Mrs Clinton's gem for interview collectors

A number of previous posts have featured classic interviews with top politicians, including
• A labour leader with no interest in spin
• A prime minister who openly refused to answer a question
• A Tory leader’s three evasive answers to the same question

Whether or not Hillary Clinton’s reply to a Congolese student who seemed to have asked her what her husband’s opinion was (though apparently the translator had mistakenly said ‘Mr Clinton’ instead of 'Obama’) qualifies as another classic remains to be seen.

But it's already had more than 50,000 views on YouTube and generated a good deal of heated debate.

In case you missed it, here it is, followed by a sample of positive and negative reactions from YouTube viewers.

See what you think:



SELECTED REACTIONS FROM YOUTUBE

FOR:

Hillary, it's about time these sexist assholes got a piece of American common sense. WHAT THE HELL DOES BILL CLINTON THINK? WHO GIVES A SHIT? what assholes! GREAT RESPONSE!

Are these students STUPID?she is right why should she answer for Mutombo or mr clinton, she said the record straight

Hillary has lots of good reasons to be pissed. A philandering husband who has humiliated her, a wet behind the ears newcomer who took the presidency from her, and the fact that even though she is Sec of State, Obama has severely crippled her authority by naming others to diplomatically handle other parts of the world.

if i asked a question that was so disrespectful of her intellect and position, yes. but i also wouldn't consider an honest answer a problem. she said, directly, i'm not going to tell you what my husband thinks. I work i a professional and public capacity and people are publicly direct all the time. This is nothing new. But when Hillary does it, everyone changes the standard and caps on her for it. I don't get why CBS has to frame that as a "snap." It's not and CBS is being sexist by doing so.

AGAINST:

"Rude" question or not (and I do not think the question was rude), Hill is representing the our nation. She should sit up straight, behave in a gracious manner and answer the question with a touch of class and humor versus arrogance and bitchiness. Ugh.

what a bitch! does she even stop to think about difference of culture??

Her true colors continue to shine through that fake 'serve our country' attitude she cultivates for show. If anyone can't handle a simple provocative question from a student without looking like a nasty villain, they don't need to be our head Diplomat. What is she doing, trying to start another world war with her attitudes?
Can you imagine her in the White House with all the pressures of the first 200 days? She can't even handle a student. We need to keep her far away from our Capitol.

what am embarrassment to the USA!

OTHER POSTS ON MRS CLINTON'S COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS:

• Clinton, Palin and the legacy of Margaret Thatcher
• Does Mrs Clinton really know someone everywhere she goes?
• Clinton on North Korea: "There are consequences to such actions"
• The ‘delicacy’ of Mrs Clinton’s ‘consequences’ for North Korea

Observing England’s cricket team in the face of defeat

The late great Erving Goffman’s studies of the minutiae of everyday life inspired thousands of researchers from the 1960s onwards and his books reached a much wider audience than most academics can ever dream of.

But, with the notable exception of two of his graduate students (Harvey Sacks and Emanuel Schegloff) who founded conversation analysis, few other sociologists ever managed to emulate the perceptiveness of Goffman's observations about the workings of everyday social interaction.

When he was a visiting professor at Manchester University in the early 1970s, someone asked him how he managed to come up with so many astute observations. His reply was along the lines of:

“By not looking at the people everyone is focused on in any particular situation but by concentrating on watching the behavior of the ones that no one else is looking at.”

I had a go at following his advice at Headingley on Sunday during the dying moments of the test match against Australia, and have some rather worrying observations to report about the England cricket team.

While everyone in the crowd was watching tail end batsmen Broad and Swann showing the main batsmen how they should have dealt with the Australian bowling, I turned my binoculars away from the pitch towards the balcony where the rest of the England team were sitting, fully expecting to see a collection of depressed and dejected faces.

Given their dismal failures over the previous two days, what surprised me was to see so much chatting, grinning and laughing going on. From a distance, the atmosphere among them looked far more casual, jovial and relaxed than seemed appropriate in such dire circumstances.

But what really shocked me was their apparent lack of interest in or support for the temporary successes of their colleagues out on the pitch: when the crowd cheered and applauded, the rest of the team could hardly be bothered to join in.

What, I wondered, does that tell us about the team spirit of the current England squad?

Then, not long after Australia had won the match, we went for a walk around the back of the stadium, and stumbled across some supporting evidence for a comment in Derek Pringle’s report on the match in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph, where he said:

‘A positive report on Andrew Flintoff would obviously be a good start but the process should have begun the moment they lost their last wicket yesterday, 33 balls after lunch, but didn’t. Instead of marching out onto the field to shake the Australians’ hands in public, all but the departing batsmen remained inside the dressing-room area leaving Strauss, their captain, to face the boos when he attended the post-match presentation’ [my italics].

It wasn’t just that the rest of the team had stayed hidden inside the pavilion, as Pringle noted, but they'd made an instant and hasty retreat. By the time we reached the players’ car park less than an hour after the game finished, the stewards told us that most of England team (except for Prior who was still massaging his ego by signing a few autographs) had already driven off – not in a team bus, but individually in their own cars.

Again, the same question arises: what does this tell us about England’s team spirit, let alone their management’s view of the urgent need for an extended team meeting?

Instead of biting that particular bullet there and then, England’s cricket leadership has apparently instructed the failures to go back to their counties and prepare for victory – which strikes me as worryingly reminiscent of former Liberal Party leader David Steel’s instruction to his members to “go back to your constituencies and prepare for government.”

England cricket fans can only hope for a bit more luck than the Liberals had in 1987, as recent performances suggest that 'luck' is the only chance left for regaining the Ashes.

Guardian ahead of record?

In a previous post, I’ve commented on the media’s peculiar preference for using the phrase ‘ahead of’ when they mean ‘before’ – even though it’s not in common usage among any other native speakers of English.

The record number of instances I’ve seen so far came in a Guardian website report on England’s pathetic performance in the 4th test match against Australia, where ‘ahead of’ appears in the headline, one of the sub-headlines and four more times in the article that follows.

Is this the 21st century version of longstanding proofreading problems at the Grauniad?

Or, given that the article is unsigned, could it be that it was written by a robot that’s been programmed to convert ‘before’ into ‘ahead of’ by another robot who can’t speak English either?

If you can bear it, here are the six specimens that that put the Graunaid ahead of everyone else in this particular race.

Ravi Bopara among five players sent back to counties ahead of fifth Test
• England No3 seeks form with Essex ahead of Ashes decider

'The England batsman Ravi Bopara, whose place in the side is under scrutiny after scoring 105 runs in seven innings, will receive an opportunity to rediscover some form with Essex ahead of the Ashes decider at The Oval.'

'.. managing director, Hugh Morris, said in a statement. "We are aware that we underperformed with bat and ball at Headingley and this decision is designed to give players an opportunity to spend time in the middle and get overs under their belt ahead of the decisive fifth Test at The Oval next week."

'Miller was also forced to defend the decision to omit Andrew Flintoff from the side for the fourth Test, insisting it was right to put the advice of England's medical team ahead of the all-rounder's wishes.'

'He will see a specialist today ahead of a decision on his fitness for the decisive Oval encounter ..'


As for which side comes out ahead of the other, we won't know before the final test match comes to an end.