Jon Entine

This is embarrassing, but I'm a dad of a 9-year, so these days I'm all but forced to say that my favorite music is anything by Miley Cyrus (Hannah Montana). Okay, now that my daughter has left the room, so I can be straight with you: I still have a great love of the music of my youth from the 1960s—everything from heartbreak love song 45s to the Beatles, the Dead and James Taylor. And don't forget the early Dylan. But my all-time favorite song is that 50s smash hit for 5 year olds, Davey Crocket

Archie and Veronica (the real literature of my youth). Advertisements for Myself, The Naked and the Dead, Armies of the Night, and Executioner's Song, all by Norman Mailer. Reading Animal Farm by Orwell while still in elementary school was very influential. John Fowles' The French Lieutenant's Woman. This sounds pretentious, but Being and Nothingness by Sartre was my favorite college book., Mailer—I've read almost all of his books--Orwell, Dostoyevsky, Freud, Barth, Tolstoy. Yes, I'm a Hogwarts fan.

I loved the 1960s spectaculars, like Ben Hur and Exodus. I lived on James Bond movies. MASH and 2001: A Space Odyssey were favorites during my teen years. Five Easy Pieces and Midnight Cowboy were my top college era flicks. Almost anything with Jack Nicholson. It's movie-light, but I love Overboard with Goldie Hawn—any movie that can survive 20 viewings (with my daughter) and still bring out the laughs has to be special, yes?

I'm a 24 addict—calling all Cloe fans! Growing up, I loved the edginess (for its time) of The Smothers Brothers and Laugh In. Adored The X-Files. Seinfeld was, well—never mind, it was nothing, really. Here's a confession: my daughter and I like to watch American Idol.

Here's where I lose you: My daughter and I are rat lovers. I know that sounds weird, but it's not. These are 'fancy rats, '—very cute, with dumbo ears. They are smart and affectionate—always wanting to lick you. We've had six "kids" so far, and were thinking of breeding our dwarf boy, Alex, who's cute as a button.

This is a tough one. I supported Richard Nixon for president when I was 8 because I felt sorry for him, because no one in my Jewish-dominated community liked him. But to me, in second grade, he was the underdog, which appealed to me. I became an independent Democrat and even dropped out of college briefly in 1972 to organize a county during the New Hampshire primary for George McGovern; and then was assistant campaign director in 1974 for Father Robert Drinan, generally thought of as the hardest left Congressman of his time. I'm still Democrat-leaning—I believe Bill Clinton was the best president during my lifetime, which stretches more years than I want to count. But I despise the anti-science, politically correct, narcissitc knee-jerk politics of many people who self-describe themselves as "liberal." I feel very comfortable as an independent thinker at the American Enterprise Institute in DC. Small-minded critics caricature AEI as "conservative"—the word used as aa pejorative—yet I see it as a liberal-minded research palace—using liberal in the classic sense. My colleagues there do not apply ideological litmus tests to ideas. Some times what is correct is not "right" or "left"—it just is.

ABC, CBS, NBC, Miami University (Ohio), Northlich (a Cincinnati-headquartered brand agency).

Trinity College in Hartford. Also was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship at the University of Michigan.