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O'Reilly interrupting Obama 48 times ? in 3-minute montage form.

ADDED: This, of course, make O'Reilly look very rude, but I didn't watch the interview and I don't know how rude it actually was. To some extent, I like interruptions. I like the back and forth of overlapping conversation with someone who does it well and isn't actually trying to dominate. Overtalking can be an important component of flowing conversations. It's no good when one person holds forth and the other one, instead of listening, is distracted thinking about when it's going to be his turn.

That said, an interview of the President is different. He commands respect. But he can abuse that. Obama could have pursued the strategy of running out the clock, blathering tediously and preventing good pointed probing by the interviewer he perceived as an opponent (if not an enemy). He'd have played O'Reilly, I suspect, if O'Reilly hadn't broken in with questions. The YouTube montage is effective at making O'Reilly look brutish, but that's not necessarily so, and if O'Reilly had patiently waited for Obama to bring each meandering answer in for a landing, it would not have been possible to make a YouTube montage that would show Obama's running out the clock to avoid serious questions.

Full post as published by Althouse on February 09, 2011 (boomark / email).