It all has shades of "Have you stopped beating your wife?", insofar as it being unwise to even
start your answer with a Yes or No. It's not a provocative question by accident, of course. If the questioner is looking to impose their own agenda then they're likely prepared to shut down the answer as soon as they get the 'clear' yes or no and lock out the bit of the reply that disentangles the nuance necessary.
Something like the more proper response, from a properly prepared answerer, might be something like "I do not accept the premise of the question (...and this is why,
if you'll let me continue...)", although that is perhaps soured by those smooth-talkers who
do have something to hide and have such answers down pat to always slither out of proper laser-targetted questions. Being just too smooth in their houdini acts can be taken as a bad sign, whereas a genuinely railroaded interviewee is probably always going to be goaded and rushed into a stumble and the best they can do is try to recover from such a forced error and hope that they dodge the worst of the bad result (hope that enough people have enough sympathy with them to recognise the railroading tactics from the interrogator, rather than latch onto it).
Nothing like the above, but last weekend I was in a situation where my general ease of speaking one-to-one contrasted mightily with having to make points to a room-full of people. When raising my hand to suggest I'd like to make a point, etc, I definitely knew what I wanted to raise. Upon being given the floor, this disintigrates somewhat as I attempt to deal with (something like) 60 to 80 people now swivelled to face me, all my usual tricks for 'effortlessly' dealing with a face-to-face(-to-face-and-maybe-one-more) conversation[1] just don't work. How I'd be if sat as a witness (a
televised witness, moreover) or similar, the world actually turning on my every word... No, I'd not like that.
Now, obviously you'd expect some who has risen to such a position of (localised) power to not be quite so unable to flash the smile and get 'the room' to go along with them (it's how they likely attained that level of competancy), but everyone has their limitations, especially when up against another "professional showboater" such as a nationally prominent politician
must be (just to prevail against all the other aspiring professional showboaters they must have somehow elbowed their way past to reach such a zenith). Yeah-but-no-but... Not a desirable spot to be put in. Best you can hope for is to be so charismatic a showboater in your own right that you've still not reached your own apogee, and are just swinging past the (
probably unchosen) obstacle of the interogation on the way to some higher thing. And there's not that much room in the upper point of a pyramid (with those who inhabit it rarely universally praised for it, certainly once they fall out of it again).
[1] There was one face-to-face where I did not know who I was talking to (didn't recognise them, but knew them by name and reputation) and I found myself in a conversation where heavy hints about a certain outcome were being said, without actually saying... But because the hints were on the down-low, I was replying on the down-low and (it turns out) was doing a 'nudge nudge, wink wink, raise eyebrow' at totally cross purposes. The other party may well have schmoozed their desired outcome, later on, but the manner of the "no names, no packdrill" conversation we had may well have added up to zero net difference in the internal politics (I dislike internal politics... as much as external politics... though of course it is a normal human condition - and I am of course a
perfectly normal human) and just downgraded his reputation more, in my eyes... And maybe next time we'll meet I'll actually recognise him, and be on the right foot in the next conversation.
Author
Topic: AmeriPol thread (Read 4156694 times)