{"id":2011,"date":"2012-03-15T16:04:31","date_gmt":"2012-03-15T20:04:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/?p=2011"},"modified":"2012-03-15T16:21:28","modified_gmt":"2012-03-15T20:21:28","slug":"listening-post-questionable-response","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/2012\/03\/15\/listening-post-questionable-response\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening Post: Questionable response"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dick Powell gets the third degree in Murder My Sweet.<\/p><\/div>\n

When Nora Flaherty first proposed that we do a Question of the Day feature at NCPR, I said “Great!” Ask a few interesting questions, find out what people are thinking–easy-peasy. Clearly I was naive. There’s something in us that instinctively resists interrogation. We like to answer a question with a question, or we want to question the premise of the question. Or we want to talk about something that the question reminds us of. Sometimes we want to compliment the questioner for the quality of the question, or for providing the opportunity for giving feedback. Sometimes we go off on a sidetrack about an issue related to what someone else said while not answering the question. The only thing people don’t want to do is–answer the freakin’ question!<\/p>\n

Take today. I tried to make it as bullet-proof as possible: What make and model currently tops the list for your next car purchase? One respondent talks about how Ralph Nader might be to blame for big cars. A friend on Facebook picked the flying saucer car I used to illustrate the post. One prefers small cars that handle well over big ones that don’t. One wants a vehicle that doesn’t exist yet, but will settle for a bicycle in the meantime. And one tells me what he is driving now, but not what he’s thinking of buying next.<\/p>\n

I think politicians are partly to blame (for everything actually). The sound bite culture of 24\/7 news has taught them that being responsive to a question is much less useful than using a question as an opportunity to say what they were gonna say anyway. When Pres. Clinton was being pinned down about the veracity of a sworn statement, he famously responded, “That depends on what ‘is’ is.” I’m still trying to figure that one out. And Gov. Romney, chided for totally ignoring a debate question replied, “You get to ask the questions you want, I get to give the answers I want.” And sadly, that’s the truth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Nora Flaherty first proposed that we do a Question of the Day feature at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[6128],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.northcountrypublicradio.org\/allin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}