Well not really. But I never wrote about Sawyer’s abysmal performance interviewing Howard and Judy Dean on Primetime last week, and I think she deserves all the scorn she can get for it. When the most substantive question you can ask a presidential candidate is whether he gets mad at his son’s hockey games, you really should throw in the towel.
This was the first time I’d really ever heard Judith Steinberg Dean speak, and I instantly fell in love with her. She’s not polished, she doesn’t have that “political wife look,” she’s an accomplished and smart woman who values her patients more than getting poked and prodded endlessly on the campaign trail. That’s cool with me.
I was also pleasantly surprised by the dynamic between Howard and Judy. They seemed genuinely, for want of a better phrase, in love with each other. It reminded me of Bill and Hillary, and how they always seemed like two positive magnets vibrating against each other when they appeared together. That was not the case with the Deans.
So yes, I do see the point of a “softer” interview where you get to know the non-political sides of a candidate and his wife. But Diane Sawyer’s smarmy “are you angry now? how about now?” manner is not the way to do it, if you ask me.
Has anyone taken her seriously since the Lisa-Marie and Michael Jackson interview?
You’re right–Diane Sawyer’s questions were lame, as was the way she asked them. And I couldn’t believe how many times they showed the Iowa clip right at the beginning of the program–it seemed like three, including the time Diane made Howard watch it as WE watched HIS reaction on the picture-in-picture. Lazy journalists with no meaningful observations of their own can’t get enough of this clip–and the same is true for political novices who have never been in the thick of a political event, and don’t know what they’re like. (Really, was Dean’s behavior all THAT weird?) I saw Jesse Jackson live during the ’88 primary season, and he was every bit as “evangelical” (for lack of a much better word) in his exhortations to the crowd.
As for Judy Dean…she rocks!!! I can’t remember the last time I saw a candidate’s spouse who seemed so natural and unvarnished. She seemed very likeable and interesting, which came through despite her shyness. And I thought the dynamic between Howard and Judy was very sweet. I described it the same way you did, Adam, to someone else who missed the show–you truly got the sense that they were in love. It seems like they have a great marriage, and they have the maturity and mutual repect necessary to arrange their lives on their own terms.
I have hated Diane Sawyer ever since I saw her interview Ellen DeGeneres a long time ago. One particular question really bothered me–it was something about whether by Ellen coming out on TV she thought she would influence other people to be homosexual as well. It was ridiculous.