Paxman and the theatre of politics
If Jeremy Paxman were an animal, he'd be a Rotweiler. All teeth and determination and almost no inclination to discern between friend and foe, between a rat and the neighbour's poodle. While the BBC's Grand Inquisitor may rail against what he regards as the dissimulation and evasiveness of our politicians, no one, in the last five years, has done more to corrode the quality of political discourse than he.
Good interviewers look for questions that illuminate the issues; but Paxman has become increasingly Pharisaic, seeking too often merely to entrap and bewilder.
Why open his pre-election interview with the leader of the SNP by asking whether he would prefer Michael Howard or Tony Blair to win the election - except to throw him off guard? Why ask George Galloway, after his extraordinary victory in Bethnal Green, "Are you proud of having got rid of one of the very few black women in Parliament?" - as if anyone in their right mind believed that Galloway's motive for standing had anything to do with the gender or colour of the other candidates...
Moreover, Paxman's insistence on 'yes/no' answers is further cramping the ability of politicians to explore the complexity of issues. So, does Tony Blair, or more recently Charles Clarke, care about the widening gap between rich and poor? Yes or no? If they say 'yes', Paxman will ask them why that gap is widening - at least between the very rich and the poor. If they say 'no', he will accuse them of not caring about the poor. But the key issue for the Government is not whether some people are getting very, very rich but whether more people have the opportunity to flourish.
The BBC's failure to curb Paxman, combined with the recent planting of hecklers at one of Michael Howard's pre-election speeches and at an anti-war religious service all suggest that our most important mass medium of information and debate is becoming more interested in creating drama than intelligently exploring the important issues of our time.
Jesus, of course, was no stranger to confrontational, point-scoring interviewers. He handled them with an intellectual agility that we applaud but also sometimes with a brutal directness that most Christians would hesitate to deploy - "white-washed tombs", "brood of vipers". In seeking to restore productive public discourse, what tactics, I wonder, should we employ? Any answers, Jeremy?
Mark Greene
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