Q 6

PLAYBOY: Who does the shopping in your family?

David Horowitz: It's split. Because of time constraints, I cannot buy everything for the house. My wife has to buy the meat and the fish and the poultry and some of the fruits and vegetables. But I buy all the other stuff--the canned goods, the soap powder, all the hardware and stuff like that. When I go into a market, the people who are shopping there love me. The people who are running the market are suspicious and scared. They want to know what the hell I'm doing there. What I've done in the past year or so, to make sure that our produce is really fresh, is have my own garden.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: When you and your wife fight, who wins?

David Horowitz: We don't win in fights. My wife and I have a really nifty relationship in terms of getting into disagreements or spats. She will tell me exactly how she feels. I will tell her exactly how I feel. This could be with raised voices, or it could be calmly. We do not throw things at each other. We sit down across a table or stand up eye to eye and just have it out. At the end of that minute and a half or two minutes or three minutes, it's over. And we walk away from it.

Q 8

PLAYBOY: What do you know about yourself that the rest of us still have to find out?

David Horowitz: That's a tough one to answer. People think I'm a suit-and-tie man. I like to dress like that, but the real me is torn jeans and a T-shirt and sneakers with no socks, cowboy boots. I'm a cowboy. Not an urban cowboy but a real cowboy with a real horse. The thing that I enjoy doing most, aside from being with my family and stuff like that, is spending time alone with Caesar, the kissing horse. I like to get on Caesar's back. I have a communication with that animal that is phenomenal. We really have good times together. I love my horse. I mean, I love my wife and kids, but I really love to spend time alone with my horse.

Q 9

PLAYBOY: With your high media profile, why don't you run for office?

David Horowitz: I wouldn't be as effective as a politician, because I'd have to be out there raising money, taking it from lobbies. Any politician who says to me, "I don't take money from any special-interest groups" is full of it. They all do. I sat next to a guy once, someone for whom I have absolute respect, and I asked him how he felt on an issue. And he said, "I don't feel any way on this issue." And suddenly he was handed an envelope across the table. He opened it in front of me, and there was a check for $5000, made out to his campaign. And I said, "How do you feel about the issue now?" He said, "I'm in favor of it."

Q 10

PLAYBOY: Will you ever do commercials?

David Horowitz: If I accept, I'm through. However, I'm asked to speak before business groups, and they pay me. That's different. They don't place any restraints on me. And they love it. It's as though they're a bunch of masochists. But they also expect me to give them some consultative information about how they can improve.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: Have you ever been asked to investigate the claims made by sex-aid manufacturers?

David Horowitz: I have had problems on sex aids. A guy told me that he had ordered a blow-up doll that was anatomically correct. It had a vibrator in the right area, it had breasts that moved, it was heated and so on and so forth. He wanted the passive model, the blow-up doll with the hands at the side. Instead, he got the S/M model, with the arms and legs stretched out that you can tie down to the bed. And the guy was very upset. He went to the company and asked for either his money back or a passive-model doll. It was one of these outfits that were operating out of a P.O. box somewhere, and the guy got no response. We tracked down the operator of that company through the P.O. box number, went to the individual concerned and said, "This guy is entitled to get his passive-model doll or his money back." He got the passive model.

Q 12

PLAYBOY: Is the area of sex aids one that really could do with some sort of quality control?

David Horowitz: The Direct Marketing Association, in New York, represents all the legitimate mail-order companies in the country that want to belong. If you ever have a problem with a mail-order outfit, whether or not it's legitimate, complain to the company first, then go to the D.M.A. If you request it, the association will also try to get your name off mailing lists. [Write to Mail Order Action Line, D.M.A., 6 East 43rd Street, New York, New York 10017.] The D.M.A. now represents some of these sexually oriented-product companies. If you don't get your vibrator or your blow-up doll or your Story of O video cassette or your restraints or whatever you're ordering, you complain to the D.M.A. Of course, I don't know who would--most people would be embarrassed to say, "Hey, you know, I ordered restraints," or "I ordered the knock-down dungeon for my closet, and the thing didn't arrive. And I really would like to either get my money back or get the product." We also handle problems with exaggerated claims for love potions or for the French ticklers that will give you 400 percent more satisfaction than you're getting now. We do these things, but we don't make a point of doing them as a way to bring in viewers. It's a legitimate concern, because the marketing of sexual products is a megamillion-dollar business, and there are legitimate companies doing it. So you can't turn your back on it. It's relevant. People use this stuff.