Monday, September 12, 2005

Hoeffel on "It's Your Call"

Joe Hoeffel was a guest this evening on "It's Your Call with Lynne Doyle." It was the first time I had ever watched the show. It is likely to be the last. There were four guests, in addition to Doyle. The guests were:

In the studio:
Edward Turzanski
CN8 National Security Analyst
Political Science Professor, La Salle University
Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute

Bill Pascrell, III
CN8 Political Analyst
Contributor, CN8's "Who's Battling Bill?"

Joe Hoeffel
Former U.S. Congressman

Out Of Detroit, MI:
Debbie Schlussel
Conservative Columnist

Debbie Schlussel behaved in an extremely rude and obnoxious manner. It always pains me when the one non-white male guest is easily identifiable as someone who will, without a doubt, look bad. She made the show difficult to watch and no doubt difficult for the other guests to participate, not to mention her rudeness to callers. I deleted her website URL from the guest list because I don't want to provide her with any more press than necessary.

In any event, hometown boy Hoeffel presented himself well. One of his talking points (mentioned a number of times) was that FEMA worked under Clinton but it was "broken" under Bush. He mentioned a 25 year right wing effort to tear down government, and that FEMA was underfunded. He mentioned that the neglect of people in New Orleans was not racism but classism, a neglect of those without a lot of resources or status. Another point mentioned was that there did not appear to have been a plan, at a number of levels, for dealing with such a situation.

I was taking notes on his remarks and not paying close attention to anyone else's and I missed the first 10 minutes of the program.

One other gender-related note, there was an announcement at the end of the show crediting the business who had provided Lynne Doyle's jewelry. Has anyone ever heard of this being done for a male "journalist?"

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

i just caught a little bit of the show, detriot debbie made it nearly impossible to watch with her voice butting in at every moment. i found her lack of facial movement aside from her mouth unnerving.

i was upset that joe didn't link classism and racism in this roundtable.

the only show i can recall pointing out a man's clothing is alex trebek's perry ellis wardrobe. that was many moons ago, i'm not sure if he's still perry ellis clothed.

Anonymous said...

Joe actually did mention classism in the roundtable. He didn't get to say too much over Deb but when he did, it was one of his longer points.
And I agree, I nearly had to turn off the show because of Debbie.

AboveAvgJane said...

Next time I am at a less-traceable IP address I will send CN8 a note about Debbie. It was too bad because otherwise it was an interesting show. I didn't think Doyle did a very good job moderating when she let one person with snide comments overtalk those with more thoughtful things to say. It's one reason I don't watch the pundit shows, other than the occasional "Washington Week in Review," which is very civil.

Anonymous said...

hilary - i know he spoke on classism, but he didn't link classism and racism which go hand in hand in this country. i didn't mean to come off as saying he didn't mention classism at all.

Doyle was pretty horrible. i've never seen the show before and don't plan on going back. at one point she chided one of the panelists in the studio for pointing fingers and asked why we were all so quick to blame. 10 seconds later, she asked the next caller who s/he blamed for this fiasco. i did a double take. 60 seconds later, i clicked away.