Interviews gone wild: O'Reilly, Speidi, Artie
Talk-show showdowns: feisty to funny to filthy to fisticuffs
As you read this, somebody somewhere is sitting in a small dark room, wearing a microphone and an earpiece, looking into a camera lens and talking with someone who is in a TV studio in another city.
There's always a split-second delay between the end of the question and the beginning of the answer. That's because it takes a beat for the satellite to transmit the audio. You're watching and you think: Didn't she hear the question?
This little built-in glitch often leads to host and guest talking over each other.
Especially if the show in question is "The O'Reilly Factor."
One of the more popular recent videos circulating on the Internet shows Bill O'Reilly engaged in a heated debate with Joan Walsh, editor in chief of Salon.com.
O'Reilly hammers Walsh about her views on late-term abortion. Walsh rips O'Reilly for his incendiary comments about Dr. George Tiller.
Before it's over, O'Reilly is screaming, "You have blood on your hands!" and Walsh counters with, "Talk about blood on your hands," after she references a church shooting in Tennessee, where the accused killer was reportedly a fan of O'Reilly's.
Walsh comes across as more measured and reasonable in the debate -- but no matter what your beliefs, you're veering into the Irresponsibility Zone when you link the writings or the art of an individual with an act of violence committed by someone else.
If a talk-show host says, "I think So-and-So should be murdered," the host should be fired immediately -- but if someone goes out and commits that crime, that person is responsible for his own actions.
Elsewhere on the "controversial" interview beat, publicity whores Heidi and Spencer are claiming Al Roker of "Today" bullied them during a recent interview.
Hardly. I've seen the video, and all Roker did was express bemusement at the whole "Speidi" routine as he asked them to clarify the difference between acting like idiots and actually being idiots. At worst, he displayed mild disdain for their act. Roker's expression was akin to someone opening the refrigerator and smelling something that's not quite right any more.
Also making headlines: Artie Lange's joltingly profane guest shot on the inaugural edition of "Joe Buck Live" on HBO. Artie -- a very funny guy who doesn't need to resort to this type of stuff -- came on with guns blazing, spewing expletives and cracking homophobic jokes.
Buck and HBO execs seemed stunned Lange would go to such extremes, which is a little like booking Tom Hanks and expressing surprise Hanks wanted to promote a movie. What'd you expect from Artie -- restraint? He doesn't do restraint.
"Joe Buck Live" received 100 times the press it would have garnered had the first show featured interviews with Brett Favre and Paul Rudd -- but HBO and Buck don't seem inclined to exploit the situation, probably because Buck didn't handle it well. Try to embed the video on your site and HBO will tell you to take it down.
I'd like to see Buck invite Artie back to talk about the controversy and to press Lange about his obsession with homophobic "humor." I love Artie, but geez. Enough already.
Finally, we've got a TV interviewer in New York smacking Christopher Mintz-Plasse, a k a "McLovin," when a discussion of sex scenes led to him saying, "Come on, you've seen your daughter have sex."
Reporter Rosanna Scotto reacts by semi-playfully smacking the guy on the leg and saying, "Hey! My daughter does not."
And then they go back to talking about Mintz-Plasse's upcoming movie, because this is television, and you've got to fill the time, even if some goofy actor kid has made a most ridiculous remark.
Yeah, I'll probably get the new iPhone. I can justify the expense by saying my current iPhone has been acting up lately -- probably because I've dropped it four or five times over the last year or so. Lately, it has this really nifty feature where I charge it for hours -- and then it tells me "Low Battery" and turns itself off while I'm trying to use it.
I also still hate the keyboard.
That said, I'm addicted to some of the apps, from MLB.com to AP News to TwitterFon to Instapaper to AroundMe, the friendly Big Brother device that identifies your location and lets you know the locale of the nearest banks, coffee shops, gas stations, hospitals, hotels, movie theaters, etc.
Looks like the newest edition has some cool features -- but as always, there's one that makes you wonder: Why are they bragging about this?
In this case, it's the compass.
"Find out what direction you're facing with a new digital compass," says the copy.
A compass? Really? Amazing!