Lou Gossett off the cuff

Published July 25, 2008 4:00am ET



Actor Louis Gossett Jr. joined other experts in a panel on media and film at the Race and Reconciliation in America conference Thursday afternoon.


The Academy Award winner told the audience that despite his profession, he didn’t need a invalidScriptTag. He could speak extemporaneously, he said, because he’s “comfortable with his heart” now on the topic of race.


Dave Zirin spoke first and said that as a sportswriter, he felt slightly out of place on the panel. “I felt a little bit like Dick Cheney being asked to come to a solar energy convention,” Zirin said.


Next up was XM radio host Joe Madison, who said he had an idea for a new reality show.


“Instead of wife swapping, let’s take a family from Potomac, Md., or Turtle Creek, Mich., and let’s move them down to southeast Washington, D.C.,” Madison said.


Madison suggested leaving the family there for 90 days and moving a family from southeast D.C. to Potomac for 90 days.


His projected outcome?


“You’re going to have reconciliation,” he said.