Aimai on the various Palin videos that are circulating:
If you watch the video lots of people were prepared with a first sound
bite “she stands for America!” “She makes me proud to be a woman!” That
was like the moment in Palin’s interviews when she knew she’d handled
the softball questions well. But as the interviewer didn’t end the
interview but instead asked for more detail the interviewee begins to
get nervous. They have to explain some things that they had taken for
granted. The very question seems to challenge them. As they start to
talk more, and find themselves giving an impromptu lecture to this
helpful student they find that they don’t have the faintest idea what
to offer to back up their gut feeling. Some of them become puzzled,
others apologetic, others excitable. That’s because the interviewer is
forcing them to think rationally, programmaticaly, and coherently about
something that was really totally amorphous and emotional. Its like
asking someone just before they get engaged “no, but really, have you
ever thought about your fiancee’s views on the moon landing? What does
she know about astro-physics, anyway?” The questions just seem beside
the point, and then frightening.
I find this interesting because it’s the approach I tend to take with movement-conservative relatives, acquaintances and friends: Tell me more. Tell me why you think what you think. Expand on that. Elaborate. What led you to that conclusion? Have you ever met someone in that circumstance? Have you ever heard someone say what you are saying now? From whence do your convictions come, and why do you hold to them? I want to understand. I want to know you. I want to get it, so explain yourself to me. And if you can’t, well, surely it isn’t my fault, then. I was just asking.
It’s a holdover from my days interviewing people about unpleasant shit for a living, that you let people fill a silence and you ask, sincerely interested, why they think what they think. It flummoxes them and turns what could be a hostile confrontation into an informative discussion. Most people aren’t used to actual interest in their views. They expect you to jump in and argue with them in slogans, set up a confrontation in which they can either feel bullied and therefore superior in their victimhood, or emerge victorious. When you answer with question upon question, you’re far more likely to get actual answers, even if (especially if) those answers are, as in the Palin videos, “we have no clue and are slightly perplexed by that, actually.”
A.