Posts
The View's views means no view of Manilow for viewers
Barry Manilow has pulled out of a planned appearance on The View (American television's version of what Loose Women would be like if all the hosts owned their own island) because he didn't want to be interviewed by Elisabeth Hasselbeck. Manilow isn't worried about her credentials as an interviewer - because, of course, softball player turned gameshow-contestant turned presenter is exactly the career path Tom Brokaw took, but more her surprising views.
Hasselbeck believes in the literal, Creationist truth of the Bible, and that God created every single living thing, except for abortionists and liberals. They, apparently escaped from a New York Times editorial. She's one of those conservatives who don't like to admit they're conservative, claiming instead to be "independent" - independently campaigning for George Bush's return to the White House by appearing at the 2004 Republican National Convention. That sort of independence.
Of course, it's a bit wet of Manilow to back out of the interview simply because he doesn't agree with the political views of the interviewer - especially since he's plugging a collection of 70s covers, not campaigning for governor. It's unlikely she's going to say "you say you're going to build a bridge over troubled water, but isn't it your fault that the waters are clogged with the bodies of aborted foetuses?"
Still, Barry insists there's good news:
"The good news is I will be on a whole slew of other shows promoting the new album, so I hope you can catch me on those."
That is good news. I was afraid this political spat would mean absolutely no chance to see Barry giving us insight into why he feels Close To You is just such a great, great song.
6 comments:
"The good news is I will be on a whole slew of other shows promoting the new album, so I hope you can catch me on those."
Excellent! I hope he went on to list the times and channels on which we could catch the commercials for this album too.
Silly Barry. If you're offered the chance of an interview with someone whom you oppose, this is what you do.
Just out of interest, is this where the missing tag should go?
Ah, I think I see... If a comment starts with a tag, but the tagged quote is longer than the cropped line which appears in the 'Last 5 comments' preview on the left, the closing tag gets lopped off, so everything else gets sucked in.
See, if I was a consultant somewhere, I'd probably be paid a hefty fee and all the coke-n-hookers I could eat for cracking that problem...
Almost, Mikey.
The problem is that - for some reason - the feed from the forum has stopped stripping out its HTML, so if someone opens an <I> tag at the start of a post, and doesn't close it within the six or seven words that form the display of the feed on the right, it remains unclosed and everything goes to italics.
Google suggest tilting your monitors five degrees in the opposite direction as a workaround.
"Of course, it's a bit wet of Manilow to back out of the interview simply because he doesn't agree with the political views of the interviewer"
I disagree. It's not "wet" atall. You have to view his actions within the current US climate of creationism being pushed as a valid alternative to science, and even being taught as such in some schools. It's a rather emotive issue in America.
I've never been a Manilow fan, and have always tended to consider him a bit lame or fey, but kudos to him for having the backbone to stand by his principles.
Anonymous:
But where do you go if you refuse to talk to people because they hold different views from you? Wouldn't it have been better for Manilow to go and say "before I tell you about the album... seriously, you think that women were made out of ribs?"
All this does is hand some sort of victory to the O'reilly axis, by making it look like liberals are unable to offer any argument against their claims and so just run away.
Post a Comment
As a general rule, posts will only be deleted if they reek of spam.