Hard Talk

While abroad, I caught an episode of the BBC programme HardTalk, they were interviewing one Lynn Forester de Rothschild.

Mrs de Rothschild, a major Clinton fundraiser is no radical neo-con, but that did not stop the interviewer from treating her as one for suggesting that Obama might be less than divine.

Highlights of the interview included an exchange were despite the pre-emptive explanation offered by de Rothschild, the interviewer was unable to grasp the difference between "privileged" (which McCain and not Obama was from birth) and "elitist" (which McCain is demonstrably not, and de Rothschild thought Obama is) and, Mrs de Rothschild being asked, after she noted that "10% of taxpayers pay 70% of taxes", "well, can't they pay more?"

In general, I can't remember an interviewer being this rude to an interviewee since I watched Charlie Rose lecture Bernard Lewis on precisely why they hate us. Almost every sentence from de Rothschild was cut off by the interviewer.

More fundementally, the interview had a hard to describe Orwellian tone. In one telling moment (and there were a few of these), de Rothschild asserted that she felt Obama was elitist because her impression of him was that he considered himself better than other people. The interviewer sputtered a bit before launching: "But no-one says that." The sense was, in the interviewers mind, conventional wisdom is the same as not-to-be-questioned truth.