CSotD: Those extra microphones are simply a formality …
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In Prickly City this past week, Carmen has had the opportunity to go on Bill O'Reilly's show to debate Alan Colmes. Here is that debate in its entirety.
I spent about a year and a half hosting a talk show on the radio in the early '80s, and, while I'm not sure what my listeners learned from it, I learned a great deal, mostly about the home field advantage.
I remember one show in which the topic was not in the least confrontational. It was just a talk with a social services person about something or other, but she happened to be wearing a red polo shirt and, when we went to a break, I realized her armpits were soaked — she was terrified. And we were just sitting there talking about something that should have been right in her comfort zone. It was the fact that we were on the radio, that she was in a strange setting, that she had some great undefined audience out there listening.
If I'd started poking at her, she'd have fallen apart.
It made me think back to the couple of times I'd been on the witness stand, and how difficult that was. The first time, I was simply nervous because it was the first time, and that was bad enough. The second time, I was a relatively important witness in an FTC case against a former employer, and their lawyer was really putting the screws to me — jumping on every possible "error" by parsing each word, and clearly following the dictum that, if you can't attack the evidence, you must attack the witness.
I think I did pretty well, but I went out and got drunk afterwards anyway, and I remember thinking how glad I was not to be a lawyer and to have to play that game all the time.
Which came back that day in the studio because I realized the tremendous advantage the home field gives you. As the host, you're in a familiar, comfortable setting, and not only are you not nervous, but you're in your element. As the phrase goes, "This is my house."
And I started watching other talk shows with a very different eye.
One thing that was obvious was that I realized how easy it is for a host to throw a guest, or a caller, off their game, simply by poking at them, by questioning their word choice, bickering over some irrelevant side issue or asking them something totally unexpected. They've mapped out how they expect it to go, and they're uncomfortable enough that you can quickly make them either start babbling or lose their temper and, either way, you come off as the winner.
The other, the more critical (and more relevant to this cartoon), thing was that I started watching how the more manipulative hosts purposefully force the conversation to go the way they want it to.
Phil Donahue was an early master of the game. When he walked up into the audience with his microphone, it looked like he was giving everyone a chance to comment. But if you watched, you saw how he would draw out an audience member who agreed with his premise, repeating their point, lingering with them, not simply asking his guests on the stage to also agree, but setting them up so that they couldn't disagree without looking bad.
With an audience member he didn't like, however, he would immediately put them on the defensive by repeating their comment in a way that challenged it — "So you think (insert reductio version)" — and then, without giving them a chance to respond, he would wheel away with a "Let's see what else people think …" and the Magic Microphone of Fame would be withdrawn.
I don't know that Stantis is specifically attacking O'Reilly in this story arc. I suspect it's a more general statement about the quality of debate on talk shows. But, in either case, he certainly chose the right fellow.
O'Reilly is the new Donahue, albeit from the other side of the spectrum. He's the master of manipulating an interview because he is relentless but he works to cultivate the notion that it's a discussion. And his master stroke is similar to Donahue's, but even more effective.
Watch for it: He will let someone make a point in opposition to his own, but then, in an off-handed way, simply contradict what they've said and go to a break. No reasoned evidence, no logical counterpoint. And no opportunity for them to challenge him.
Reilly is not alone in this. Howard Kurtz does much the same thing — let the guests talk and then, if the conversation isn't going your way, pontificate as you end the topic.
In essence, the point of their show is to provide them with a pulpit. The guests are simply window dressing, either paper tigers and strawmen to be eviscerated or a fan club to provide the applause. And the highest ratings go to the hosts who provide the "best discussions" — that is, those whose discussions are reassuring in their consistency and in the certainty they provide.
There has been another one of those "nobody knows anything" stories making the rounds this week, a poll in which we find out how many people don't know when the Declaration of Independence was signed or who we broke free from back whenever it was and so forth.
It's always presented as if this was some great departure from the past, that previous generations knew all this stuff, but there's nothing new in the ignorance of the mob. Back in 1898, Elizabeth Cady Stanton suggested that, when women gained the vote, there should also be a change that would require voters to qualify for the privilege.
"Some say the ignorant classes need the ballot for their protection more than the rich," she wrote. "Well, they have had it and exercised it, and what have they done to protect their own interests? Absolutely nothing."
The notion of testing people before they can vote is attractive but, thanks in large part to the rotten practices set up to keep black voters out of the voting booths during the Jim Crow era, it's already been proven to be open to corruption.
Besides, people will only eddikate themselves up to a certain level anyway. Whether they're lining up behind Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann, they are very much in the school of "Don't confuse me with the facts."
They don't care if Lexington is in New Hampshire or Massachusetts or Nevada. They don't care whether Paul Revere was warning the Americans or the British. They don't care whether it was John Wayne or just his parents who lived in Waterloo, Iowa. And they certainly don't care whether cavemen and dinosaurs lived at the same time or how long it took to carve the Grand Canyon.
The American people are looking for answers. They aren't looking for questions. They don't want no stinking questions.
And if you don't think today's Prickly City is funny, you'd better find a nice cave and stock it up for about the next 18 months or so, because this style of debate is just coming into season.
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