{"id":2523,"date":"2011-02-06T01:33:07","date_gmt":"2011-02-06T06:33:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2523"},"modified":"2011-02-06T01:33:07","modified_gmt":"2011-02-06T06:33:07","slug":"low-expectations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/?p=2523","title":{"rendered":"Low expectations"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bill O'Reilly will be interviewing President Obama before the Superbowl.  O'Reilly doesn't want us to expect too much from him<\/a>.  Interviewing the President is, like, hard.  For one, you've got all these rules about being respectful.  You don't get to cut the President's mic if you don't like what he's saying, or interrupt him and call him a pinhead.  Well, that's it:<\/p>\n

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That's because the rules are different when it comes to interviewing the president of the United States. . . . For example, he is addressed as "Mr. President." No one says "Yo, Barack, how you doin'?" There is a respect for the office that formalizes all conversation.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Right.  You don't open with 'Yo.' But the point is that you don't undermine the dignity of the office, instead of make some lame attempt at racializing the president.  Seriously, 'Yo'.  Yo.  Right, so were the president Irish, you make a big deal about not starting your conversation with President O'Malley with "Blarney!" or asking where he keeps his leprechauns.  Methinks the pundit doth protest too much.<\/p>\n

Regardless, O'Reilly prepares us for a subpar interview and a round of critical beatings of his interview.  Instead of preparing his questions, he's preparing his rationalizations. <\/p>\n

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I fully expect to get hammered after the interview. Depending on how you feel about the president, the questions will either be too soft or too intrusive.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Nope.  False dilemma. O'Reilly can't even rationalize properly.  The questions will not be either too soft or too intrusive.  They will be too improperly formed.  Too ideologically obtuse.  Too pandering to an audience on the other side of the camera and not to the person to whom they are posed.  Too… Fox.  And they will be insufficiently intelligent, serious, or intelligible.  They will be exactly what we expect from Bill O'Reilly.  Which means that our expectations will be low.  Just as O'Reilly has asked us to set them.  Except for different reasons.  Oh well, at least we're all prepared for his journalistic failure.  The only problem is that too many will blame the President and his office for O'Reilly's failure, not the interviewer.  Sheesh, if O'Reilly knew already that this interview wouldn't portray him in a good light, why did he agree to it in the first place?  Doesn't the President know that O'Reilly is important and that interviewing Presidents is hard on him and puts his career in danger?  It is such a sacrifice, you know, interviewing a President when you know that you just can't win.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill O'Reilly will be interviewing President Obama before the Superbowl.  O'Reilly doesn't want us to expect too much from him.  Interviewing the President is, like, hard.  For one, you've got all these rules about being respectful.  You don't get to cut the President's mic if you don't like what he's saying, or interrupt him and … Continue reading Low expectations<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2524,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2523\/revisions\/2524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenonsequitur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}