Sep 12th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Schiffren: It’s “Inappropriate” To Ask Candidates About Stuff
If you just met someone for the first time, it’d be pretty rude to suddenly start grilling them about the basic facts of national policy, even if you grilled them in a gentle and polite tone. The must be what NRO’s Lisa Schiffren had in mind when she wrote this:
And, for the record, it just looks condescending and inappropriate for one of the great minds of the national media to sit, notebook in hand, quizzing this younger woman, as someone said, as if she were a grad student.
The younger woman in question might be President of the United States four months from now. To do the job she’s (a) going to need to know the answer to basic questions, and (b) going to need to face-off against some tougher folks than Charlie Gibson.
58 Responses to “Schiffren: It’s “Inappropriate” To Ask Candidates About Stuff”
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September 12th, 2008 at 10:26 am
Funny, I thought the worst part of that quote was calling Charlie Gibson “one of the great minds of the national media”.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:29 am
no, it’s inappropriate for an older man to ask a younger woman questions about things.
also note where she whines that Obama wasn’t subject to such questions this early on in his campaign. presumably, she thinks the press should’ve waited 16 or 17 months before asking Palin these questions. how conveeeeenient.
Schiffren is a fucking idiot.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Poor thing. That Charlie Gibson is a tough cookie. Good thing Putin et al are softies who are sure to give her deference.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I think that Obama should run ads with McPalin being crybabies.
He won’t but, you know, it’s interesting.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:31 am
no, it’s inappropriate for an older man to ask a younger woman questions about things.
Well, in this case, I’d grant that it was certainly inappropriate for a particular older man (McCain) to ask a particular younger woman (Palin) a certain, very personal question (’Will you be my VP?’).
September 12th, 2008 at 10:31 am
If she`s running for VEEP she should grilled until she either collaspes or answers correctly, we are talking about a VEEP candidate hear not a mayor of a small town.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:35 am
Schiffren is right. Given what we already know about Palin, the more responsible thing would be to assume she is ignorant and incompetent to serve as president (and therefore as VP), unless and until she shows us otherwise.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:41 am
I love the premise that Palin is the first candidate for national office to ever be asked foreign policy questions that require substantive knowledge. It is so absurdly false it is almost sublime.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Thanks for keeping me informed about what the koolaide drinkers over at The Corner are saying. I quit reading stuff over there a couple of years ago, largely because, like almost all right wing blog sites, they don’t have a comment feature and after reading their stuff I used to feel like my head was going to explode if I didn’t have somewhere to vent about the utter imbecility of most of their posts.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:44 am
I just finished my undergrad in political science. Now, I had some really great TAs in my time studying there, folks who will likely go on to do great things. But those grad students weren’t even allowed to give actual lectures, let alone run the country. And Gibson’s interview was inappropriate?
September 12th, 2008 at 10:44 am
Palin would never make it into grad school, and she’d definitely overload just getting ready for comps.
You can’t whine your way into candidacy, at least in grad school.
.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:45 am
And, for the record, it just looks condescending and inappropriate for one of the great minds of the national media to sit, notebook in hand, quizzing this younger woman, as someone said, as if she were a grad student.
And yet it looks just fine for Bill O’Reilly to hector Obama on Fox? IOKIYAR.
And I agree with Jake that it’s weird to consider Gibson a “great mind.”
I might actually watch the VEEP debates.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:46 am
“One of the great minds of the national media”
Does find this phrase absolutely ridiculous and misleading? Charlie Gibson: the Fields Medalist of journalism. Wow Sarah Palin, the fact that you even could have a conversation with such a brilliant egghead means you can be our President.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:49 am
She did fine against Gibson. The point is that Gibson’s approach was condescending and designed to trip her up, not to elicit her views. The worst thing he did was to bowlderize her quote in her old church, completely changing its meaning.
September 12th, 2008 at 10:51 am
For some reason or other, I’d always assumed that shame would be a component of rational human behavior, that we wouldn’t normally permit shameless people to have a say in what we do. Even friggin’ Bill Clinton, of cigar-fame, expressed shame over his behavior. Yet, one by one, these right-wingers show that they have no shame. Inappropriate to ask her stuff? (What does the “notebook in hand” have to do with anything? If whining about idiotic issues were a terminal disease, the activity would be self-correcting. Alas.)
September 12th, 2008 at 10:59 am
John McCain wants to raise your taxes on energy and healthcare.
John McCain wants to raise your taxes on energy and healthcare.
John McCain wants to raise your taxes on energy and healthcare.
John McCain wants to raise your taxes on energy and healthcare.
John McCain wants to raise your taxes on energy and healthcare.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:00 am
What do you expect? Schiffren is the same idiot who argued that Obama must be a red diaper baby, because only Commies married interracially in 1961.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:04 am
She’s either “this younger woman” or she’s the frakkin GOVERNOR of a state. You can’t have it both ways.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:07 am
Unseemly for a reporter to ask questions? What does someone being interviewed anticipate if not questions? Duets of “Onward Christian Soldiers”?
September 12th, 2008 at 11:07 am
And yet it looks just fine for Bill O’Reilly to hector Obama on Fox?
Well yes it does. Obviously he’s not a great mind.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:08 am
i’m fascinated by nitwits like e o’neal who keep misusing the right wing’s new favorite word: “condescending.”
please, e o’neal: show us a specific example of how a gibson question was “condescending.” show us that you know what the word means and demonstrate how it’s applicable. we can’t wait….
PS. apparently you don’t know what “bowdlerize” means either: was palin talking dirty?
September 12th, 2008 at 11:09 am
She’s either “this younger woman” or she’s the frakkin GOVERNOR of a state. You can’t have it both ways.
Not only that, she’s the COMMANDER OF THE ALASKA NATIONAL GUARD, America’s bulwark against the slavering Siberian hordes, not to mention America’s Foremost Energy Expert.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:12 am
You know, the other day I went on a job interview. While I was there, the people who were interviewing me started quizzing me about all sorts of stuff that might be relevant for the job they had available. How inappropriate!
Seriously though, *every* interview that Palin, McCain, Obama, or Biden do in the next two months is an interview for the job of President or Vice President of the United States. Job interviewers are *supposed* to ask all kinds of tough questions of job candidates.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:15 am
When you and I got our jobs, we had job interviews, where we were asked tough questions. But the right-wing welfare machine doesn’t work that way; it runs on nepotism and personal connections. Lisa Schiffren probably got her job based on who her friends and relatives are, and has no idea that things could work another way.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:33 am
Yes, with the em-PHA-sis on “looks.”
Barack Obama is knowledgeable and intelligent enough to make that interview LOOK like a heavyweight politician tangling with a tough interviewer.
Sarah Palin is such a lightweight as to make her interview LOOK like a Charles Gibson was picking on her.
Pretty damning for her.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:49 am
She did fine against Gibson. The point is that Gibson’s approach was condescending and designed to trip her up, not to elicit her views.
Boo hoo. People who don’t deserve being condescended to know how to counteract it and turn the tables.
The worst thing he did was to bowlderize her quote in her old church, completely changing its meaning.
I strongly dislike both possible meanings of that church quote, myself. “We pray that they’ll be doing God’s work” vs. “They’ll be doing God’s work” — not much of an improvement if you ask me, given that the work involves KILLING PEOPLE.
September 12th, 2008 at 11:56 am
howard, I misspelled bowdlerize (I should have looked it up), but I did use it correctly. The first meaning is the one you cited, to expurgate vulgar language, but the alternate meaning is “to modify by abridging, simplifying, or distorting in style or content”. That’s what Gibson did when he lopped off the first part of her sentence, changing its meaning to the opposite of what she actually said. He was either dishonest or stupid, or, most likely, both.
By condescension, I mean he talked down to Gov. Palin or patronized her. He adopted an air of superiority that is inappropriate for a guy who earns his living reading headlines to geriatrics. He thus came across as an insufferable jerk asking gotcha questions. I guess he’s trying to be more like Peter Jennings back when network news mattered. Compare this interview with his reverential tone when addressing The One.
September 12th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
ok, e. o’neal, i’ve never seen anyone use bowdlerize the way you are suggesting, but it is a second dictionary definition so i’ll give you that one.
but in terms of “condescension,” you still need to demonstrate its presence, specifically. your generic discussion of “air of superiority” is complete crap, of course, and totally non-responsive to my challenge to you.
September 12th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
if she can’t handle an interview with a fucking newscaster, why should we expect she’ll be able to handle the business of running the country ?
September 12th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
howard, I was referring more to his tone than to specific questions, but here are a couple of instances. When she asked him what he meant by the “Bush Doctrine”, a sensible question, instead of answering her in a straightforward manner, he acted like a supercilious law prof I once had who delighted in showing up his students. Also, after one fairly clear answer of hers, he referred to her “blizzard of words” and demanded that she restate her answer. If yo read the transcript, her answer was clearer than his question.
September 12th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
I’m pretty sure “great minds of the national media” was sarcastic. The reason I know this is that sarcastic people tend to be smart and Lisa Schiffrin is one of the great minds of the conservative media.
September 12th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
David B., good post. I’m trying to peel through the multiple layers of irony.
September 12th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
By condescension, I mean he talked down to Gov. Palin or patronized her. He adopted an air of superiority that is inappropriate for a guy who earns his living reading headlines to geriatrics. He thus came across as an insufferable jerk
(sic)
I hate Gibson as much as anybody, but you could also say he adopted an air of someone having a strong & eminently justifiable suspicion that he understood a lot more about the topic at hand than a state governor and VP candidate.
September 12th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
tone? that’s your response, e o’neal, that you think his “tone” was condescending? you do realize how inane that is, don’t you?
here’s an example of condescension: “since, e. o’neal, you are reciting idiotic talking points, it’s clear you aren’t well educated.”
i’m still waiting for you to find me an example of condescension in the interview: tone my ass….
September 12th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Bill, you’re right, but that’s not an appropriate air for an interviewer. Let the audience make that determination. Palin is not a foreign policy expert, but neither is Obama. Neither were GWB or Bill Clinton, but they were interviewed respectfully, except for the radio guy who asked Bush the names of foreign leaders. BTW, I object to O’Reilly’s hectoring of Obama, but that’s his trade mark.
The interviewer should ask tough questions but not convey an attitude or try to trip up the interviewee.
September 12th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
actually, e o’neal, to make the point a little better, i should have said “since, e. o’neal, you are reciting idiotic talking points, it’s clear that you aren’t as well educated as i am and that i will have to speak to you very slowly in short words.”
September 12th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
she asked him what he meant by the “Bush Doctrine”, a sensible question, assuming that one has paid no attention whatever to this ocuntry’s foriegn policy over the last 8 years.
I mean, for crying out loud, don’t you want a VP who at least knows her own party’s position on foriegn policy?
September 12th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
howard, describing an approximately fifty word answer as a “blizzard of words” is condescension. Ask any woman. My wife was furious at Gibson’s tone. She said that if Pawlenty or Romney had been picked, the media wouldn’t be attacking them like a pack of dogs. She’s right. As the polls shift toward McCain-Palin, the MSM will get really desperate. Read Howard Kurtz’s column — he’s gone off the deep end.
September 12th, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Like a grad student? What grad schools has Schiffren been to lately? They must have been pretty lame. Having spent six years at a good one, I can tell you that Palin wouldn’t have survived the first four minutes of a first-year seminar because you can’t simply memorize and regurgitate canned answers fed to you by campaign staffers two days earlier. At national security meetings, is she going to have sit there with a Blackberry the whole time so she can google words like “Sino-Russian”, “Baluchistan” and “unilateral” that she hears in a conversation for the first time?
September 12th, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Bill, you’re right, but that’s not an appropriate air for an interviewer. Let the audience make that determination. Palin is not a foreign policy expert, but neither is Obama
E. O’Neal,
Obama has been debating and interviewed about foreign policy for the last 18 months in front of countless national audiences. By contrast, Sarah Palin barely spoke about foreign policy until she was selected as VP 2 weeks ago. In 2007, she said, “I’ve been so focused on state government, I haven’t really focused much on the war in Iraq.” (Compare that to Obama, who was giving speeches about Iraq as far back as 2002). Last night was the first time Palin’s given an interview to the national press (People magazine excluded).
Are you honestly saying, that given all this, it isn’t warranted for an interviewer to take a more aggressive tone with Palin than with another candidate?
September 12th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Let’s review the exchange, shall we?
GIBSON: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government?
PALIN: Now, as for our right to invade, we’re going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be, a military strike, a last option.
GIBSON: But, Governor, I’m asking you: We have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government.
PALIN: In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target.
GIBSON: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes? That you think we have the right to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government, to go after terrorists who are in the Waziristan area?
PALIN: I believe that America has to exercise all options in order to stop the terrorists who are hell bent on destroying America and our allies. We have got to have all options out there on the table.
Now describing Palin’s first two attempts to answer Gibson’s question as a “blizzard of words” may or may not have bee unwarranted, although I personally think it is exactly correct she was saying a lot but not actually coming close to answering the question he was asking, even including the third try.
But regardless of whether his implied criticism was warranted, that doesn’t make this implied criticism of Palin’s failure to actually answer the question being asked an example of “condescension”. That is frankly just nonsense, and an all-too-typical tactic by certain right wingers (implying that any criticism of their lack of coherent and substantial thinking on an issue amounts to “condescension”, “elitism”, or so on).
September 12th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
describing an approximately fifty word answer as a “blizzard of words” is condescension
not when it’s a nonsensical non-answer answer.
if Pawlenty or Romney had been picked, the media wouldn’t be attacking them like a pack of dogs
if either of them had been picked, there’d be no need to have to pick at them to find out if they have any ideas at all about foreign policy because they’d have a record to look at. Palin appeared out of nowhere, 14 days ago. she has no record. nobody knows a fucking thing about her. maybe you think we should entrust the executive with a complete cipher, but you’re going to have to be patient with the rest of us because we don’t, and we’re going to do our best to find out who she is and what she thinks.
September 12th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Does anyone else find it completely absurd that Schiffren is referring to Palin as a “younger woman”? This is the #3 most likely person to be President some time in the next four years, and we’re supposed to be offended that she isn’t being given deference for her gender and age?
Another thing that we need to remember is that she chose to be interviewed by Charlie Gibson.
September 12th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
She said, “We must do whatever it takes and we must not blink”. To me, that sounds like a “yes”, though she was reluctant to say baldly that we would invade a putative ally’s sovereignty.
September 12th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
After enduring the last eight years of Bush/Rove/McCain/Schmidt politics, it is easy for me to recognize something like “we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink” as a non-answer, one designed to encourage people to think Palin said whatever they wanted her to say, but giving her the flexibility to later walk away from any specific interpretation of her words by claiming she did not literally say whatever they are interpreting her to say.
September 12th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
DTM, that’s the point. It’s why leaders with real responsibility usually refuse to answer hypothetical questions. For instance, one scenario is we discover OBL’s location and we take him out. Another one is we locate a second tier Taliban commander and his extended family, we take them out, and cause a serious incident with Pakistan. A third scenario is the Pakistan government demands that we cease attacks in the tribal areas or else they will deny us access to Afghanistan through their territory (they’re our main staging area). If there’s a simple yes or no answer to the second and third scenarios, I’m not sure what it is. Life is complicated.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Has anyone seen the Obama/O’Reilly interview? I give Obama points for showing up but he got spanked. Not hearing much about that in the MSM.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
E. O’Neal,
Politicians pose and answer hypotheticals all the time, but in any event Gibson didn’t ask her a hypothetical question. In case you aren’t following the news, it was recently reported that President Bush signed an executive order in July allowing special forces to operate in Pakistan without Pakistani permission, and subsequently Navy Seals launched such a ground assault, after which Pakistan protested. Gibson was simply asking her if we have the right to do such things, and this issue is very much anything but hypothetical.
September 12th, 2008 at 5:27 pm
DTM, I read about Bush’s order. Pakistan’s protest occurred after the NYT reported it. Discretion is crucial in dealing with Pakistan. Their government is weak and unpopular, and there is widespread anti-American sentiment. I consider Pakistan almost as dangerous a situation as Iran. The last thing we want to do is cause angry crowds to take to the streets.
Politicians answer the hypotheticals they like and say, “I don’t answer hypotheticals” when they don’t.
September 13th, 2008 at 9:10 am
She’s right, that’s totally unfair.
Palin barely made it through undergrad, how dare he treat her like a grad student!?!?!?
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