I tend to prefer Meet the Press over its competitors because Russert, more often than not, gets the best guests. To be fair, I can appreciate the difficulties in getting A-list guests the day after Christmas. Fine. But if NBC is going to run the program, Meet the Press has to do better than a pop psychologist parroting bumper-sticker wisdom for the masses.<\/p>\n
Russert, who likes people to believe he’s a “tough” interviewer, lobbed these hardballs at Dr. Phil:<\/p>\n
* How do we get in the hearts and minds of those young girls, young babies having babies?<\/p>\n
* So many parents talk about quality time. Isn’t every second with your child quality time?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Mrs. Carpetbagger strolled by to ask me why on earth I was watching such nonsense. I told her the truth: somewhere in the most na\u00efve part of my brain, I thought Russert might show some pride and put Dr. Phil on the spot. Maybe there’d be a question probing Dr. Phil’s credentials. Perhaps a few words about why Dr. Phil’s private practice failed. A question about why Dr. Phil’s “empire” charges little old ladies several hundred dollars to hear him speak might have been appropriate. Maybe even a recognition that familial difficulties can be more complex than Dr. Phil’s program makes them out to be.<\/p>\n
But those questions never came. Russert would serve up softballs and Dr. Phil would offer sage advice such as, “I think every parent, every generation has wanted their children to do better and have a higher standard of living, but I think there’s too much guilt.”<\/p>\n
Next week, a special panel featuring Deepak Chopra and that “Men are from Mars…” guy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I can tolerate Tim Russert’s proclivity for being tougher with Dems than Republicans. I can swallow hard and watch “ideologically balanced” panels that include Kate O’Beirne, Bob Novak, and William Safire. But inviting Dr. Phil on as the primary guest on Meet the Press is unacceptable by any reasonable standard. I tend to prefer Meet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3264","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3264"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3264\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3264"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3264"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3264"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}