So here are my five minutes on MSNBC with Dylan Ratigan.
And here is the backstory:
I had made a beginner’s mistake: Yesterday, I got a bit of redness above my right eye, eczema or something, as I occasionally do. Normally, I ignore it, but today I remembered some cream that my mom had once sent me for exactly this purpose. I fished it out of the closet and rubbed it on. And apparently, I got some in my eye.
Just as I was arriving at the studio, my right eye started gushing tears. Great.
This is what wives are for. So I texted mine, and she texted back, while I was still in the parking lot:
think about Hannibal and his one conjunctivitis eye.
So that’s what I did. I was clutching a Kleenex during the clip, and kept wiping the tears away.
So, not that bad a performance, considering. 😉
Hannibal and Me: life lessons from history 
Nice job. I didn’t notice the eye – I think you’re in the clear for that.
I was surprised too to see the bullet points of lessons. Seemed very unKluthian. You handled the topics well though. btw, was he pronouncing your name properly?
Nobody’s ever pronounced my name properly. So that’s OK.
(I wonder why that is so difficult for Americans: After all, nobody struggles with the pronunciation of the San Andreas Fault. Just drop the saint and the fault and you got me.)
But yes, the entire thing was exceedingly unKluthian. What can you do?
You didn’t instruct them to speak sans “Andreas” and call you “Kluth”? Whose fault is that?
Great. Turtleneck and a jacket and no elephant. Why I even bother to make suggestions I have no idea.
I knew you’d be upset. honey. But I was standing there with my Legoland foam sword, my little skirt and loincloth, and I said to myself: I am not ready for fame YET.
So I toned it down. But you had the right idea.
Very impressive. I watched the video before I read the rest of the post and after reading the conditions under which you were working it’s even more impressive. Like Dan I didn’t notice anything amiss with your eye. I wondered about the powerpoint bullets too–at least that means someone took a crack at reading the book. I got the impression Dylan hadn’t.
I think he had somebody look at the last chapter, where some lessons are indeed enumerated. From those, they phrased their own bullet points.
This is usually how these things go: I get to “free-associate” about whatever the show host has on his mind at that particular moment. A skill all of its own. I’ve got a lot of practicing to do.
Very nice Andreas. I watched the clip first and like others I didn’t notice anything wrong with your eye.
Fine performance indeed.
Speaking “with an auspicious, and a dropping eye” in the manner of Hamlet’s stepfather — each eye embodying a different “impostor” — is fine classical form well suited to the occasion.
Here I am, being compared to … Claudius. 😉