. Yeah, and I just go and what kind of work do they have you doing? Year one? In the very beginning, I'm working in mergers and acquisitions,

and it could not be less. I don't understand anything that's going on because I've been talking about the fourteenth Amendment for three years and yeah, and all of a sudden they're saying, take a look at the balance sheet, make sure they can really afford this note. And I'm thinking, what note is that I'm looking for? Like the note that miss so and so passed to somebody else or playing the piano and the note. So quickly, very very quickly,

I get myself transferred to the entertainment department. Where where so I'm thinking, okay, well this breathe. I was like, okay, I've got to work out a royalty. Yeah, I can do this. I work with mostly with theater and fine arts and music. I don't want to get too greatest hits here, but then you wind up working with I'm working with amazing clients. I'm working with Stephenson, I'm working with Jerry Herman, I'm working with Lincoln Center Theater huge,

I'm working with Scott rudin Um. I really thought this is fantastic. This is about as good as it could get. And after two years of it, I'm realizing, Oh, if I go look at what Stephen Sondheim's personal assistant is doing and I look at what I'm doing, there's really not that big a difference being a lawyer unless you're doing something that it's very ad hoc. It is very

ad hoc. And working on the fourteen revival of Company by a you know, yeah, the great doing the contracts and working out the royalty pools and is Wendy wasser Stein going to fly business class or coach. It's not fascinating. But I'm getting paid a lot. So I'm going, well, I think this is what I want. I want to

be paid, talking about the constitution anymore small. I want to be paid, but it's very small, And so I thought, Okay, the way I'm gonna the way I'm going to bridge this because, um, my parents are also very big or my mother at this point is also very big on everybody pulls their own weight. You were given a wonderful first class education, and now you will pay you'll support yourself, go off into the world. Go. So it wasn't like

I could have had the luxury. I mean, good people, truly good, better people than I do, would go work for the A C. L U and they would live in a land so they'd live in Massapequa and they would take the train in and they'd work for dollars a year and they do work that they really cared about. But I was a little too horsh for that, and so I wanted to be in business. I wanted to stay working at a firm where I was going to get paid. But here's what it was interesting to me

from the moment I met you. You know, you're like cave it. You know, this is really bright and this wit and this warmth is everything sewn into that fabric. And when I met you, I thought, God, this guy is just so fun to talk to you. I mean, it's so bright and funny and in statche when are you there? Does someone see that in you. Does someone tap you on the shoulder and go, you gotta get out of here, or do you just do that for yourself?

Know what happens is I start thinking the way I'm going to bridge all this is that I'm going to do something creative on my own. So I'm gonna wake up, I'm gonna set my alarm at five o'clock every morning, and I'm going to start writing a novel. I've got a novel to write, and that is going to be the thing I really care about. And I'm going to go into Paul Weiss or you know whatever league job I m m in that's going to pay the bills for living on in the apartment that I live in.

And I do it, and I wait, I mean, because the one great quality I think I have his discipline. I set that alarm clock and I'm up at five o'clock in the morning. So for two hours I'd write and then I'd go into work. And I published the novel. And it is a one failure. It gets. It gets really doesn't make you go running back into the arms of the offer. You know, it gets great, great reviews and Barnes and Noble makes me a discover great new writers, and Sunny met Office is like, oh yeah, I'm very

proud of the book. Everybody's like, this is gonna be I mean, you were going to sell this book to the movies. We're gonna and absolutely nothing happens. I'm like, it's like dropping a feather into a well and waiting for the noise. When it in a little and then there's there ain't no noise. But all of a sudden, out of comes a call from an editor at The New York Times who says, please come and write for

us where they want you to write. Well. At the time, I was working for a company that was owned by uh Lorne Michaels and Barry Diller and Dick Snyder called Golden Books Golden Books Family Entertainment. And the more it failed, the higher I rose, because you know, smart people would leave, but I kind of thought they were all interesting personalities, and I stayed and how there um I was there until it failed so badly it went into bankruptcy court, and then I negotiated the sale of the thing to

various enterprises. Uh So, so that's where I am, and the New York Times calls, and I thought, well, this is really really interesting. First they wanted me to do a column, you know, one of those you'd know everything about me and my boyfriend and my dog. And it was supposed to be about my life, the life of you know, a metropolitan gentleman. Yeah, going around to the movies and what I saw at the theater, and I thought, people will be so fucking like it's like I can

see that. For three weeks, they said, come in with a list, Philip, lightly from now. They said, come with a list of twenty five columns that you'll write. And I could come in with like three. I had three, and I thought, I thought, I know what I need to do. I need to switch the pitch on this. And I said, you know, I think people would be a lot more interested if they could write into me for advice. And they said, that is the tackiest idea we've ever heard. Thank you very much. You can show

yourself the door. And then they thought about it some and we did it. What was the column call It's called Social Cues. It's still runs to this day. It's me the founder and I was the founder of it. And then that grew into I developed a show at HBO.

I developed a show. At CBS, we developed shows about an advice columnist who's you know, a little got a little spring in his little bottle rocket at every single place, intend of never it's never seen the light of day because it shouldn't, because it's a show about an advice columnist. So you're back at the Times and what was the gap in between twenty years? Twenty year gap? So how

was the Times different when you go back? Well, now they're all obviously it's different, But what's your description back then? Was it was? Yeah? They were they were so grand. They were in this big, shabby building and everybody was jostling next to each other. They were a little tight for space. People were the phone was ringing off the hook. Now you go back and it's really I mean, it's the it's not the failing New York Times, but it's

like all media. It's boy, they're sure are some empty cautious New York Sure are some empty desks, cautious New York Times? And how do we deal with this? But I want to interject something that this is so interesting. We have Jill Abramson on the show, and she was very gracious, and she was of course more um disclosive

than anybody in that position before. And New York Magazine reports that Sulzberger was complaining to people that she talks too much to the press, she's too out there in that role, and he doesn't like that she's too media centric, and he cited her appearance on My show that he didn't like that. And I thought to myself, all we did was kissed the ass of the Times. I mean, I am somebody who I have a very separate relationship, but I'm kind of proud of myself that I read

the Times every day. I'm a big fan of The Times. I just don't like when I read my name in the Times. Well, it's in big It's a big part of the change that we're talking about. In the thirty year period. It was before the event of celebrity journalism. People there was there was maybe did people magazine maybe had just started when we when I was when I was first there, and now that is what the news is. The news is, you're the news. I mean, it's very hard.

I admire the guys and women who were up there. I mean I personally, by the way, I think Joe Abramson was tremendous because she also had a great people sense. When I got I started doing this other I used the social cues column to sort of segue into the table for three column, which you've done with me and um. When I would get somebody really amazing, like Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Gloria Steinhum, she would send a little note.

Or when I would get a good get, she would say it would it was only a line and she but she was the head of this huge thing. But she was seeing. It's so important when you're working, when you're working at a place like that, to of someone say I see you. That's all they have to say, I see you, and I like what you're doing. And I feel like they're there's under so much siege now because reporting couldn't there couldn't be a more important time

for it. Do you consider yourself political in the work you do and the writing you do, in the in the interviews you're doing well? Now? It is such a it's at such an interesting time because I was getting I was getting good gets in the political world. I was I got the president, I got the president, I got Nancy Pelosi, I got to do Table for three, Table for three. Did Obama do it with Obama? Did it with Brian Cranston? What was that like? The three of them? Well, the three, I mean it was it

was the reason it happened. I think john was the Johnson movie, and I think the Obama press people were starting to think about legacy and they were trying to create a parallel track and trying to get Obama on this show. I Oh, he was fantastic. I mean, we talked about you'd love it because we talked about we talked about fathers, and we talked about guys who were really raised without fathers, who most important role in life they felt was being a father. And it was really

touching and I was really nervous. But but I mean, so this column has really gotten some great political figures, Elizabeth Warren, Christian Jella Brand. I mean, we've gotten all the great ones. That was it ever difficult? Was there any friction with anybody? Umble was David Duke? The problem is I have not been able to crack Republicans. Okay, you're a lawyer from Yale the time the funk? Would I want to have lunch with you? So? Did you do Trump? Have you interviewed Trump? No? I have not

interviewed Trump. I was very close. Not I don't want to say very close, because I don't know how close I was. Really. I was really close to getting Ivanka Trump, which I thought would have been very interesting during the campaign super woman. But the old has switched so much that I mean, and I had never understood how much. I mean. I think for you it's very different, But for me it wasn't an access game, and my access to certain people pipelines has totally dried up. And I

really wouldn't love nothing. I would love to get Mitch McConnell. I mean, I'm not. I mean, and if you read the table for three, you know it's now it's what you're saying. You're never in the hot seat. I don't want to put him in a gotcha moment. I want to think, tell us what you wanted to know, tell us how you're thinking about this, so that we can

understand it better. And since I'm so interested in in in the subjects childhoods and what their relationships with their parents were, as you are, I think you can do it in a in a way you can get with political people in a way that Trump's their politics. In a recent social Cues column, a reader complained about having his table at a restaurant given to a list celebrity. In response, Philip Galamis did what he does best, put things in perspective through pros take solace in the words

of Emily Dickinson. He wrote, how dreary to be somebody, how public, like a frog to tell one's name the Livelong June to an admiring bog, This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to here's the thing.