Paxman beaten?
When the 麻豆社 starts running programmes called "How to beat Jeremy Paxman", you know there's trouble lurking.
Last night we booked , the extraordinary new phenomenon of the American right who has been topping the US bestseller list with, among other books, her own guide - "".
Now, wouldn't categorise himself as a liberal, and Newsnight certainly welcomes conservative and alternative thinkers, but in the course of the day he wondered with some anxiety how best to talk to her.
Her many utterances are so outrageous - , "I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo" - that he had to challenge them, and ask if she really believed it or was just saying so for effect.
Once the interview was underway (watch it here) it quickly became resoundingly clear that she believes everything she says, otherwise why would she have said it?
Some felt Coulter beat Paxman. I prefer to think that in this electric encounter TV was the winner.
Comments
I have to say that having watched the interview i disagree with Peter. I came away from the whole thing (including the previous segment about whether politicians are too influenced by the press) thinking that it had added nothing to my overall knowledge of anything in particular. The fact that it was capped by this "big name" interview made me wonder whether the whole segment had been essentially thrown together to justify the big name interview at the end.
Maybe she's best understood as a brand. It looks like a thankless task asking whether she believes it or not: if she were ever to say "sometimes, I'm just jerking chains", the gigs could dry up.
But she's a content provider for a different kind of show - she fits into those American "culture wars", all binary and rhetoric. Her politics, such as they are, are more or less irrelevant: she's a showboater and a self-promoter; absolutely not a debater. It's not clear she has much to bring to 麻豆社 News programmes.
Saying that "TV was the winner" is every bit as infuriating as the trite "football was the winner" response to a titanic clash that leaves blood on the floor 鈥 Portugal vs Holland last night, for example. The 麻豆社 positioned Paxman's guest as "Ann Coulter 鈥 the Republican Michael Moore?" leaving very little doubt that that was being presented as an adversarial match of the first order. Paxman played the role of liberal media figurehead perfectly, except he had failed to do his research; his questions were so banal that Coulter could do nothing but respond with monosyllabic answers. It was one of Paxman's poorest performances and Coulter emerged unscathed. To call TV the "winner" here is a cop out.
I'd say this appraoch was an attempt to replicate the now (nearly) famous 'just how irrelevant are you' question to Michael Howard as Tory leader in the last election. That time Howard was stunned by the impertainence of the question and never recovered.
This time she simply treated it with contempt. I've not read any of her work, and I also doubt that Jeremy has either. Next time, my humble advice would be: play the ball and not the (wo)man, as they say in .
Might I ask that those involved in running this blog try to find a way to exclude from the 麻豆社's UK-only broadband firewall those videos linked to by the editors in their posts on this site? As much as I enjoy Mr Paxman, it's almost impossible to watch him, or anyone else, via a video stream running at a mere 34kbps. One can barely make out the audio at that speed, much less the video.
It seems to be a common theme to the questions Ann Coulter is being asked in interviews in regard to her new book. I鈥檝e seen her interviewed a few times now, and almost everyone end up like Paxman. 鈥淒o you truly believe this?鈥 completely dumbfounded by her veil absurd claims, not being sure what to ask her in a seriously manner. She acts the same every time, glancing resigned out of shot as if the interviewer is being an idiot. Why not ask her some more challenging question, like 鈥渨hat in the theory of Darwin is not logical?鈥 and 鈥渨hat motif do you believe liberals must have to push (global warming/safe sex/recycling)?鈥 and 鈥渨hat do you base your claim about *** on?鈥. Coulter always appears to win the arguments because of her performance, while the reality is that she is never really challenged.