Washington Is Hollywood for Ugly People
From Movie Sets to the White House: Highlights from a Reporter’s 44-Year Career

Martin Kasindorf | Fall 2024

From the perspective of a wide-ranging career writing for California newspapers, Newsweek, USA Today, Newsday, and the New York Times Magazine, Martin will introduce VISTAS members to the personalities and historic events he covered, contrasting the political and media environments of print journalism’s 1960s heyday with today’s internet-era trends and tensions. Highlights include interviews with nine presidents, from Truman to Trump; Northern Ireland’s violent Troubles; 13 national conventions; campaign travel with John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy (Marty was there at his assassination), Jerry Brown, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and other candidates; six years of White House life and worldwide Air Force One travel with George H. W. Bush and Clinton; the trials of Sirhan Sirhan, Charles Manson, Patricia Hearst, and other defendants; the quirks of Hollywood stars and directors, from John Wayne and Groucho to Brando, Spielberg, and Jane Fonda.

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