Background: Marvin Neil Simon (born July 4, 1927) is an American playwright, screenwriter and author. He has written more than 30 plays and nearly the same number of movie screenplays, mostly adaptations of his plays. He has received more combined Oscar and Tony nominations than any other writer. Simon grew up in New York during the Great Depression, with his parents' financial hardships affecting their marriage, giving him a mostly unhappy and unstable childhood.
Context: Two years later, he quit his job as a mailroom clerk in the Warner Brothers offices in Manhattan to write radio and television scripts with his brother Danny Simon, including tutelage by radio humourist Goodman Ace when Ace ran a short-lived writing workshop for CBS. They wrote for the radio series The Robert Q. Lewis Show, which led to other writing jobs. Max Liebman hired the duo for his popular television comedy series Your Show of Shows, for which he earned two Emmy Award nominations. He later wrote scripts for The Phil Silvers Show; the episodes were broadcast during 1958 and 1959.  Simon credits these two latter writing jobs for their importance to his career, stating that "between the two of them, I spent five years and learned more about what I was eventually going to do than in any other previous experience." He adds, "I knew when I walked into Your Show of Shows, that this was the most talented group of writers that up until that time had ever been assembled together." Simon describes a typical writing session with the show:  There were about seven writers, plus Sid, Carl Reiner, and Howie Morris...Mel Brooks and maybe Woody Allen would write one of the other sketches ... everyone would pitch in and rewrite, so we all had a part of it ... It was probably the most enjoyable time I ever had in writing with other people.  Simon incorporated some of their experiences into his play Laughter on the 23rd Floor (1993). A 2001 TV adaptation of the play won him two Emmy Award nominations. The first Broadway show Simon wrote was Catch a Star! (1955), collaborating on sketches with his brother, Danny.
Question: What was the first script he wrote?
Answer: They wrote for the radio series The Robert Q. Lewis Show, which led to other writing jobs.

Background: Edward Wadie Said (Arabic: dwrd wdy` s`yd [waedi:? sae?i:d], Idward Wadi' Sa'id; 1 November 1935 - 25 September 2003) was a professor of literature at Columbia University, a public intellectual, and a founder of the academic field of postcolonial studies. A Palestinian American born in Mandatory Palestine, he was a citizen of the United States by way of his father, a U.S. Army veteran.
Context: Orientalism provoked much professional and personal criticism for Said among academics. Traditional Orientalists, such as Albert Hourani, Robert Graham Irwin, Nikki Keddie, Bernard Lewis, and Kanan Makiya, suffered negative consequences, because Orientalism affected public perception of their intellectual integrity and the quality of their Orientalist scholarship. The historian Keddie said that Said's critical work about the field of Orientalism had caused, in their academic disciplines:  Some unfortunate consequences ... I think that there has been a tendency in the Middle East [studies] field to adopt the word Orientalism as a generalized swear-word, essentially referring to people who take the "wrong" position on the Arab-Israeli dispute, or to people who are judged "too conservative." It has nothing to do with whether they are good or not good in their disciplines. So, Orientalism, for many people, is a word that substitutes for thought, and enables people to dismiss certain scholars and their works. I think that is too bad. It may not have been what Edward Said meant, at all, but the term has become a kind of slogan.  In Orientalism, Said described Bernard Lewis, the Anglo-American Orientalist, as "a perfect exemplification [of an] Establishment Orientalist [whose work] purports to be objective, liberal scholarship, but is, in reality, very close to being propaganda against his subject material."  Lewis responded with a harsh critique of Orientalism accusing Said of politicizing the scientific study of the Middle East (and Arabic studies in particular); neglecting to critique the scholarly findings of the Orientalists; and giving "free rein" to his biases.  Said retorted that in The Muslim Discovery of Europe (1982), Lewis responded to his thesis with the claim that the Western quest for knowledge about other societies was unique in its display of disinterested curiosity, which Muslims did not reciprocate towards Europe. Lewis was saying that "knowledge about Europe [was] the only acceptable criterion for true knowledge." The appearance of academic impartiality was part of Lewis's role as an academic authority for zealous "anti-Islamic, anti-Arab, Zionist, and Cold War crusades." Moreover, in the Afterword to the 1995 edition of the book, Said replied to Lewis's criticisms of the first edition of Orientalism (1978).
Question: How did Said feel about Orientalism?
Answer: Said described Bernard Lewis, the Anglo-American Orientalist, as "a perfect exemplification [of an] Establishment Orientalist [whose work] purports to be objective, liberal scholarship,

Background: Norquist grew up in Weston, Massachusetts. He is the son of Carol (nee Lutz) and Warren Elliott Norquist (a vice president of Polaroid Corporation), and is of Swedish ancestry. His brother, David Norquist has served in senior posts in Republican administrations at both the United States Department of Defense and the United States Department of Homeland Security. Norquist became involved with politics at an early age when he volunteered for the 1968 Nixon campaign, assisting with get out the vote efforts.
Context: Prior to the November 2012 election, 238 of 242 House Republicans and 41 out of 47 Senate Republicans had signed ATR's "Taxpayer Protection Pledge", in which the pledger promises to "oppose any and all efforts to increase the marginal income tax rate for individuals and business; and to oppose any net reduction or elimination of deductions and credits, unless matched dollar for dollar by further reducing tax rates."  The November 6, 2012 elections resulted in a decline in the number of Taxpayer Protection Pledge signatories in both the upper and lower houses of the 113th Congress: from 41 to 39 in the Senate, and from 238 to "fewer than ... 218" in the House of Representatives. According to journalist Alex Seitz-Wald, losses in the election by Norquist supporters and the "fiscal cliff" have emboldened and made more vocal critics of Norquist.  In November 2011, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) blamed Norquist's influence for the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction's lack of progress, claiming that Congressional Republicans "are being led like puppets by Grover Norquist. They're giving speeches that we should compromise on our deficit, but never do they compromise on Grover Norquist. He is their leader." Since Norquist's pledge binds signatories to opposing deficit reduction agreements that include any element of increased tax revenue, some Republican deficit hawks now retired from office have stated that Norquist has become an obstacle to deficit reduction. Former Republican Senator Alan Simpson (R-WY), co-chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform, has been particularly critical, describing Norquist's position as "[n]o taxes, under any situation, even if your country goes to hell."
Question: is the pledge still in effect?
Answer: