Daily Inspiration Quote by Leon Askin

Honor with an asterisk: Leon Askin’s line captures the double-edged prestige of working inside a powerful entertainment machine. As an actor himself, he’s not posturing as a theorist; he’s naming the kind of status that looks glittering from the outside and quietly coercive from within. “Considered” does a lot of work here. It suggests reputation more than reality, a social consensus that props up the Dumont label as a badge actors are expected to covet. That passive construction also lets Askin dodge direct accusation while still indicting the system: nobody person is responsible, yet everybody participates.

The phrasing “great honor” evokes a courtly economy - you’re “chosen,” you’re visible, you’re validated. But the pivot, “yet,” undercuts the romance with a weary professionalism. The “disadvantages” are left deliberately vague, which is precisely the point. In show business, the costs are often unspeakable if you want to keep working: typecasting, contractual restrictions, political pressure, exhausting schedules, the subtle loss of autonomy that comes from belonging to a brand. Prestige becomes a form of soft control; it flatters you into compliance.

Context matters too. DuMont was an early television network, part of the era when TV was consolidating its norms and gatekeepers. For actors, landing in that ecosystem could mean stability and exposure at a time when both were scarce. Askin’s sentence reads like a veteran’s aside: the honor was real, but so was the price - and the price was the part you weren’t supposed to say out loud.