That was a genuinely awful interview this past Thursday. Carol Off let the two just wander all over the place and I could barely understand Wenjack, her First Nations accent was so thick and she was trying not to cry.
Apparently, at no point did it occur to Carol to pause the interview and have Wenjack take a sip of water and clear her throat so her listeners could understand Wenjack more clearly.
And then there was Mike Downie, who between his blubbering couldn't decide if he wanted to talk about his brother's impending death, the creation of the Secret Path cartoon, or the Secret Path comic book.
Just a horrible job by Off and her producers in terms of controlling the interview and directing where everyone was going, topic wise.
And then to top if off, they finish the interview by playing the entire "Secret Path" acoustic song by Gord Downie in it's entirety!! And it's very unpolished nowhere near Downie's best work.
That's two and a half minutes that the hosts should have been using to do a final rundown of the day's headlines, not playing a bad Gord Downie song!
Here in America, the joke among Public Radio listeners has always been that "As It Happens" is the ugly stepchild of "Q," (or at least, that was the joke when Jian Ghomeshi was host, with Shad as host the joke became more that both shows had inherited some sort of Autism Spectrum from their parents at the CBC).
Carol Off did nothing to change that stereotype on Thursday.
Apparently, at no point did it occur to Carol to pause the interview and have Wenjack take a sip of water and clear her throat so her listeners could understand Wenjack more clearly.
And then there was Mike Downie, who between his blubbering couldn't decide if he wanted to talk about his brother's impending death, the creation of the Secret Path cartoon, or the Secret Path comic book.
Just a horrible job by Off and her producers in terms of controlling the interview and directing where everyone was going, topic wise.
And then to top if off, they finish the interview by playing the entire "Secret Path" acoustic song by Gord Downie in it's entirety!! And it's very unpolished nowhere near Downie's best work.
That's two and a half minutes that the hosts should have been using to do a final rundown of the day's headlines, not playing a bad Gord Downie song!
Here in America, the joke among Public Radio listeners has always been that "As It Happens" is the ugly stepchild of "Q," (or at least, that was the joke when Jian Ghomeshi was host, with Shad as host the joke became more that both shows had inherited some sort of Autism Spectrum from their parents at the CBC).
Carol Off did nothing to change that stereotype on Thursday.