The concept of Tough or Hard vs Easy seems embedded in almost every aspect of our lives. Tough questions, hard choices, difficult decisions…
Interviews are often ranked as Hard or Easy, with seemingly no middle ground. Interviewers, with no apparent center, clamber for the label ‘Hard’, asking ‘Tough’ questions of their ‘guests’. There seems to be an imaginary prize for the ability to make a ‘guest’ uncomfortable. The answers evoked appear irrelevant, only the embarrassment level of the ‘guest’.
And reality or even relevance also appears superfluous, as in: “It has been said that…, without ever identifying these imaginary sources or their imaginary utterances. The single criteria appears to be the amount of personal pain the question anticipates for the ‘guest’. They pick a big fancy word ‘hypothetical’, for these ultra-stupid questions.
Control, anal-retentive control, seems to be the main concern, reminding the ‘guest’ often, how many seconds remain until the next commercial break, the really important part of the show.
A mind-numbing, technique called “The Lightening Round” throws topics, often absurd ones out for the ‘guest’ to give as short a response to as possible. A kind of feeble attempt at a verbal Rorschach Test. Only shallow, pithy responses are expected, never anything long enough to be meaningful.
In defense of one wise guest, I recall Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday explaining his Lightening Round Rules to General David Petraeus. The general’s response was: “those are your rules not mine”, and proceeded to take as much time as he wanted to answer the pithy questions with thoughtful answers.
But what instead…
How about an ‘interesting’ question. One which might lead to an unexpected answer, perhaps a new insight, or an untried alternative… I propose this idea as I doubt it would be raised by any of these hollow Individuals.
Or, just for variety, a ‘principled’ action, i.e. an action taken not because it is easy or tough but it represents living by a personally held guiding principle…