Straight Ahead

Tonight I am posting a series of questions for Donal of Dudrat review. You will get the usual off the wall questions and it should be fun. There will be a few FPM questions but the focus will be on her new blog.

Tuesday night will be an interview with Kevin of the Amboy Times. This interview is long overdue and earned. Kevin has a top shelf blog and posts excellent comments and should have been near the top of any interview series.

Over the last week or so a criminal from CA has attempted to infest my boards. Socrates is a serial criminal whose habit of posting under multiple aliases alone at FPM should earn him a lifetime ban. I was sceptical about the pedophelia charges as they are commonly used as an atomic bomb in divorce proceedings. However he has boasted of the crimes and provided details notably on the Radosh thread. His sexual harassment of female posters is legendary notably his comments about Fiona who posts under the name Sabuki. The bottom line is I own this site and Socrates and all of his creations are banned forever.

Most wanted interviews

1 Jason Pappas
2 Mustang of Social Sense
3 Farmer John
4 Lady Esther
5 Possum brilliant and when two conservative nature fans host a discussion it promises to be a must read.
6 Woman Honor Thyself
7 Brooke
8 Iran Watch I have sent Leonard Nimoy in search of IW. I didn't see him in any bogs
in my trip across VT.
9 Ecology new poster who is a great guy but differs with nost of us.
10 Jeff Bargholz

I am going to discuss what makes a good interview and the questions. Most of the time
I have a basic knowledge or a blog to read in order to understand a guest. Now most of us know a Ducky's odious positions and there is little point of reading rehashed predictable material. However Ducky on the subject of the Sand Pebbles or Planet of the Apes is more interesting. Ducky missed the writers thinly veiled references to race in the latter. Planet of the Apes also had an anti nuclear weapons message and was in fact pointedly liberal but our friend was unable to look beyond Charlton Heston. Yet this is a detail that we did not know .

Most bloggers are multi dimensional thus MZ also is a huge football fan. We learned that Nanc likes golf and Mr Beamish does not like rodeo. Thus we have many possibilities to work with. The interviews are meant to be a mix of entertainment and factpresented in a fun manner. Contrary to popular opinion I have only done one interview with a cartoon charachter and it was not Ducky. The interview of Anum was a difficult segment in that she demonstrated a serious lack of depth. The most disturbing question was the one where she would not eat lunch with a person who was gay or eating pork. MZ also does not eat pork but would likely bring his own meal and that is fine. I have no problem eating lunch with a gay person it doesn't change my orientation. I would have huge problems eating with a John Brown who would likely give a long lecture about fried chicken. For me the question of excluding a person based on factors unrelated to personality is unthinkable. How would most of us react if someone made similar comments about Blacks or Lefthanded people ?

Lastly I try to extract an interview that I would want to read myself. Why would I ask questions that I am well aware of the response. This creates a boredom and bored readers go elsewhere. All of us know AOW is an educator so why ask that. However, if I ask are teachers expectations of students too low and do students reach their potential without challenges is interesting reading.

Yet even a skilled interviewer can not elicit an interesting response from a crass one dimensional interviewee. A skilled interviewer must ask interesting questions but there are limits to what we can do with bad material.