Sunday lunch with... Neil Cavuto

December 11, 2005

BY DEBRA PICKETT SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

Neil Cavuto, the host of the Fox News business show "Your World with Neil Cavuto," is waiting in the lobby of Catch 35, the Wacker Drive seafood restaurant just down the street from Fox's Chicago broadcast studio, when I arrive. The first thing I notice -- because it's really hard not to -- is the American flag pin in his lapel.

It's not possible, I remind myself, for an inanimate object to be sanctimonious. So I must just be imagining it.

In the past few weeks, Cavuto has been traveling the country to promote his new book Your Money or Your Life (Regan Books, 280 pages, $25.95), a collection of the brief commentaries that end his shows. Cavuto -- who is careful to describe himself as a "host" rather than a "reporter" or even an "anchor" -- has been offering up these editorials since his days at CNBC, where he spent seven years before leaving to join the newly created Fox News Channel in 1996. Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the commentaries, which often had sentimental, human interest-y overtones, have taken on a more resolutely political tone.