Here’s a nice counterpoint to our post last week covering Susan Jacoby’s new book The Age of American Unreason and her lament that America has declined into a morass of anti-intellectualism and low expectations.
Let’s set the scene: A reporter selects a young Barack Obama supporter at a rally and starts peppering him with questions about the candidate. And it all feels like a staged effort to demonstrate that the mobilized youth has no real handle on the issues. He’s just blindly buying the hype. Without wasting time, the reporter leads the young man into a conversation on the complexities of health care. It’s the perfect setup. But then it suddenly becomes clear that the reporter chose the wrong kid (who is a naturalized immigrant, by the way) to play the fool. Watch the video below (and check out this follow up video that gives you more of the back story).
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The guy’s name is Derrick Ashong. He gives speeches about politics; also was in Spielberg’s “Amistad”. http://wiki.idmashup.org/DerrickAshong
wrong kid indeed!
Interviewer is a gigantic tool. He might as well begin each question with “Hey stupid…”
I couldn’t watch the whole thing (dude was making me sick), but even halfway through, once it became clear that his subject had something to contribute on the topic, he’s STILL trying to catch him out.
Wow! Thanks so much for posting this! I hope you don’t mind but I had to post this over on my blog as well. In addition, I found a few more of Derrick’s posts on youtube… I encourage others to check them out as well…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2zO5d-XZWA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-JirI45yGs
What an abrasive interviewer.
The takeaway from that video was not health care-related but rather that Obama as president would unite Congress. Which means it was a promotional spot in the guise of an interview.
The fake high five at the end was classic.
i am confused, why, if the interviewer was trying to catch him out, and was being made to look bad, did he post the video. It seemed to me in watching it, that this whole thing was staged. The interviewer was not catching him out really, but setting up questions. and given the subject is a regular youtube correspondent, seems a great coincidence that he is the one randomly interviewed.
and he is also an actor, staged seems right