This is, of course, the problem with every goddamn Question Time. It’s essentially a bourgeois WWE: lots of histrionics, disingenuity and smartarsed populism on issues the panelists will either fail to comprehend or refuse to treat with any honesty…

…except for Will Self, who’s occasionally good.

Huh? I watched QT and found the debate almost perfectly reflected the debate at large in the media and in blogland too – that is to say: should we whole-heartedly support the Egyptian revolution regardless of what form it takes? Should we support homophobic misogynists who may attempt to hijack a grassroots uprising?

Now I’d like to see Richard Seymour or Sunny Hundal on QT as much as the next chap, but I think the Beeb did a good job in choice of guests last night. Mad Mel was shown up once again as the voice of insanity she clearly is.

On a side note, when Philips went all Gowin’s Law and mentioned that “Hitler was elected” I did wish that someone had shouted “Yep, and your employers supported him!”…

@2, the events of 1933 are not quite that straightforward – well, from the POV of Hitler coming to power, not the Daily Mail backing him.

I too think that Sunny Hundal should be on QT, and perhaps one of those campaign thingies ought to be started on his behalf

> Mad Mel was shown up once again as the voice of insanity she clearly is.

Maybe she has said insane things elsewhere – but on QT I didn’t spot anything.
Which bit exactly?

Actually, I rather thought Claire Short’s angle on the Islam angle was weak – basically she effectively deflected debate on he issue of potential role in future governments of Islamic groups by simply repeating (words to the effect of): it would be wrong to label every Muslim as a problem.

That was a strawman, as far as I could see, no one on QT had suggested that.

Though I may be in a minority- the audience seemed to like her input!

@4

The reductio ad Hitlerum, mostly, but also her conflating the Muslim Brotherhood with the entire protest movement & her argument in favour of friendly dictators.

The conspicuous absense of white, western scholars

Yay! Let’s judge people just by the colour of their skins. That’s progressive, innit.

I imagine the BBC includes enraged and irrational people like Melanie Phillips on its programmes for the same reason that Channel 4 used to select socially dysfunctional individuals for Big Brother: it makes for lively, if not edifying, television. Never mind the Reithean directive – grab the ratings (and don’t offend the government – or Israel).

Mr S Pill

> The reductio ad Hitlerum, mostly,

Maybe your Godwis Law antenna is too finely tuned – that was such a tiny, passing point, that she couched carefully so as not to overplay it.

She was after all making the valid point, that I can’t image you’d disagree with, that simply being elected does not make a government good or positive (in a western liberal sense).

Hamas were also mentioned as an elected but not ideal government.
Some of LC and elsewhere might even put New Labour in that category too…! so not controversial!

@8

Oh come on, you’re giving her wayyy too much credit here. Invoking Hitler as everyone knows is the last refuge of debate because the man was so monsterous. No-one here would compare Blair to Hitler (except a few delusional trolls of both sides) and the same applies to Hamas etc. It’s such a lazy way of arguing I’m surprised that Philips dared use it as an example. Sure, democracy ain’t perfect – but it’s the least bad system we’ve got as Churchill sort of said.

Now there are fair arguments to make about democracy and the rise of political extremist theocracies, but dragging Adolf into the debate is a way of trying to close down the debate itself – “Hitler was elected – therefore people power isn’t always good”. It’s lazy and wouldn’t get past a 6th form debating society – not least because (as @3 points out) events in ’33 weren’t that black and white.

It happens every time a non-Western backed person or movement comes to power, or nearly does – re: Saddam being Hitler, for a contemporary example. Noreena Hertz made the best points IMO particularly regarding the nature of revolutions when they can turn sour (Iran, Russia, France) without bringing Hitler into the argument.

But yeah, maybe my Godwin’s Law antenna is too finely tuned. It’s all this time arguing on the internet

It does amuse me though that Philips decried the homophobia of extremist Islamists, when they are so in tune with her own thinking.

Also it somewhat overstates the influence of the MB on events in Egypt to compare the MB with Fascist Germany. Which is what I suspect Philips intended to do (as does the Egyptian establishment).

No-one here would compare Blair to Hitler…

An unfair comparison.

@6 Paul
So often coverage of international news is framed from a western perspective and, by some extension, debate is conducted through largely western white commentators. This is due to ease of access here in the UK. For example, many of the news guests on the Haiti earthquake were British aid organisations, very few Haitians were available or accessible. That this trend has been bucked in favour of commentary/debate from Egyptian/Arab voices actively involved is to be applauded. And it’s also what makes the overt lack of such a panelist on QT all the more noticeable.

@ 9 S the Pill

“Hitler was elected – therefore people power isn’t always good”

To be fair, that’s a true statement and not an example of Godwin’s law as I understand it. Godwin’s law would be “Hitler was elected, you were elected, therefore you are as bad as Hitler”. It’s about absolutist statements; this is the opposite.

Similarly, if I told someone with a moustache that Hitler had a moustache and they were therefore a Nazi, that would be a stupid bit of Godwinning. If someone with a moustache claimed that moustachioed people were always lovely and I said “What, like Hitler?”, that would be perfectly valid.

Question Time has been quite an issue for the past couple weeks. I think the reason is that people want live entertainment on thursday night around 10 o Clock. They want thoughtful political debate and humour and they aint getting that anywhere else, so they watch Question Time.

@ 14

Very subtle! To be fair, the show-that-you’re-totally-not-talking-about-at-all seems to be getting steadily to its feet, although it would be good if someone could explain to David Mitchell that hosting a debate does not mean “pillorying the person you disagree with”.

@15…and that’s the reason I haven’t seen this weeks episode, I don’t know, I gave it two weeks, I will probably give it another chance, but ironically I didn’t catch this weeks episode cause I was watching How TV Ruined Your Life, which was very good indeed…though to be fair I still have yet to get around to watching this weeks episode of Question Time, but will do soon. Should be good if Phillips is on it, she is mad isn’t she, I bloody love it. I think Question Time is far funnier then that show they have on Channel 4, and the thing is I love everyone on that show, even Jimmy Carr.

I know its off topic, and that the Egyptian situation is important, I agree, I apologise too, but still on the topic of the 10 o Clock ( I know I brought it up, sorry about that), I did watch it the week before and it was depressing to see David Mitchell get Owned by Campbell, just like he did with Adam Boulton, but that was fun.

@ 16

I watched it on 4OD just now… clicked onto this site and the first thing I saw was your comment!

I think they’ve missed the reality that they can’t recreate the alternative election broadcast because something’s missing: the election. So everyone watching back then was excited and fired up and pleased not to be watching Peter Snow. The standard needs to be higher now.

Also, you can’t combine political interviews and debate with an audience that’s there for entertainment and hasn’t been vetted. Leads to too much playing to the crowd. Did you see Carr interviewing that environmental scientist? Everything he talked about is accepted at least as a line of scientific investigation. But the crowd see this guy talking about using volcanos to combat global warming and they start laughing at everything he says, because they think they’re meant to. So – and I don’t think this was the show’s intention – we have a load of people laughing at an expert because they don’t know what they’re talking about.

Still, better this time. Mitchell got too dragged into his own agenda interviewing Caroline Lucas, but in the debate, this time they’d at least given him one guest he agreed with and two he disagreed with, which is better than watching him and two other people tag-team the designated villain like last time.

Thus endeth the review.

@ 17 car down

Really? I was relieved that a major political mover could fend off an entertainer. Oh, a lot of what Mitchell brings to his field is that he’s intelligent and knowledgable – as well as very funny – and it’s possible he could become a serious commentator if he played his cards right, but at the moment he remains an entertainer.

Was impressed by Campbell. He dodged a lot, as was to be expected, but came across as very personable and fairly honest. I can see why people wanted him for Labour leader.

@18…good review, actually might give it a watch before QT, cause of that.
That Carr interview you talk about, I learnt nothing from it. I actually learnt more when Jonathon Ross interviewed Jimmy Carr.

@19…It was just embarrassing really, Mitchell was trying to be a cross between Jon Stewart and Paxman, but ends up being neither. David Mitchell is a funny bloke, Liberal lefty bleeding heart socialist type, that’s cool, I am into that too…and I love Peep Show, and I can watch a few episodes of that sketch show he does with Jez, and his video podcasts are funny and even though he is on every bloody panel show ever I will still watch him, seems like a nice bloke, but he isn’t Frost vs Nixon, no matter how much he wants it to be like that. Still Brooker is always worth a watch even when he has stubble and a haircut.

sorry about that back to QT and Eygpt.

@ 20

I’ve got Brooker lined up and ready to go on iPlayer…

The problem Mitchell’s having is that he’s forgetting which side of the desk he’s on. When you’re even nominally in control of the conversation, you should be saying more than deadpan snarkers, and you certainly shouldn’t be going off on personal rants. I should warn you that the interview with Lucas pretty much devolves into him doing an ad-libbed version of one of his David Mitchell’s Soapbox episodes.

When he interviewed Campbell, he got the last line in then said “We’ll have to stop there”. You don’t do that in interviews. You just bloody don’t, because it turns you into Bill O’Reilly. Even Paxman always gives the interviewee the last word.

@21 Thats the thing, I don’t have a problem with the people presenting the show. I like them all, but I am always thinking I am actually missing out, even when, by the sounds of this story, I am not. Question Time certainly has the edge.

Couldn’t BBC Question Time find anyone informed on Egyptian politics?

It’s not really that kind of show. It’s middle of the road, with people just saying the first thing that comes into their heads.

What’s being asked in this revolution is that the wealthy class change everything about their lives and share with the common people in a way not done before.
Like in Iraq, there are substantial sections of the ”to be diminished class” that would fight to prevent that.

There is an irony in saying that QT doesn’t have an Egyptian specialist on, and then commenters saying that they should invite on Richard Seymour or Sunny Hundal, both of whom have great points but neither of whom is an expert on Egypt!

I think one of the problems illustrated by that comment and the reason that you have someone like Melanie Phillips on is that TV and viewers are only interested in people whom they know- there is a bias in favour of people who don’t know very much about a lot, against those who know a lot about something very specialised. I worked briefly in Scotland for the BBC and was astonished at one point when during making a documentary they asked not for the most eminent specialist in the country, but for a guy who’d done another history documentary but had never published on the subject in question. The problem is that as we go further and further towards celebrity commentators, we move farrther and farther away from experts who talk about what they know, not what they have read a Guardian or Telegraph article about that morning.

It always strikes me that the best programs on radio or television (say In Our Time) are the ones in which the commentators never come back: because whenever the topic changes, they change the expert they consult.

@23

Probably the smartest thing I’ve heard on the subject since the West started caring about it.

your bang on Damon,

Mad Mel is certainly mad – but in the main her madness somewhat under control on Thursday night. The dynamic between Egypt and Israel is very pertinant to the current situation and since she is a knowledgable comentator on Egypt (all being polarising) – I don’t have a problem with her as a guest.

I agree that Claire Short was terrible and they should have found someone who could hold their own a little better.

Equating the MB to fascist Germany not all that outrageous imo. Said Qutb, a key thinker within the MB is seen by many to be the father of modern Islamism and the key influence for al-Qaeda. The similarities between hardline islamism and fascism is something many academics have written about and although there are significant differences – both ideologies can produce truly monstrous regimes – even regimes sprouted from democracy.

I am in favour of liberal democracy. But in Egypt the choice is not between liberal democracy and Mubarak. There is the possibility of various froms of Islamist governance, most of which would be worse for western interests and many of which would be worse for Egyption interests.

^Sorry, I meant mad mel was knowledgable about Israel – not Egypt.

“The conspicuous absense of white, western scholars talking at length about the intricacies of the the situation has been wholly refreshing.”

Yes. Would someone care to defend this racism? As it happens I know one or two people in British Universities who are definitely White, but being experts in Arabic Studies and having spent a lot more time in Egypt than people like El Baradei, I suspect they may be able to offer a sensible comment.

What the comment about the Egyptians misses, of course, is that they are Egyptian. They tend to be invested. The type of commentator they get also tends to know the West well and so report the story in a way that is slanted in their favour. Or simply use the language they have learnt in the West.

If you go over the reporting for Iran for instance, it was mainly pop Marxism at the time. On both sides. As such it missed the real story which was the power of the Islamists. Western political terms simply do not carry over to the Middle East all that well and whatever else you can say, all the commentators will probably be wrong.

Noreeeeena is mad as a box of frogs. ‘I’m an Economist!!!’ and what were those random………….pauses all about? Strange girl. Green was woeful – uuurrgghh, just so insipid, Short meh – she can’t get over Iraq fuck up and Mad Mel seemed quite calm all in all. Burnham looked bored and Dimbleby was on crowd control with Princess Noreeeena.

I think some of you have completely missed QT’s raison d’etre. It has never been a show that gathers together experts on a particular current news item in front of a live audience. Each show, at the start, it is reiterated that the panel do not know the questions in advance. So how could the panel be constructed to fit the questions?

1. Ben six- bourgeois WWE hahaha nice one. Very good. Question time was rubbish. You know exactly what everyone is going to say and then they say it badly anyway. Ho hum.

10 oclock show- also rubbish. The only surprise is Jimmy Carr and that surprise is only that he actually has a political opinion.

@ 32

Carr’s political opinions come out quite a lot, actually. On the alternative election broadcast he was the first person to say something politically slanted – about 20 seconds after voting ended – and a lot of the quips he makes on panel shows and the like suggest that he’s fairly left-wing. A fact obviously confirmed by 10 O’Clock Live.

But it does seem a bit surprising, which is probably because his comedy (while often funny) doesn’t go very deep. Until the last three weeks at least, he’s ben more about one-liners than satire.

The panel for Question Time is selected ten days or so in advance of the programme. It means that the panel have a random selection of knowledge or expertise, and occasionally world or national events leave them flummoxed.

But I like the randomness. The BBC recognise that allowing political parties to nominate spokespeople for the programme would be wrong — the programme would be unattractive and the least enjoyable bits are when an individual has been well briefed, delivering a rehearsed message. So I’m with bsk @31.

Occasionally, the BBC presents special editions of Question Time — local election versions or specialist topics (broadcasts from Europe) or special guests (Nick Griffin). These are interesting distractions, but the appeal of the programme is that it isn’t about experts dissecting a subject. It’s a panel of theoretically intelligent and diverse people talking about current affairs.

@ 34

Griffin wasn’t a special guest as such, there was just a lot of controversy-driven publicity about his appearance. But yes, it took over the rest of the show. I think Dimbleby said something like “I know we’re going to end up discussing the BNP for most of this evening, but there are some other issues we’d like to get through first”.

It was a good episode. Poor old Woundwort didn’t realise that while laughing and clapping when someone makes a witticism at your expense looks like good form, laughing and clapping when they tear your philosophy to shreds and denounce you as one of the worst things about modern Britain just look weird.

Couldn’t BBC Question Time find anyone informed on Left Wing politics?

there was something awfully imperialistic about watching Melanie Phillips and Nourenna Hertz discuss the dangers imposed by the Muslim Brotherhood

Hard to see quite how two Jewish women intellectuals could come to represent ‘imperialism’…… but hey ho.