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Liz Smith: the 82-year-old syndicated newspaper columnist--and professional Texan--on politics versus gossip, the trouble with young Hollywood, and the one magazine that can make or break a star (nope, it's not Texas Monthly).

Article Excerpt
So here we are in a Mexican restaurant on the ground floor of your apartment building in New York. Do you think it's funny that I live over a Mexican restaurant called El Rio Grande?

I think it's appropriate. But what I'm stuck on is whether you can get good Mexican food in New York. Remember what Jane Trahey, who used to work for Neiman Marcus, always said? There's no such thing as really bad Mexican food, and even bad Mexican food is better than no Mexican food. They make a few things here that I like and a few things that I don't like. You can't get a decent taco in New York, and people are crazy about burritos, which I never much took to.

What did you like growing up, and what do you still like now? Oh, I like chicken-fried steak better than anything. I'd eat it every night if it didn't make you weigh four hundred pounds. Then I could do the Kirstie Alley show.

You've managed to retain a lot of your Texanness after being away all these years--Well, I have on cowboyboots today from Tony Lama.

Some people lose it. I think Dan [Rather] has kept it. Bob Schieffer has kept it.

It's obviously an important part of your self-identity. I guess so. I'm not good at faking anything. When I went to work for NBC, I said, "I'd like to go to your speech coach and get rid of my accent," and they said, "Are you crazy? We hired you for your accent!" So I never did.

You don't seem to have much of an accent now. I think it's terrible. If I'm around people from Texas, it gets worse.

But you're around them a lot. You're the queen bee of the ex-Texans. I have a lot of Texas friends here: [former Miss America] Phyllis George, [ABC News executive] Joe Armstrong, Ann Richards. I gravitate toward anybody who's doing anything interesting. That's the point of my new book [Dishing]. I've lived the high life and the low life, and I think they're both great.

How connected are you to the state these days? You know, I lived there when I was in college, and it was a different world. I still have a few friends in [my hometown of] Fort Worth, so I like to go back there. But most of...

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