Satirist talks about dad's role at MUSC

Q: What is your father's legacy at Medical University of South Carolina?

A: One of the great things about doing this speech is that it gave me an opportunity and a reason to find out about his career.

He was the first person who really encouraged research by the faculty and the students, who tried to turn this into a research facility.

I have been told that one of the things he gave very quickly to the university was a sense of ambition. He would not be surprised by what the university has become because he knew this was possible.

People have been kind enough to say the success of the university today is based on the foundation he laid in giving the university that ambition.

Q: A lot of your satire is based on the media. What is the future of journalism?

A: I love journalism. I satirize it because I think it's important. No small target is all that fun.

I worry about newspapers disappearing because they're still the best first source, certainly for local news. And if all politics is local, what the hell are we going to learn about politics if there's not someone around to cover the local?

I suspect someone will crack this nut because there has always been a press, and if we have the freedom of it, somebody will find a way to make a buck off of it. Right now my generation, and the generation below me, is getting their information off the Internet, which is what's killing y'all.

But that won't last forever because once it reaches a point — what astrophysicists call the Schwarzschild limited radius, which is how small stars can get before they become a black hole. Once newspapers reach that point before they implode to become a black hole, the market will create a facility for it to exist as a business again because people don't want it to disappear. People don't just want opinion, they want information as well.

Q: You've criticized media for being too complacent, for taking what people tell them at face value ...

A: Yes. Yes, I agree with me. Next question.

Q: Do you miss President Bush?

A: No. And that's no joke.

I actually stopped talking about President Bush pretty much a year before he left office because, again, objects of power are the best subjects for satire, and his unpopularity had made him impotent, except for his ability to wage war.

So there was not much to talk about starting late 2007, and after that it was all about the campaign. I've grown accustomed to not talking about him.