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Was Neil Cavuto’s painful interview with a college student activist fair game?
Washington Post ^ | November 18, 2015 | Callum Borchers

Posted on 11/18/2015 7:45:22 AM PST by TroutStalker

By now, there’s a reasonable chance you’ve seen Fox Business anchor Neil Cavuto’s interview with Million Student March organizer Keely Mullen. It was all over the Internet in recent days -- and particularly the right-leaning portion of said Internet, which delighted in a liberal college student struggling to explain how giving everyone free college would be paid for.

The exchange was, in a word, uncomfortable.

Cavuto began by giving Mullen the floor to lay out the demands of her group, which orchestrated student walkouts at 110 college campuses last Thursday. They were: free tuition at public universities, the cancellation of all student debt and a $15-per-hour minimum wage for all campus workers. Cavuto then asked Mullen how to pay for all this.

“Um, great question,” Mullen replied.

It was almost instantly apparent that Mullen was in over her head. She seemed flustered and unprepared. She seemed like, well, a kid.

Yet the interview continued for nine excruciating minutes. Cavuto, who had moderated a Republican presidential debate just a few days earlier, would ask a tough question, Mullen would squirm and fumble her way through a response, then they’d do it all over again.

Given the vocal role students are playing in national conversations about racial discrimination and, naturally, college debt, it’s likely that more media encounters such as this one are on the way. Which raises an important question: Should the press cut student activists some slack, recognizing that their reasoning — or, at least, their ability to articulate it — might not have caught up to their passion? Or should news outlets treat students like true activists and like the adults that they technically are, expecting them to hold their own against journalistic pushback?

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: callumborchers; demagogicparty; districtofcolumbia; leftwingnuts; meanmeme; memebuilding; neilcavuto; partisanmediashill; partisanmediashills; washingtoncompost; washingtonpost
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To: TroutStalker

I did see the interview. Yes, it was painful to watch the ‘student’ dig an increasing deep hole - but it was a lot of fun to watch.

Note to WaPo ‘reporter’ (notice how I put the quotes around that word just like I did with the girl getting her @ss handed to them on national TV? Same reason - no evidence that either is really what they self-identify as):

That poor girl is a snowflake, snowflake.


21 posted on 11/18/2015 8:00:41 AM PST by Quality_Not_Quantity (Democrat Drinking Game - Every time they mention a new social program, chug someone else's beer.)
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To: TroutStalker
Should the press cut student activists some slack, recognizing that their reasoning - or, at least, their ability to articulate it - might not have caught up to their passion?

Of course not.

Their faulty reasoning needs to be exposed -- for their own benefit, as well as that of the larger society

22 posted on 11/18/2015 8:00:59 AM PST by BenLurkin (The above is not a statement of fact. It is either satire or opinion. Or both.)
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To: TroutStalker
Should the press cut student activists some slack, recognizing that their reasoning -- or, at least, their ability to articulate it -- might not have caught up to their passion?

In a word: no.

College students should be able to be articulate and able to reason well. Certainly those who participate in college-level debate, whether national topic or parliamentary-style, are able to frame arguments, reason about policy issues, and muster facts to bolster their positions. I am quite certain that, for instance, the young Ted Cruz in his undergrad days could so all of those things quite well.

23 posted on 11/18/2015 8:01:45 AM PST by The_Reader_David (And when they behead your own people in the wars which are to come, then you will know...)
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To: TroutStalker

If she wants to go on Fox Business Channel to announce her “demands”, then she better be ready to deal with reality.


24 posted on 11/18/2015 8:02:00 AM PST by uncitizen (Trump: Saying what we are all thinking)
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To: TroutStalker

Cavuto should have reminded her that we do have public Universities and State Universities that are partially subsidized by tax payers. They’re cheaper than private universities. College can be very expensive, is having someone else pay for it the solution? Really, she needs to think harder.


25 posted on 11/18/2015 8:02:45 AM PST by Vic S
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To: Gaffer

Truth of the matter is she is espousing EXACTLY what the Democrat Party will propose next Fall which she and her compatriots will then crawl over broken glass to go and vote for.

How to pay for it is a can to be kicked farther down the road.


26 posted on 11/18/2015 8:04:02 AM PST by Buckeye McFrog
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To: pepsionice

“How do we pay for” free stuff is a stupid question?


27 posted on 11/18/2015 8:04:08 AM PST by subterfuge (TED CRUZ FOR POTUS!)
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To: TroutStalker

There was nothing wrong with the questions or the way they were posed. The person being interviewed did not come prepared and it showed. There was nothing “gotcha” about it.


28 posted on 11/18/2015 8:04:52 AM PST by DoodleDawg
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To: TroutStalker
Keely Mullen is a student at a top 50 American college who took it upon herself to be the spokesman for a particular cause.

Neil Cavuto is no expert in education and he went to a far less prestigious college.

The Keely Mullens of the world consider conservative talking head pundits to be undereducated buffoons.

As far as she was concerned, she was supposed to mop the floor with him.

No one at the Washington Post worries at all when a conservative activist is blindsided with irrelevant questions by leftist pundits, questions designed to make them look stupid.

Mullen was asked questions that were directly relevant to her whole cause, the basic questions she needs to answer.

29 posted on 11/18/2015 8:05:24 AM PST by wideawake
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To: TroutStalker

You know you’ve exposed undeniable stupidity when the WP publishes an article asking for mercy.

Sorry Lefties, but you stupid is there for all to see!


30 posted on 11/18/2015 8:06:47 AM PST by Darteaus94025 (Can't have a Liberal without a Lie)
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To: Gaffer
It was almost instantly apparent that Mullen was in over her head.

I assume she was selected as spokesweenie for the cause because she was the most committed. She definitely shed a bright light on this pack of rebels without a clue.

31 posted on 11/18/2015 8:07:54 AM PST by pfflier
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To: TroutStalker
"Fair"?

What would be "fair" would be for the Post to do a little post-interview research on the young woman's K-12 and post-high school educational opportunities.

She seemed to be a bright and pleasant student. Perhaps hers is a government school background, which would partially explain her apparent lack of understanding of how things get paid for which politicians promise and "progressives" advocate in order to get votes and power.

If that premise turned out to be true, then it is the propaganda network known as "public education," its bureaucracies, unions, and promoters are then ones who should be embarrassed.

If the Post found this premise to be true, then, to be "fair," perhaps they might ask the same question of some students who were home schooled, or educated in many of the private and charter schools where freedom of conscience, pursuit of learning and critical thinking are reflected in the curriculum.

32 posted on 11/18/2015 8:09:51 AM PST by loveliberty2
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To: wideawake

Keely Mullen was also the leader and head organizer of this protest. Who else would you interview?


33 posted on 11/18/2015 8:10:13 AM PST by outpostinmass2
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To: subterfuge

It’s like standing at McDonalds and explaining to some kid about the free gift toy for kids....it’s not really free....you’ve paid enough into the pot to make these toys free.

Nothing exists in life for free.


34 posted on 11/18/2015 8:11:14 AM PST by pepsionice
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To: TroutStalker
Should the press cut student activists some slack, recognizing that their reasoning, or, at least, their ability to articulate it, might not have caught up to their passion? Or should news outlets treat students like true activists and like the adults that they technically are, expecting them to hold their own against journalistic pushback?

These little witch-hunters are ruining lives and careers with their BS, and forcing collectivist mob-rule on institutions and society at large. They should be treated like the the bomb-throwing reprobates that invented most of the nonsense they spew ... the Bill Ayers/SDS notion of "white privilege", the wholly-invented "right" to free this and free that ... They should be treated like the brain-washed enemies of freedom they are.

35 posted on 11/18/2015 8:11:45 AM PST by spodefly (This is my tag line. There are many like it, but this one is mine.)
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To: Obadiah

I saw some idiot cbs reporter grilling and attempting to intimidate Ted Cruz this morning. He was a completely rude asshole, interupting, making accusations like Cruz was a child molester. When has the media EVER done that to any democrat, especially president Anus or queen bitch HilLiaRy!!!
The author of the article is a moron for even proposing they go easy on the student. As if normal people won’t recognize his idiocy.


36 posted on 11/18/2015 8:12:59 AM PST by subterfuge (TED CRUZ FOR POTUS!)
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To: TroutStalker
This article says more about the fantasy world in which the Washington Post operates, than anything about a particular group of 'wet behind the ears' student crack-pots, having anything to contribute to reasoned discussions of future policy.

Let us see if the Post has the same level of compassion, when right leaning students start to fight back against the recent antics on scores of campuses! Will they even report such reactions when they take place?

37 posted on 11/18/2015 8:13:26 AM PST by Ohioan
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To: pfflier

I think the real problem with education today is that these young liberal clueless elites are taught by liberal professors in an ideology that is comprised of a number of failed political systems. Their first hurdle is to learn how to talk to and respond to the media and press. Their second hurdle is learning the key words and phrases meant to appeal to the baser instincts of the masses - IOW, free shit.

Logic, reason and realization are about as far from them as the moon. It this woman represents the best and brightest we are in store for, then perhaps human evolution ending up with the likes of ‘her’ is probably better relegated to those strains on the evolutionary scale that are failures and just die out.


38 posted on 11/18/2015 8:13:43 AM PST by Gaffer
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To: ButThreeLeftsDo

It was painful.I used it in a debate with a few college students online,one of them was my Granddaughter.:) Mean grandmom.


39 posted on 11/18/2015 8:13:47 AM PST by fatima (Free Hugs Today :))
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To: TroutStalker; stephenjohnbanker; Impy; NFHale; BillyBoy; fieldmarshaldj

Asking her who would pay for all those things is unfair.
When things are as important as all the free stuff she demands then $$$ is no object.
Asking that shows intolerance.

Besides, Dems ALWAYS promise that ONLY the rich will pay, then like O’ Malley and Brown (MD and CA) they slam low and middle classers with multiple tax and fee hikes (or new tax and fee creations).

With O Malley it was tax after tax, fee after fee .

Creating an MTAG service fee just for having a transponder was hardly billing the wealthy. Or the rain tax,.


40 posted on 11/18/2015 8:14:55 AM PST by sickoflibs (Donald Trump : 'It will be wonderful. It will be glorious., You will be amazed, Just wait"')
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