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It's still a political statement to stand on stage as a person of color and be excellent. We still need those images to combat the narrative we're often fed - as someone innately inferior or inexorably linked with lack.

Being president isn't anything like reality TV. It's not about sending insulting tweets or making fiery speeches; it's about whether or not the candidate can handle the awesome responsibility of leading this country.

But I think the image that's thrown out on television is a bad image. Because you see players who want to imitate hip-hop stars. And the NBA is taking advantage of the situation.

They say it figures MTV would do such a vulgar, awful, horrible show and they completely miss that it's satirizing the people who watch MTV.

We are obsessed with image. I don't think we should take it that seriously.

A lot of television stuff is mean-spirited, and I think that's how political advertising got so mean-spirited, to where people are throwing things at the television set every time we have an election.

Television's very dependent on images. That's not what news is.

I think there's something unfortunate about the attention that performers get in our media, but the weight of government propaganda is so heavy that anyone with a different point of view who has access to the media has a responsibility to use it.

The only place we were really told to tone it down - where other people would use the word censorship, but I wouldn't - was when we did MTV right after the Beavis and Butt-head thing.

Did I say that the President's entire job is image management? Of course not.