UPDATED: RT Reminds Me That Some Media Know How To Interview (If You Want An Interview…Read On)

Etiquette, Ilana Mercer, Ilana On Radio & TV, Intelligence, Journalism, Media, Objectivism, Politics, Pop-Culture

The Barnum & Bailey Circus of American public life is on display today with the coronation of King Tut, down to the identity group freak shows. My, my, how far we’ve fallen as a culture.

Bring back the vomitorium says I (I am well aware that the concept is misrepresented, but the misrepresentation is worth retaining. It’s a good one).

I have been able to avoid some of the solipsistic orgy over Obama—to say nothing of the obscene platitudes and paradoxes: The Ass With Ears spoke of “Preserving our individual freedoms” through “require[d] collective action.” Moron.

This morning, I gave a prerecorded interview to RT (Russia Today TV, where my Paleolibertarian Column features). It was a pleasant, polite, intellectually stimulating, and professionally conducted exchange.

Ideas were the focus, not personalities. It always is this way with RT.

My RT experience has been vastly different from my experience with American hosts. How? Well, the RT producer’s starting point is a familiarity with and interest in some of the work written by the interviewed individual. She’ll point out which aspects piqued her curiosity, what she’d like to explore on air, etc.

Wow. Intellectual curiosity and courtesy: What old-fashioned concepts!

On the other hand, inquiries stateside invariably begin with the host’s persona and perspective. As follows:

US host: “Like, hey, We want to interview you.”
Ilana: “Sure, what about?”
US host: “Check us out on YouTube. We don’t read.”

You are expected to come on a show and rap, move your mouth. If you’re as chatty and as self-absorbed as your hosts invariably are, then all’s copacetic. But if you’re a person who tends to use words sparingly and with attempted precision, you’re out of luck.

When my daughter was seven-years old, her school assigned her the task of describing her parents. On her father, daddy’s darling heaped unrealistic praise. For her devoted mother, this perceptive chatterbox of a child reserved a matter-of-fact appraisal. “My mother,” she wrote in her girly cursive, “is a quiet woman who speaks mainly when she has something to say.”

To that my friend, writer Rob Stove, responded: “If everyone rationed speech thus, the entire mainstream punditocracy would cease to exist.”

Amen.

If he’s having a good day, your host may just exhibit a limited interest in you, not in your output, by sending you some obscure link or file that has caught his attention. The idea is that his inner world and current preoccupations should become your own.

In any event, if you want to interview me, do as RT does: Check out and choose a topic from my weekly output.

UPDATE (Jan. 21, 2013): The interview was on RT’s “The Truthseeker.” The process was fun and professional. The end result not ideal, as the sound conked-out on me and only a short snippet was harvested from the lengthy interview. There’s always a next time.

The Peerless Malevolence of Redcoat Piers Morgan

Christianity, Constitution, Founding Fathers, Free Speech, GUNS, Hebrew Testament, Individual Rights, libertarianism, Natural Law, Private Property, Taxation

Below is an excerpt from the current weekly column, “The Peerless Malevolence of Redcoat Piers Morgan,” now on RT (“hoplophobic” in the tagline is courtesy of the editor—I had never heard that word before today. Very cool):

“Piers Morgan is preaching treason from his perch at CNN—and not because he is undermining the dead-letter US Constitution, as some have claimed.

Most people would define treason as a betrayal of one’s country or sovereign. In my book, the book of natural law, treason is properly defined as a betrayal of one’s countrymen—and, in particular, the betrayal of the individual’s right to life, liberty and property. (To your question, yes, this renders almost all politicians traitors by definition.)

A right that can’t be defended is a right in name only. If you cannot by law defend your life, you have no right to life. If you cannot defend your property, you have no right of private property. And if you cannot defend your liberty, you are not a free man.

It follows that inherent in the idea of an inalienable right is the right to mount a vigorous defense of the same rights.

Knowing full well that a mere ban on assault rifles would not give him the result he craved, our redcoat turncoat has structured his monocausal appeals against the individual’s right to bear arms as follows:

1) The UK once experienced Sandy-Hook like massacres.
2) We Brits banned all guns, pistols too.
3) There were no more such massacres.

… This week, the CNN host will be fulminating over the shortfalls of 23 new imperial orders against firearm owners and in furtherance of federal tyranny. Piers believes the president’s extra-constitutional diktats don’t go far enough to void what’s left of the Constitutional scheme (to say nothing of the Hippocratic Oath. The Dear Leader has decreed that, “Doctors and other health care providers … need to be able to ask about firearms in their patients’ homes and safe storage of those firearms”).

Last year, an admirably rebellious Egyptian people revolted against President Mohamed Morsy for issuing a single executive order. America’s “King Tut” issued 23 such directives in one day! But—and by contrast—Piers thinks nothing of this “attempt by the [US] executive to make laws in violation of the Article 1, Sec. 8 of the Constitution” …

… Read the complete column, “The Peerless Malevolence of Redcoat Piers Morgan,” now on RT.

If you’d like to feature this column, WND’s longest-standing, exclusive paleolibertarian column, in or on your publication (paper or pixels), contact ilana@ilanamercer.com.

JOIN THE DISCUSSION, AND DO BATTLE FOR LIBERTY BY:

• Using the content-sharing icons on Barely a Blog posts.

• At the WND and RT Comments Sections, and on Facebook.

• By clicking to “Like,” “Tweet” and “Share” WND’s “Return To Reason” , and RT’s “Paleolibertarian Column.”

Crime & Self-Defense: Putting The Lie to Media Propaganda

Britain, Crime, GUNS, Race

As welcome a reality check as Ben Swann’s fact checking is, with respect to gun-related crime, it doesn’t include a dose of race realism. Even liberal hypocrites know which zip codes to avoid in order to stay out of the line of fire.

Here is Ben Swann’s Reality Check, paraphrased:

First up on Swann’s list is Piers’ single most touted fact: that the UK, having banned guns 15 or so years back, suffered only 35 gun-related deaths in 2011, against 11,000 in the US. FBI crime stats reveal that, of the 12,664 homicides we had in 2011, 8,583 were gun-related.

With a population of 62.6 million, Britain in fact saw 59 gun-related homicides in 2011, and not the number Piers persistently cites. But as our fact checker points out, is it any surprise that gun-related homicides in a country that has banned guns will be lower than in one that has not effected such a ban?

The cretin’s claims (Morgan’s) for no-guns-equals-lower-crime rates dissolves. The US has the highest gun ownership rates in the world. But, despite being number one in gun ownership, the US is 28th in gun-related homicides, and has a remarkably low overall murder rate: 2.97 per 100,000.

The UK has the second highest overall crime rate in the EU, the fifth highest robbery rate, the fourth highest burglary rate. And the EU crowned Britain as the most violent country in the EU, with 2,034 violent crimes per 100,000 people.

The US has only 466 violent crimes per 100,000.

UPDATED: Guns Are Good For Me, But Not For Thee

Barack Obama, Constitution, Democrats, Family, Feminism, Gender, GUNS, Individual Rights, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Regulation

A coterie of creepy kids converged today on DC. These modern-day freaks, the products of progressive parenting and pedagogy, put on a show worthy of the miniature reality show stars they are. (Watch Dance Moms to get a feel for the pathological, repulsive vernacular America’s kids are acquiring from the formative figures in their lives.)

The hallmark of an infantile society whose members lack an adult life: the canonization of The Kids.

Soon, the estrogen brigade on TV—right and left; Megyn Kelly and her slobbering sister on the other news stations—began beating on breast. The kids, the kids, you can’t use the “nation’s” little Buddhas—our demigods, our future (NOT)—in such a manner.

The participation of creepy kids—at the urging of their weepy, corpulent parents—in the celebration of 23 imperial orders in furtherance of federal tyranny was conflated by TV’s estrogen brigade with the NRA’s factual allusion to The Kids in this perfectly good NRA ad. It declares, “Protection for their kids, gun-free zones for ours:

“Are the president’s kids more important than yours?” the ad’s narrator asks. “Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their schools? Mr. Obama demands the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security.”

UPDATE: I am all for child labor. But kids should be seen and not heard. (Humor alert, FB Friends.)