Questions

Here is an email I just sent to Book TV after watching an interview with an author (and conservative talk-show person). I was freaked. Not because of idiology, of which I have my share, but because I'm a journalist. Uninteresting, unproductive, and unintelligent questions make me sort of crazy. You can ask interesting questions without being biased, for pete's sake! Anyway, here's the email:

"I know and respect C-Span's mission. As a journalist myself, I understand bending over backwards to be unbiased. And I understand that you get a lot of messages from dumb-heads from the left and right.

But, as a journalist, I go nuts at the lack of even slightly interesting questions being asked.

For instance, today I've been watching a talk-show person hitting softballs out of the park.

What is wrong, even for you, to ask some simple questions. Like, please tell me about one time in which conservatives have been right in the past dozen years? After all, the Democrats have been critical. Fight back! Educate me! When have you people been right: About deregulation of the financial industry? About putting our Social Security money into the stock market? About WMD? About ... what? About "Drill, baby, drill?" Surely there is SOMETHING conservatives have been right about!

Once again, I know your mission. (And I know your funding source.) Of course, liberals should get similar sorts of simple questions. What have they done lately? (Say, in the last 40 years? Anything? Can you reveal them?) But, sheesh! The Fox-news-like pabulum on Book TV is making me beat my head on the floor."

OK, I'm still a little freaked about the kindergarten level of public discourse these days. Perhaps I get a little carried away. But, hey, wouldn't you like to hear the anwers to some, not tough, but interesting questions? I not only would like to, I'd like to still be asking them.