Last night's Question Time.

[LibLabUK]

Anyone watch last night's Question Time?

I was shocked at how 'different' the audience was from what we are used to, and I felt sorry for Michael Moore because they didn't seem to want to let him speak at all.


Richard Littlejohn was on spectacular form, spouting his less than unique form of bile.

And there was a lovely moment of pure racism from the audience when a woman made some rather offensive comments about Arabs and their lack of trustworthiness, and propensity for shooting you in the back....

The big dissapointment for me though was that the audience really wouldn't allow Sidney Blumenthal and Michael Moore a chance to speak uninterupted. The shrieks and boos from the Bushistas became tiresome very quickly.

I did find it quite amusing at how Frum dodged almost every audience question and stuck to the Whitehouse spin on WMD, Iraq and Terror... despite Blumenthal and Moore refutations.

Worth a look, if you have 45 minutes free... it's still available on the Question Time website as a video stream.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/question_time/default.stm

[non sociopath skin]

1. As my wife pointed out ...

... those Repugs are scary, scary people whose idea of democracy is to shout people down. You could see the same thing on the footage of the '92 Repug National Convention on "Nightmares" last week. And the Israeli lady, sadly, was the epitome of the Likud variation of the same tendency. Their sentiments on Arabs are identical with those of the Broederbond in black people in apartheid RSA - primitive, violent untermenschen who need to be penned, programmed and controlled by their racial superiors. Little wonder that the Repugs and Likudniks have palled up, even though they share mutually antagonistic "religious" fantasies.

The problem with Mike Moore, of course, is that he ISN'T a ranter - nor is Sid Blumenthal - so yes, you needed good chairmanship and Dimbleby was clearly out of his depth. I found it useful to see not only what a repulsive human being Littlejohn is, but how anachronistic he is ... an unreconstructed Harry Hardnose straight out of an '80s "If" cartoon.

And was it just us or was Frum talking gobbledegook? Couldn't follow a word he was saying most of the time ....

The Skin

[D-Notice]

3. Don't think it was "gobbledegook", it was just bollocks!

I think his best statement was

"It is an invention by Hollywood that Saddam was funded & armed by the USA"!

Agree about Richard "Michael Moore is Lord Haw Haw" Littlejohn - I didn't know speaking out against the govt was equiv to treason... But he does work for The Sun, so it would explain a lot

[LibLabUK]

4. Hmm

"Dimbleby was clearly out of his depth."

This was suprising, but I don't think his mild-mannered schoolmaster approach was what was required for the American audience.

The fact that he seemed to have something stuck in his throat the whole time couldn't have helped matters.

I was quite suprised at how poorly Frum did when faced with questions from the audience that he'd not seen. Blumenthal, when he finally managed to get a word in, demonstrated that he had prepared himself and was able to give answers based on reports that he'd obviously read and understood. Frum, on the other hand, looked like he was unprepared, and just stuck to the standard WH script.

[D-Notice]

6. Not used to not seeing the questions up-front...

[RogueTrooper]

7. The same thing happend the first time he did a QT from the US

The audience and the panelist just roled over him. He comes from a world where people are allowed to finish what they are saying. I think part of it is that most American politicians, or political commentators, rarely participate in a tv show that gives people so much time to talk. There seems to be a tendency to try and get every talking point out in the first breath. We are used to watching QT with an audience and panel who have, for the most part, been wathcing QT for 25+ years. It was an excellent show. I really enjoyed watching it with an American audience; there was visible passion on both sides and that always make for good tv.


Lida Rodrigez did the best job at controling the audience.

[RogueTrooper]

2. It was certainly a lively forty five minutes

I had to laugh at Richard Littlejohn. The right wingers in the audience must have thought they had a fellow traveller until he started talking aboout how he believed in a secular society. And at the end of the debate he mutters the immortal words "I find myself agreeing with Micheal Moore".

I thought Micheal Moore did very well. He was better than he was on his first apperance ( just after 911 ).

A note on the audience:

They were very media aware and used their talking opportunities to get their talking points across. I think that a British audience would be a little more reserved ( and far less likely to be caught in something as tawdry as "trade" ).

[muriel_volestrangler]

5. Yes, a definite difference in the audience

I think the director should have turned off audience mikes when the panelists were in the middle of talking. Dimbleby should have done a better job of getting basic answers to the questions sometimes.

Littlejohn is a real waste of space on things like this. He should have been there to be the right wing counterpart of Moore, but he had neither the arguments nor the wit (I liked Moore's reply to "Saddam wanted to have WMD" - "well, I'd like to be 150 pounds, but that doesn't mean it's going to happen").

[Guy_Montag]

8. Off topic a little...

I always hoped Paxman or Humphries would have the chance to interview GWB.

[LibLabUK]

9. Hehe..Paxman..

Could you imagine it...

"Answer the question!" would probably be repeated 1400+ times.

There's no chance GWB would ever be put in the same room as Paxman or Humphries.. his staff would shit a brick.

If he ever does an interview over here it'll probably be with Lorraine Kelley or Richard & Judy, with some soft-core questions about how he likes God and baseball or some shit.

[LeftishBrit]

10. Moore was really good!

I thought Blumenthal was good - couldn't stand Frum! - but I might have preferred to have people who were from outside party politics, or else politicians in their own right, rather than aides and speechwriters to presidents. And I wish my own country had been represented by someone better than Richard Littlebrain!

The audience were very 'lively'. I was also shocked by that racist comment about Arabs. Some people made a lot of sense, however.