June 20, 2020

"An attempt to not be weird while being interviewed by Terry Gross."

A comic by Adrian Tomine in The New Yorker... and don't come crying to me if you don't have a subscription. Here are 2 of the 47 panels just so you'll know what I'm linking to... 

36 comments:

Carol said...

Is that the NPR interview show that was (gently) lampooned on SNL?

That bit was pretty funny. SNL really had those silly SWPL liberals down. For awhile anyway.

john said...

I got all the panels. For free. Didnt get much of it, except that he obviously didnt jump.

Fernandinande said...

I like comics where sweat shoots out their heads. Bushmiller was a master of sweat shooting.

Ice Nine said...

I don't get it. Or, should I say, it is really overdone. I've listened to a few hundred Fresh Airs and, though I'm sure there is a modicum of nervousness that might go with being interviewed by Terry, I don't particularly recall anyone grossly betraying that anxiety. Was this guy on Fresh Air and had a bad experience or something?

Temujin said...

OK. I won't.

Big Mike said...

Does Adriane Tomone have a sister named Pat?

themightypuck said...

This definitely draws a caricature of anxiety ridden, emasculated, NPR listening, coastal liberals.

steven bailey said...

I would never come crying to a phony self important piece of shit like you.
How dare you put your words and meaning incorrectly onto someone else, and not
own up to your own incompetence.

Char Char Binks, Esq. said...

I used to listen to Fresh Air until the leftward slant got to be too much for me. I never noticed any sense of panic from anyone, or even any urgency. It was always very smooth and placid, host and guest, NPR-ishly soothing. The only note of alarm I ever heard was from Gross when one guest expert shot down some idiotic anti-Trump conspiracy. She solved that problem by never booking another guest who wasn’t rabidly anti-Trump.

Fernandinande said...

and don't come crying to me if you don't have a subscription

I can see everything on every website without subscriptions to any of them.

Here's his Fresh Air interview; I'm going to listen to it because I like his drawing style and I want to see if they mention the dentist.

rcocean said...

Terry Gross looks Gross. No one is better named.

Bill Peschel said...

Well, that was pointless (and I had a free read).

Harvey Pekar did it much better. He used his experiences as a jumping-off point for something he wanted to say to us.

This was like watching him masturbate. I'm sure it was good for him.

rcocean said...

Fresh air interviews are usually edited. Terry talks to people, and then pieces together the interview from the "best bits". Sometimes, the producers will tell the interviewee if they would expand on their answer or rephrase it so it sounds better or more interesting.

Its like the old "playboy interviews" where the interviewee would talk to Brando for 3 days, tape most of it, then "write up" the interview, making Brando (or whoever) seem more more concise and smart then he really was. Usually a draft copy would be made available to the interviewee for edits and approval. Its why people rarely claimed they were "misquoted" by Playboy.

Dave Begley said...

Terry Gross could only exist on NPR.

Defund NPR.

Howard said...

Terry Gross of (breathlessly) Fresh Aire is the most overrated interviewess on FM. She is the most tone deaf with Women of Color.

navillus said...

Terry Gross & Fresh Air jumped the shark real bad after Trump got elected. I used to listen & just tune out how frigging liberal everybody was, but now Terry has gone Full Jenn Rubin.
Never go Full Jenn Rubin!
Now Fresh Air gets turned off immediately- it' s too tedious to listen for 15 minutes to see if it's the one show in 50 that has an interesting, non-Trump-hating guest. Sad!

Rabel said...

I think the joke is that he keeps making the same point, panel after panel after panel - like Terry Gross with interview after interview after interview.

Is that right?

Earnest Prole said...

As opposed to trying to be weird while being interviewed by Terry Gross: Google her interview with Gene Simmons of Kiss fame.

Rory said...

Could we give the coronavirus a list of the names of some old people?

Freeman Hunt said...

I stopped listening to Fresh Air when NPR became a bunch of Saddam Hussein apologists in the run up to the war. That's also when I switched from left to right. The left doesn't care about civil or human rights unless fighting for them aligns with their political interests of the moment. Libertarianish types care about them all the time.

cubanbob said...

Anyone who isn't at the same level of Left or further Left than NPR should be a guest on NPR. Unless it's a live and unedited broadcast. That is also true of network television.

Ingachuck'stoothlessARM said...

didnt Alice Cooper pee on a dozen dead roses

and send them to to Terry Gross ?

we like Diane Rehm, because spasmodic dysphonia, not her content

eddie willers said...

Well, I learned one thing today. Terry Gross is a woman.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Talking to people is awkward.

I approached someone, Fred Stoller, and i had in mind to complement him on his set and i was choking, not because he was a big name and i was a fan, or anything remotely like that, i was choking because i didn't have a handy go to compliment for a comedian. So Fred did what nay comedian with little self confidence would do. He guessed that i was going to complain about a gay joke he told on his set about a half hour prior. I said yea... relived that i had been saved from a terrible situation, only to find myself in another terrible situation because now Fred Stoller thought he had to explain the joke and himself, lest i leave with the impression that he was a homophobe. I tried to backpedaled as best i could and i said not that there is anything wrong with that... meaning, not that there is anything wrong with telling a gay joke.

The rest is history.

I first wrote about this encounter when Althouse posted about a book Fred had written about his time as a Seinfeld writer. My memory was sketchy then. Recently i was driving and as if out of the blue i remembered exactly how my interaction with Fred Stoller transpired. I had tried to compliment someone and while while trying to think of something authentic something else happened. Something else kind of wonderful.

Lucien said...

OT, but does anyone know what US policy is if India & China get into a serious shooting war?

Earnest Prole said...

Is that the NPR interview show that was (gently) lampooned on SNL?

Two words: Schweddy Balls.

Hannio said...

I'm not sure I got the point of the cartoon. It did highlight one thing that has always irked me about interviews in general, which is the interviewee being thanked for the interview and then responding, oh, thank YOU. Like they did him a big favor by interviewing him for their show. Well, maybe there was some mutual advantage, but I decided long ago if I am ever interviewed, when they thank me at the end I am going to just say you're welcome.

Joan said...

Bill Peschel wins the thread.

eddie willers: I also thought Terry Gross was male.

Obviously, I also was able to read the whole thing. I kept waiting for there to be a point somewhere, but there wasn't. I appreciate the realistic style of the art and the clarity of the lettering, but I'm not inspired to seek out more of this guy's work. It wasn't amusing or edifying in any way. Sadly, this piece worked as an anti-advertisement for me: Don't bother buying this guy's book, it's just like this, you won't like it!

I'm vaguely curious about the actual interview, to the point where if someone else listened to it and had an opinion, I would be interested to know their opinion. I'm not interested enough to go listen to the interview myself.

Eric said...

Many years ago I went to a dentist across the street from Carnegie Hall. I don't think that anything was particularly grotesque, but I wasn't in a position to observe from outside.

Bruce Hayden said...

“OT, but does anyone know what US policy is if India & China get into a serious shooting war”

My guess is to openly sit on the sidelines, but quietly support India.

Marcus Bressler said...

She's shitty interviewer (usually gives questions that elicit closed-end responses, leading the interviewee). She's also batshit lefty, so there's that.

THEOLDMAN

The schtick where she breathlessly pronounces the programs name is SO lame.

narciso said...

meanwhile incident in reading, uk,

Fernandinande said...

I'm going to listen to it because I like his drawing style and I want to see if they mention the dentist.

Quit after about 20 seconds. They were enacting a comic strip.

Sprezzatura said...

Here’s a comic strip drawn over a pic:

https://twitter.com/ProjectLincoln/status/1274481502349295629/photo/1

Banjo said...

I expect both NPR and PBS Newsroom (or whatever they call themselves) are considered little better than Blackshirts in today's climate, but I'll have to leave it to others to tell me. I tuned out both years ago. So long ago that my daughter, now in middle age, was going to college for the indoctrination that equips us now only to discuss her children.

Charlie said...

Modern liberals, in one comic strip.

Also, Terry Gross is awful.