Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

As a generally Progressive person and also a devout Catholic, I often listen to interesting times with Ross because his episodes do get to some of the tensions I feel within myself and what I believe about the world around me. I am quite often at odds with Ross and his positions, but he has proven to be an astute observer of culture and thoughtful practitioner of our catholic faith. Overall, I think this is a fun podcast to listen to. My only real frustration, beyond differences of opinion, is that Ross is incapable of not interrupting his guests. This drives me crazy. Please consider leaning back a little to give your guests time to fully get their thoughts out before jumping in.

The ICE interview is literally nauseating me l as I listen from my home in the Twin Cities. Ross adopts a faux neutral tone, but in his rhetoric fits perfectly with the framing administration’s framing of ICE’s abuses, from arguing that it’s the job of protesters to make sure ICE agents don’t shoot them while they’re exercising their free speech rights, to refusing to interrogate the (demonstrably false) narrative that ICE is only going after the worst of the worst. This is not an exchange of ideas, it’s just Ross looking for opportunities to insert Trumpian talking points.

Ross Douthat is very difficult to listen to. I think he feels like his questions are nuanced and interesting. He often stops his guests and tries to redirect them (numerous times) into a false construct. He is not nuanced. He doesn’t tolerate nuance. His view is misogynistic, outdated, and incredibly narrow — he only seems to be able to see things through his own lens. He doesn’t want a discussion/ dialogue about an issue that he and his guest disagree on. Instead, he wants to hone in on one or two details of his view and stuff his guest into those exact boundaries, even though the boundaries often do not apply to the guest, democrats, or liberals. He uses a very broad brush to paint a tiny sliver of a thing and seems to have zero awareness that he talks over his guest’s actual point to make a ridiculous argument that starts with “Democrats think…”. The republicans are a much more homogeneous group. The democrats are virtually everyone else. A big tent. We don’t agree on everything. Ross seems like the kind of person who only accepts your viewpoint as a valid and valuable viewpoint if you not only agree with him on the issue, but you also must agree with him on the how and the why and on how arrived at this opinion. For all these reasons, I find him to be the worst kind of person to platform.

Trying not scream while listening to Ross take the ICE activist to task on what training is provided to ICE activists to ensure they don’t take risks and get shot by ICE agents. A better interview would include the head of ICE or an ICE agent asking them what they are doing to ensure they have more training and ability to deescalate and not shoot American mothers at close range in the face. This interview falls embarrassingly short.