Ta-Nahesi Coates may not be everybody’s cup of tea, but I love the dialogue he provokes.

Bill Safire hosted a wide variety of guests who had at it — Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, and Mary McCarty. I watched a clip from Firing Line and was stretched to learn new vocabulary words. He was erudite, funny, and had an odd accent that was upper-class New England.

His family home was ensconced in Sharon, Connecticut, where I visited a friend’s second home many times. She lived in New York City, in a fourth-floor walk-up, and owned a falling-apart old white clapboard home in Sharon.

She had the accouterments of the intellectual, but not the influence — the connections that make a difference. She had come from an upper-middle-class background and had fallen on hard times, although she kept up appearances. Her New York apartment was lined with bookshelves. She had been blacklisted during the McCarthy period.

Even though women might not have had many spots as Designated Great Authors, Susan Sontag, Hannah Arendt, and Joan Didion were heroes of the 60s before feminist bona fides.

I also looked to Lillian Hellman and others as role models. Their authorship entered them into the world of public intellectuals, where ideas were floated that became part of the public discourse.

I moved to New York City in the 70s, in part to become part of that class. I didn’t understand that explicitly, but I did want to be one of those interesting New Yorkers who met interesting people. I certainly did meet interesting people with some remarkable talents I only understood in hindsight.

I grew up in North Dakota, so I had deficits in many areas of exposure and understanding, and the North Dakota to New York City transition involved pulling hayseeds out of my teeth.

(True story. I met a woman who introduced herself as from Jamaica, which I did not understand to mean Queens. She clarified. I explained I was from North Dakota. She asked if North Dakota was more like Queens or Manhattan. I paused, and said it was like the runways at JFK Airport.)

We learn from mistakes

I blew a great opportunity to join a writing group with up-and-comers and recognized a CIA agent I dated must have been CIA only when talking later with someone who knew him. I mentioned how he, a freelance journalist, always seemed to be where the world hotspot was. I had an affair with a nuclear scientist on a Nobel-winning team, thinking he was pulling my leg with his arrogance about his accomplishments. He wasn’t.

I was very young and was busy learning about life and the way the world worked. I made lots of mistakes, but I don’t know how else to learn except by making mistakes. I was early 20s and a bit boy crazy, or older man crazy, and without a plan, strategy, and tactics to get what I wanted. I acted on whatever the day brought.

American Masters

American Masters series on the Public Broadcasting System recently featured both Bill Safire and Daniel Moynihan. Daniel Moynihan, I was surprised to learn, did not have the patrician roots one would have expected. He wore a bow tie, produced books or long reports regularly, and influenced American policy for many years.

I met him once when he was campaigning with a local politician in New York, and both he and she were in their cups, after stopping off to campaign in a local pub, I’m sure.

He had a wonderful combination of eccentric character, great intellect, Irish charm, and a love of drink and stories.

I was reminded by the PBS series that Dick Cavett’s television talk show often had leading figures of the day on for serious conversation. It, too, did not act as if television was a wasteland.

So how about today?

Ta-Nehisi Coates was recently in town to talk about his most recent book, The Message. The heightened reaction to the book had me realize that an outcome of our polarized politics is that we cannot have civil conversations about controversial subjects that need to be deeply explored so we can each come to our own understanding.

I especially feel this way about subjects when there is a knee-jerk progressive response as well as an automatic conservative response. Let’s have a deeper conversation — about guns, transgender issues, Palestine, or other hot-button subjects.

The left and right responses prevent what-if thinking and the ability to discuss a subject for its intrinsic difficulties as opposed to a political impact. This undiscussed consequence may be our greatest loss in these polarized times.

The airing of the conversation is not pointless. Things that are patently silly have a way of becoming part of the culture. Gay marriage was like that 40 years ago. The negative income tax, first proposed by Daniel Moynihan when he was in the Nixon administration, became the earned income tax credit. It came with the welfare reform package of the Clinton Administration and is responsible for helping countless poor people who worked but did not earn enough.

Last year I bought a ticket series to public lectures and learned a lot. If I only took away one idea, I thought my ticket was well worth it. I have learned I have to buy the tickets in advance, or I will find an excuse to stay home on a dark fall or wintery night.

Social media forums like this one provide an opportunity for all the rest of us to engage in discussion. There are the benefits and drawbacks of minimal gatekeeping.

Meanwhile, I still seek out and aspire to be a public intellectual.