When Terri Gross is not on politics, she is actually an excellent interviewer. She asks honest questions intelligently, often the questions the listener already has in her head. She just doesn’t come with a hard list of questions, she directs the natural flow of the interview without jarring the interviewee. In this way she is the anti-Diane Rehm. (And frankly, the anti-Sean Hannity)
Normally, when she does political interviews with conservatives, her pattern changes, and she willfully “misunderstands” the conservative, and will not cross-examine the liberal, while maintaining a veneer of even-handedness.
Twice I have heard her completely undone. The first was when she interviewed the hostesses of BBC’s “What Not to Wear”, and her guests turned the tables, asking her why she doesn’t wear skirts. By the time they were through with her, they were asking her why she was afraif of her own femininity (no coherent answer).
The second time (which was a repeat, meaning that Miss Gross was in SERIOUS denial in how the show would be perceived. Gene Simmons of KISS, was grotesquely obscene with her, saying things that a real woman would have slapped him for, and any decent man would have punched him in the nose before literally kicking him out. They didn’t/wouldn’t realize that this is what the condescending valuees-clarification NPR approach inevitably devolves into.
That, I would have liked to have heard.
Otherwise, she grates on me.
I had to listen to the Gene Simmons interview and it was all it was cracked up to be. Glad to see Gene turn the interview around on Gross and then ending was great!
I won't defend vulgar behavior towards a woman, not for a second. But it's worth noting that Simmons is a known conservative, and he is a strong supporter of Israel.
A Simmons quote, from Wikipedia:
"I wasn't born here. But I have a love for this country and its people that knows no bounds. I will forever be grateful to America for going into World War II, when it had nothing to gain, in a country that was far away... and rescued my mother from the Nazi German concentration camps. She is alive and I am alive because of America. And, if you have a problem with America, you have a problem with me."
I didn't hear the interview, but perhaps Simmons was trying to shake Gross up, get her off her game.