Why Steve Bannon’s Fireside Chat With The Economist Is So Grimly Watchable
18th September 2018
Zanny Minton Beddoes herself could almost have been dreamed up by Bannon. She is his ideal foil. The Economist’s editor-in-chief is the epitome of a certain hectoring Davos type. From the moment she kicks off her interview she is as sharply rude as possible to her guest, making it clear to her audience from the get-go that her attitude towards Bannon is akin to that of someone who, having trodden in excrement, must perforce adopt some attitude towards its removal.
What makes this so grimly watchable is that Bannon merely has to phone it in. Zanny Minton Beddoes, on the other hand, appears to be fighting for her political, professional and social life. She won’t let Bannon get on a roll on anything. She won’t let him finish a sentence. She rebukes. She jabs. She hectors. It appears that to allow Bannon to make any point (let alone win it) would be to risk the total and utter death of Zanny Minton Beddoes. Henceforth she would be said to have given a platform to fascism. To have let it speak. And from there to have caused it. And look where that would lead us. While every last one of us was being herded onto cattle trucks, the one thing everyone would be in agreement on would be that the only reason the world had got into this mess was because of the unsatisfactory interviewing technique of Zanny Minton Beddoes.
I am reminded of those show-trial ‘debates’ that Christian inquisitors were fond of staging against Jews in the Middle Ages. Granted that the concept of Bannon in the Jew role is rather incongruous, the situation is pretty analogous. ‘We’re talking to you in order to show how superior to you we are and your job is to be beaten and, more importantly, to acknowledge that you are shit and we are gold.’ That about sums up any ‘interview’ between a Voice of the Crust and a Heretic/Sinner. They don’t even try to make any effort to appear fair, or objective. They’re playing to their bleachers, and it’s just one vast virtue-signaling ritual.
We see the same thing with the Kavanaugh hearings — ‘”I’ll be judge, I’ll be jury,” said cunning old Fury; “I’ll try the whole cause and condemn you to death.”‘