Remember Froma Harrop, the civility scold and Baroness Catherine Ashton look-alike who called Tea Party congressmen "terrorists" and couldn't understand why anyone found this hypocritical? She provided us with lots of material last summer and now Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" has recycled it into comedy gold, somehow persuading her to sit for an interview in which she looks utterly ridiculous. You have to watch it to believe it.
A colleague who did watch it posed an interesting question: Was she playing the straight man, or is she really that oblivious? There's no way to know for sure, but based on our back-and-forth with her last year, the hypocrisy and cluelessness ring entirely true.
On the other hand, in previewing the show yesterday on her personal blog, she suggested she was in on the joke: "It's a comedy sketch, needless to say, and the joke will be on me." Then a follow-up comment: "Sure, much of my careful reasoning ended up on the cutting-room floor, but it was fun."
There's no doubt that it was a skillful editing job, but in our dealings with Harrop, she has never proved herself capable of careful reasoning. Our interpretation is that she realizes, at least after the fact, that she looked foolish and is rationalizing it by saying it's only comedy. The true explanation is some combination of obliviousness and the desire to get on television. We are not confident that we can accurately estimate the precise balance of those two factors.
1 comment:
Maybe you need to speak to her on an elevator.
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