Drawing the line:

We'll watch all sorts politics on television, even Meet the Press and Fox News Sunday. There are problems with those shows, but there is at least a bit of discourse and presentation of a liberal perspective. But we're drawing the line at this:

The Charlie Rose Show
AHMED CHALABI
Deputy Prime Minister, Iraq

For the hour!

How bad will it be? Consider this observation from Slate's Jack Shafer:

Notables who ordinarily shun television talk shows make an exception when the Charlie Rose invitation arrives because he offers them such a big, safe, dark room in which to chat. The show's blackened set, the late hour in which it airs, and Rose's protective style suggest a father lulling a child back to sleep after an early night fright.

Rose conducts the show's business as if the interviews belong to the subjects—not to the host—and that they're free to confide as little as they wish without risking his reprimand as long as they allow him to ask his tortured, show-off, preening questions.

That's bad enough when Rose is interviewing the chairman of Mobil-Exxon. But Chalibi! Scoundrel, crook, manipulator, thief. And with Rose tossing the softest of softball questions.

Forget it.


posted by Quiddity at 11/15/2005 02:12:00 PM